Roland Barthes argues that “all identity” (142) is lost in the act of writing, and that the text arises through interaction between the reader and the written word. Responding to Barthes, Michel Foucault asserts that this highly relativistic perspective ignores the way that the “author function” (107) serves to render the writer punishable for potential transgressive social, political, or legal ideas that the text disseminates. While for Foucault the text’s meanings are unbound from the author’s intent, he asserts that the authorial role ensures that some social apparatuses are trained on distinguishable individuals. More recently, scholars such as Carla Bennedetti, Sean Burke and Amardeep Singh have nuanced the authorial role, noting that authorial presence can arise through the text. In conjunction with social media becoming central to conducting daily life, some scholars stress the importance of radically revising existing conceptions of the nature of authorship. I argue in this thesis that many genres of internet video on social media confirm and challenge entrenched understandings of authorship, as authorial status vacillates between creators and the wider userbase. Authority over the text’s meanings, and the consequences of certain interpretations, are both decentralized from and centered upon the original creator. At times, authority is spread out amongst other users to both productive and troubling effects. I suggest questions about identity are pertinent to conversations about determining authorship, as many social media users’ lives are packaged as content for their viewership while others author texts without their identity ever being revealed to the public. Ultimately, social media reveals that not only is authorship polysemous and polyvalent in the digital age, but that conflicting and contemporaneous notions of authorship tend to exist at the same time and influence textual reception and engagement.