YouTube Content and Women’s Identity: A Mixed-Methods Study of Content-Identity Linkages and Audience Perception among Women in Lahore, Pakistan

Abstract

Aim of the Study: This study examines how the content of five leading Pakistani YouTube channels relates to women’s identity, and how Pakistani women themselves perceive and define that identity.

Methodology: A mixed-methods design combined quantitative and qualitative content analysis of 452 videos from five popular Pakistani YouTube channels (Sistrology, Fatima Faisal, Rabeeca Khan, Ghazal Jawad Vlogs, and Kitchen with Amna) with in-depth interviews with (n=20) female viewers in Lahore.

Findings: Content analysis showed that 77.4% of the videos carried an identity theme, producing five distinct images of Pakistani womanhood: collective/family-focused, beauty-expert, celebrity-marital, religious-modest, and domestic-professional. Interviews showed that women largely described identity as self-authored and self-chosen rather than imposed by fixed relational labels, though this sense of freedom was consistently described as partial and shaped by family upbringing and the judgment of wider society and culture. Education and career achievement emerged as the clearest pathway to a confident, self-chosen identity.

Conclusion: YouTube functions not as a space of passive viewing but as a site of active engagement, exposing Pakistani women to multiple, sometimes competing, models of womanhood that they filter through family, culture, and critical awareness.