Televangelists’ Self-Presentation on YouTube

This chapter marks the first empirical part of the book in which I will investigate how the three televangelists—in question—represent their identities on YouTube. Thematically speaking, the chapter will be divided into three parts. First, I will explore Yusuf Estes’ self-representation on YouTube, moving on to explore Hamza Yusuf’s and Baba Ali’s self-representations. The chapter will show that televangelists have created (multifaceted) identities, drawing on a variety of modes such as camera movement, close-up shots, graphic effects, gestures and dress codes. The chapter will also show that involvement strategies were apparent in televangelists’ videos. To illustrate, while in the case of Yusuf Estes and Hamza Yusuf, audience involvement was achieved via reaction shots, showing the engagement of the co-present attendees, in the case of Baba Ali, audience involvement was created through the use of extreme close-up shots, suggesting closeness and proximity with the viewers, and through creating a dialogue with an imaginary ‘built-in’ audience. In addition, rhetorical strategies were featured in televangelists’ video-content, to various effects. This included the use of personal narratives, metaphors and rhetorical questions. Thus, drawing on insights from the Theory of Visual Grammar (cf. Kress and Leeuwen, Reading images: The grammar of visual design, Routledge, 2006) and the Discourse Historical Approach (cf. Reisigl and Wodak, Discourse and discrimination: Rhetorics of racism and anti-semitism, Routledge, 2001), the chapter will further the understanding of Muslim televangelism as a novel phenomenon, extending the application of Critical Discourse Studies to religious discourse online (cf. Rosowsky, 2019).