Abstract

Communicators often face challenges when attempting to cultivate identification with audiences. Inaccurate media representation, stereotypes, and information overload can prevent audiences from identifying with communicators who seek to create authentic connections. While many international artists find global success, most rely on adapting their style, identity, sound, and language to placate English-speaking audiences. Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, known as Bad Bunny, serves as an example of artists who depart from this strategy but shatter records in the process as well. Therefore, a central question informs this study: How does a performing artist, like Bad Bunny, find success in communicating their authenticity to global audiences in today’s hyper-fragmented media landscape? We argue that Bad Bunny negotiates his identity with audiences through an approach we term multimodal authenticity. Multimodal authenticity is an adaptive strategy expressed across different modes of communication that reflects and supports one’s own values and identity. This study seeks to provide an explanation of how he negotiates these challenges, and also discusses how multimodal authenticity might offer a new understanding of what representation and identity mean to audiences today. We employ a close reading of his 2022 song “El Apagón” to explain how this communicative approach is structured, building on the previous scholarship from Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA), identification, social semiotics, and sociolinguistics. Ultimately, we argue that multimodal authenticity offers a new understanding of what representation and identity signify to audiences today.