MEDIA FOLLOW THIS Social media entertainment – the kind that has seen huge growth on YouTube and other platforms – needs understanding if there is to be any measured policy response, writes STUART CUNNINGHAM from an Australian perspective

ver the past 10 years or so, in the midst of all 1+ million; 2,000+ Australian YouTube channels the cacophony of change we are well familiar earned between $1,000 and $100,000 and more than with, a new creative industry was born. With 100 channels earned more than $100,000. More O my collaborator David Craig, a veteran than 550,000 hours of video were uploaded by Hollywood executive now teaching at the University Australian creators and over 90% of the followers of of Southern California Annenberg School for Australian channels were international. Communication and Journalism, I have been That’s only YouTube, and only the programmatic examining the birth and early childhood of what advertising revenue that can be tracked by Google. we call social media entertainment. It is peopled by A Google-funded study by AlphaBeta2 estimates that cultural leaders, entertainers and activists most of the number of content creators in Australia has whom you may be very unfamiliar with... Here more than doubled over the past 15 years, almost are some of them – Hank Green, Casey Neistat, wholly driven by the entry of 230,000 new creators PewDiePie, Tyler Oakley. of online video content. The same study estimates We understand social media entertainment to be that online video has created a A$6 billion an emerging industry based on previously amateur consumer surplus (the benefit that consumers get creators professionalising and monetising their in excess of what they have paid for that service). content across multiple social media platforms to build global fan communities and incubate their IMPACT ON POLICY own media brands. What’s all this got to do with regulation, The work has taken three years and has taken competition and global content markets? us to nine countries, but the best moment was The big social media platforms (Google/YouTube, as I lined up as an enthusiastic early bird at the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Twitch and others) Melbourne Convention Centre for Australia’s first are spaces where an awful VidCon show in September 2017, along with several Over 3 million lot of Australian content hundred tweeners, many with their mums and is being distributed to the dads, all prepped to get to interact with their YouTube creators world by creators such as favourite creators. A 30-something guy walked down globally receive the Van Vuuren brothers, the line, looked at me relieved and said, “Just as well some level of Wengie, and SketchSHE. – I thought I’d be the oldest person here.” And while it is certainly This emerging industry started soon after the remuneration from premature to bracket acquisition by Google of YouTube in 2006, and their content. social media concurrent with the launch of Twitter and their entertainment in the counterparts in China, Youku and Weibo. We know same class of content that that more than 3 million YouTube creators globally is the subject of Australian content regulation, there receive some level of remuneration from their is much for industry, policymakers and regulators uploaded content and it is estimated that, in to get their heads around. mid-2018, the top 5,000 YouTubers had at least First, let’s get more acquainted with this 1 million subscribers; more than 200 had 10 million emerging industry. There is still a remarkable subscribers; and more than 100 had a billion ignorance about its dimensions, both global and lifetime video views. local. In various public utterances by industry Across other platforms, the top 500 Twitch figures, in interviews and at an event in 2017, the streamers have a minimum of 200,000 paying “Australian content conversation”,3 which kicked off subscribers, the top 100 Instagram users have a a review of Australian and children’s content, views minimum of 20 million followers, and the top have been put that: 100 Twitter users have 20 million followers and up. l This sort of material is not viable as a business A report by the Re:Create Coalition found that (they are hobbyists who need to grow up) creators earned $5.9bn across nine digital and social l It’s rubbish anyway and should not be media platforms in 2016 in the US alone.1 mentioned in the same breath as professional In Australia, Google states that there were in 2016 screen content (it’s all about cute moggies doing the more than 400 Australian YouTube channels darndest things). with more than 100,000 subscribers and 85 with Behind these two sit the fear and loathing that all

12 InterMEDIA | December/January 2018/19 Vol 46 Issue 4 www.iicom.org this happens on platforms that are eating our lunch Clockwise from top After all, the mainstream screen business that we as the advertising lifeblood of broadcasting and left: Casey Neistat, all know and love has been around in various forms media moves online. Louna Maroun, Felix for 100 years. Social media entertainment is an Kjellberg (PewDiePie), Wengie, Australian upstart and a young person’s business. While you IT’S NOT VIABLE AS A BUSINESS twins Danny and get the odd octogenarian outlier, the average creator Yes, social media entertainment is definitely part of Michael Philippou is a 20-something, and – while it has proven the gig economy. It is inherently unstable, not least (RackaRacka), impossible for us to establish good data at this stage because the algorithms that drive remuneration on SketchSHE, Tyler – there are no doubt many who have burnt out, Oakley (and his fan the platforms are constantly being tweaked. But number) flamed out or aged out. And there is Mathias Bärtl’s volatility doesn’t stop hotel associations and taxi study on YouTube:4 companies from taking Airbnb and Uber seriously. “It demonstrates stark contrasts between video genres in As we have seen, there has been huge growth, terms of channels, uploads and views, and that a vast but the business models during that time have majority of on average 85% of all views goes to a small undergone fundamental change owing to the need minority of 3% of all channels. The analytical results give for risk management and portfolio diversification evidence that older channels have a significantly higher and in response to platform competition. We’ve probability to garner a large viewership, but also show that seen moves from a single platform (YouTube) and there has always been a small chance for young channels to programmatic advertising, to multiplatform become successful quickly, depending on whether they choose and multiple sources of revenue, including their genre wisely.” merchandising, live appearances, licensing and While this doesn’t sound too different from any crowdfunding, but most centrally, brand other creative industry, what is fundamental is that integration and the rise of the “influencer”. creators of social media entertainment engage in a Of course, it’s too early to tell whether and how model of entrepreneurial practice that pays as this rapidly changing environment featuring much if not more attention to how you build and constantly pivoting platforms will consolidate. maintain a subscriber community that is www.iicom.org December/January 2018/19 Vol 46 Issue 4 | InterMEDIA 13 MEDIA

passionate enough to follow you through thick For debates to be subscribers, has flirted with Nazi and thin as to the creation of content. And feedback useful, arguments symbolism and been lauded by is in real time, constant, fulsome and often the Daily Stormer, while Logan confronting. This includes a lot of strong negatives about quality need a Paul has uploaded video of and trolling. much stronger dose Japanese suicides. On the other Every kind of revenue model in this hand, there are social media entrepreneurial practice depends on activated of demand-side entertainment thought leaders community support. Mainstream arts, culture and thinking. Hank and John Green, the screen industries, with all their talk of audience “Vlogbrothers”, who started building, have much to learn from this practice. Nerdfighters and the VidCon It’s an unforgiving business model: upload content show and speak out for small business creators and several times weekly through non-commensurate, communities. Note that there is a lot of disciplining multiplatform gateways, build and maintain of creators by their communities as well as the your community, deal with the vagaries of the inbuilt constraints that commercial interests exert algorithm, risk-manage your authenticity with both on platforms and on creators. demanding brands and even more demanding But a crucial point is that it is not a zero-sum communities. game about what is professional quality and what is As the multitalented, multidisciplinary musician, rank amateurism – it is not only about quality of actor, vlogger and Twitch streamer, Louna Maroun, content but quality and diversity of engagement. said when she spoke to me: For debates to be useful for policymakers, “I work constantly, whether it is filming, editing, emails arguments about quality need a much stronger dose or social media. It is a lot of work and I spend the majority of demand-side thinking. of my time dedicated to it. Sometimes I don’t feel like I’m At the Content Conversation event, Megan actually working when I’m working, and that makes it Brownlow from PwC made significant points about difficult to keep track of how much work I am putting in. the “lost generation” of television viewers; 8-22 year I love it so much that I don’t even have a regular schedule. olds – generation Z and the millennials – constitute I just want to be able to access it whenever I feel inspired.” a huge video market, 20% of the Australian At the end of 2017, the Australian and Children’s population. But 15-24 year olds have been lost to Screen Content Review5 was submitted to linear television. government, with the aim of “reviewing the On the other hand, social media entertainment support measures in place for producing and engages underserved audiences and provides delivering Australian and children’s screen content, production and career building opportunities for to determine if these remain fit for purpose in the new voices (youth, and culturally and ethnically new, multiplatform environment that has emerged diverse creators and audiences) most of whom have since these measures were established”. But so far, never been near a screen production course or a while there are odd mentions in the media of its funding agency. And there is a lot of social recommendations, there is nothing official. innovation going on – such as with Nerdfighters As we wait, I suggest that the biggest gap in the (there are thousands of Australians in the consultation paper for the review was a lack of Nerdfighter global community), the YouTube- attention to new business models and the lack of supported Creators for Change programme, and serious attention to what the paper still calls much more. “user generated content” – and what we call social And as I have noted, when it comes to the media entertainment. entrepreneurial aspects of distribution, Mitch Fifield, Australia’s minister for merchandising, and audience building, I suggest communications, in his address to the Content that social media entertainers have achieved Conversation in May 2017, acknowledged the levels of professionalisation greater than many seriousness of structural change in advertising mainstream screen businesses. support for the industry and called for “significant Of course, it is a mistake to perpetuate the “us investment in new business models”. professionals” versus “them amateurs” line, even if for regulatory purposes you have to draw the IT’S RUBBISH ANYWAY line somewhere. In support and enablement The premise is that social media entertainment programmes, you can afford to be more should not be mentioned in the same breath as immediately responsive and experimental. There professional screen content. Of course, like any has been a great deal of movement globally for culturally relativist academic, I could deflect this screen, broadcasting and arts agency support for by pointing out that every new pop cultural form social media entertainment. The biggest initiative through history has been called crap. But even appears to be the establishment of Funk, an annual YouTube’s CEO, Susan Wojcicki, says, “We are not e45 million investment in online content services polish, we are texture”, which we could interpret for young viewers from the German public as, “there’s lots of crap but don’t let that stop you broadcasters, ARD and ZDF. As far as I can ascertain, advertising with us”. this is the largest public support of social media But, more seriously, there are plenty of sinners as entertainment up to 2017. well as saints in social media entertainment. While coverage of this initiative has suggested PewDiePie, the most popular YouTube channel, that it is in part motivated by the need to create which currently numbers more than 77 million efficiencies due to high fixed costs in broadcasting

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(it involved the closure of ARD’s EinsPlus and and national brand advertising was appearing ZDFkultur), it is more a response to the programmatically alongside YouTube videos demographic crisis in public service media and a featuring terrorist organisations, anti-semitic clips decision to “offer formats on the net in which discussing a “Jewish world order”, and Swedish young people are interested and make them neo-Nazi groups. available on the platforms they use”, in the words The backlash from over 250 major advertisers of ZDF director, Thomas Bellut. like Walmart, which pulled their advertising from And in Australia, from 2013, Google and Screen the site, was met swiftly by a response from Google/ Australia launched the Skip Ahead programme, YouTube vowing to crack down immediately on this aimed at providing local talent with resources to flagrant failure of programmatic advertising to develop episodic scripted content for distribution maintain baseline community standards. YouTube via YouTube. There have been five rounds of Skip introduced a set of filters to promote more “ad- Ahead so far. Screen Australia selects creators for friendly content”. Creators were charged with the programme, and those selected receive a share indicating whether their “content” fitted a list of of joint seed funding along with access to local categories which advertisers had the option to production resources, and an opportunity to delete from their advertising inventory. network at YouTube Space in Los Angeles. If left unmarked, these videos would remain But there are also indicators of quality – one is demonetised and undergo a human review process RackaRacka, run in Adelaide by brothers Danny – a kind of purgatory with anonymous censors and Michael Philippou, who create action-packed hired by the platform. Even if the video was later videos full of choreographed fight scenes, comic cleared for monetisation, most creators reported violence, and pop culture references (their Marvel losing up to 90% of the revenue they might have vs DC video has had more than 60 million views). earned under the filterless system. The content of Graeme Mason, CEO of Screen Australia, has exemplary social media entertainer, RackaRacka, described RackaRacka as Australia’s most successful was caught up in the adpocalypse, losing it content creator, and there are plenty of other hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue. mainstream tributes. The adpocalypse does give some hope to mainsteam media, which has experienced the PLATFORMS ARE EATING OUR LUNCH departure of advertising to online. But the rapid The big digital platforms are avatars of what brand safety responses by platforms to the Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron called the adpocalypse shows them to be very vulnerable to “Californian ideology”6 – that unique mix of the growing calls for them to be treated for ultracompetitive high-tech and communitarian regulatory purposes as much as media companies as anti-statism – that makes their voice provocatively tech companies. orthogonal to the Australian communications and cultural policy space. CONCLUSION But with foreign influence on the 2016 US This is very much a “watch this space” situation. election now under intense forensic examination, But from a broad policy perspective, we need: the “adpocalypse” of 2017 (the advertising boycott l Better demand-side understanding of what has of YouTube), and the Cambridge Analytica episode, substituted for linear television for young people. we have entered a new regulatory era. There are While it is often very much “television” in terms now a slew of regulatory initiatives and policy of content, it’s just that it’s not delivered in developments: broadcasting mode, surrounded by advertising, l Regulation attacking tax minimisation while a lot of it is social media entertainment (coordinated global effort) l Greater attention to business model innovation l Interventions against anti-competitive practices – some of which must be modelled on social media (EU, especially) entertainment l Interventions on grounds of privacy and l Wider enablement strategies that take these first cyberbullying (global) two points and work them more confidently into l Activity against fake news and democratic deficit our established policy work instruments. (US, especially) Audiences for the screen industries of the future l Interventions to support news values and the depend on it. crisis in journalism (several jurisdictions including Australia) STUART CUNNINGHAM is professor of media and l Regulation to support local/national content communications, Queensland University of Technology, (EU, for streamers). Australia, and co-author with David Craig of Social Media While it is not at all clear what benefits Entertainment: The New Intersection of Hollywood and regulation might bestow on social media Silicon Valley, to be published by New York University entertainment, it is abundantly clear how it could Press in February 2019. and does harm it. As everyone picks up the pitchforks to demand greater and more effective REFERENCES 1 Shapiro R, Siddhartha A (2018). Unlocking the gates: America’s new creative economy. bit.ly/2Etgk5h platform governance and regulation, remember 2 Alphabeta (2016). Bigger picture: The new age of screen content. bit.ly/2yBpEDe 3 ACMA. Australian Content Conversation: Overview. that the adpocalypse of 2017 had unintended and bit.ly/2O6PHXT 4 Bärtl M (2018). YouTube channels, uploads and views: A statistical analysis of the past 10 years. Convergence 24 (1): unfortunate consequences. 16–32. bit.ly/2SnYlof 5 Department of Communications and Arts (2017). Australian and Children’s Screen Content Review. bit. In 2017, journalists revealed that multinational ly/2OOSvhA 6 Barbrook R, Cameron A (1995). The Californian ideology. bit.ly/1d1Uth0 www.iicom.org December/January 2018/19 Vol 46 Issue 4 | InterMEDIA 15