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Youtube As a Platform for Politics

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Youtube As a Platform for Politics “At the end of the day, these are just regular people talking about political things.” - YouTube as a platform for politics. -A study on how and why young adults use YouTube as a platform to engage with political content, and how that impacts their political identity. Einar Tobias Grude Masteroppgave i medievitenskap Institutt for informasjons- og medievitenskap Universitetet i Bergen Vår 2021 Abstract This thesis explores how and why young adults in Norway use YouTube as a platform to engage with political content, and studies how this content and its producers impact their political identity. A lot has been written and said about YouTube as a political platform; a lot of it negative. YouTube has, among other things, been called “the great radicalizer,” (Tufecki, 2018). Part of my goal with this thesis is to dispel the notion frequently promoted in media that political content on YouTube is an altogether evil that leads to radicalization (Weill, 2018). Instead, I want to show how young adults can use it to create and understand their own political identity. I recruited young adults, aged 20 to 25, who all described themselves as active watchers of political content on YouTube. I interviewed them all separately over a period of a few months, then analyzed the interviews. Thirteen interviews were analyzed, in which the informants were asked to talk about their own experiences with YouTube as a platform for political content, why they followed the political YouTubers they did, and how they used the political content they watched. I wanted to explore how political YouTube could be an arena for young adults to build and better understand their own political identity. Using a reception research approach, I tried to get a better understanding of how the informants interacted with political content, and what uses it had to them. I also explored the informants’ experienced relationship with the YouTubers they watched. I discovered that young adults have a very varied concept of what a political YouTuber is, as well as a diverse understanding of why they watch political YouTubers. The most common explanation was that politics on YouTube combined entertainment with information in a way that other sources to politics rarely managed. Though a lot of my informants were now active in politics, for many of them YouTube been the entry-point into politics. YouTube had been an important tool for a lot of my informants in understanding their own political ideologies. By watching political content on YouTube, they could learn about political concepts and ideologies, and they could find political role models. These role models could play a vital part in shaping the informants’ understanding of their own political ideologies and affiliation. Forord Å skrive master er noe jeg hadde både gledet og gruet meg til. Jeg gledet meg fordi jeg liker å lære nye ting, og gledet meg til sette meg inn i noe jeg både liker og bryr meg om, og gruet meg fordi jeg visste dette kom til å bli mye intens jobbing. Det er morsomt nå å se tilbake på hvor jeg startet, og hvor utrolig lite jeg kunne om hva som skulle gjøres. Nå som jeg endelig skal levere føler jeg endelig at jeg har forstått jobben som skal gjøres. Nesten slik at jeg er klar for runde 2. Det er mange som fortjener en takk for at jeg i det hele tatt har en ferdig oppgave å levere. Jeg vil begynne med å takke veilederen min, Synnøve Skarsbø Lindtner. Uten din veiledning er det skummelt å tenke på hvordan denne oppgaven hadde blitt seende ut. Du er en god ressurs som jeg skulle ha benyttet meg enda mere av. Tall til alle på masterkullet 2021, takk for tiden vi hadde sammen. Jeg tror vi alle er litt skuffet over at vår tid som masterstudenter ble så hemmet av Corona, men jeg er likevel takknemlig for tiden vi fikk sammen. Takk til alle kollegaene jeg hadde i seminarlederjobben. Det var den beste jobben jeg har hatt, mye takket være dere jeg jobbet med. Solveig, du kommer til å redde verden en dag. Til jentene på lesesal 542, dere har vært fantastiske. Maya, du er nok den jeg har tilbrakt mest tid med det siste halvåret, og jeg kunne ikke ønsket meg en bedre lesesalnabo. Takk for alt du har lært meg om politikk og The Kardashians, og takk for alle de andre høyst intellektuelle samtalene vi har hatt. Til slutt, takk Lisa, for din tålmodighet og hjelpsomhet. Uten deg hadde dette aldri gått. 1 Contents Part 1: Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1 1.1: Why study politics on YouTube? .................................................................................... 1 1.2: Research question ............................................................................................................ 2 1.3: What is YouTube? ........................................................................................................... 3 1.4: Negative aspects of YouTube as a platform for political content ................................... 4 1.5: This thesis’ structure ....................................................................................................... 5 Terminology explanation ....................................................................................................... 6 Part 2: Theory ............................................................................................................................. 7 2.1: Past research on political YouTube ................................................................................. 7 2.2: What is political YouTube? .......................................................................................... 10 2.3: What is a political YouTuber? ...................................................................................... 11 2.4: The different types of political YouTubers ................................................................... 12 2.4.1: Austere channels ........................................................................................................ 12 2.4.2: Casual channels .......................................................................................................... 12 2.5: The two major political networks: ................................................................................ 13 2.5.1: The right ..................................................................................................................... 14 2.5.2: The left ....................................................................................................................... 15 2.5.3: Centrists ...................................................................................................................... 15 2.6: Three theoretical approaches for why people turn to YouTube for political content ... 16 2.7 :What is politics? ............................................................................................................ 16 2.8: The informed citizen ideal............................................................................................. 17 2.9: Civic duty ...................................................................................................................... 18 2.10: Politics as entertainment ............................................................................................. 21 2.11: Identity and relationships ............................................................................................ 23 Part 3: methodological approach .............................................................................................. 25 3.1: Ethical dilemmas ........................................................................................................... 25 3.2: Method selection ........................................................................................................... 25 3.3: Qualitative method ........................................................................................................ 26 3.4: Reception research ........................................................................................................ 27 3.5: Criticism of the qualitative approach: validity, reliability, and generalizability ........... 28 3.5.1: Validity ....................................................................................................................... 28 3.5.2: Reliability ................................................................................................................... 28 2 3.5.3: Generalizability .......................................................................................................... 29 3.6: Qualitative semi-structured interviews.......................................................................... 29 3.7: Interview structure ........................................................................................................ 30 3.8: Data and analysis ........................................................................................................... 31 3.9: Recruitment process ...................................................................................................... 31 3.10: Informants ................................................................................................................... 32 Part 4: Analysis and results from interviews ............................................................................ 34 Introduction to analysis ........................................................................................................ 34 4.1: Use of YouTube
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