Graduate School of Humanities MA Media Studies: Television and Cross-Media Culture Master Thesis
How to value YouTube. Uncovering the myth of freedom that bolsters the political, social and economic uses of YouTube.
Emma Duncombe 11311827
Date of completion: 27 June 2018 Word count: 19,460
Supervisor: dr. Joke Hermes Second reader: dr. Jaap Kooijman ABSTRACT ...... 3 INTRODUCTION ...... 4 1) Guerrilla TV: The Historical and Political Roots of YouTube ...... 8 Convergence Culture: The Fragmentation of Broadcast TV ...... 9 The History of Traditional Broadcast Television ...... 10 The Rise of Online Platforms ...... 10 The Disruption of Flow in Television ...... 11 Demographic Shifts: Audience Migration ...... 12 The Effects of Production Quality ...... 14 Cybernetics: A New Vision of Interaction ...... 14 American Counterculture: How YouTube Could Have Come into Being ...... 16 Historical Roots: How Should YouTube be Valued Politically? ...... 19 2) Creating YouTube Content: Pursuing Entertainment Value ...... 23 Could YouTube have Become a Democratic Version of Broadcast Television? ...... 24 Intimacy and YouTube’s Aesthetics ...... 26 Case Study Example: Neistat Creating Intimacy ...... 28 Vlogging vs Reality Television ...... 28 Given YouTube never became Citizen Journalism, Why Should it be Valued Socially? .. 30 3) Platform Capitalism: Creating Economic Value ...... 32 The Power of Platforms ...... 34 Commercialisation of YouTube ...... 36 How YouTube Produces Economic Value ...... 37 The “Gig” Economy ...... 39 Values, Benefits and Success ...... 41 Morals and Ethics ...... 44 A Modern Media Landscape: Why should YouTube be Valued economically? ...... 46 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ...... 48 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 51 Websites and News Articles ...... 54 User Generated Content ...... 55
2 ABSTRACT
This thesis considers YouTube as a media platform and a space where content creators, advertisers, distributors and consumers of online video content all co-exist and interact. YouTube is generally considered to be a ‘free’ space. Access is open to all, there is little regulation, potentially it affords all the uses video-sharers would like to put it to. This view of YouTube obscures how Google, YouTube’s owner benefits economically; it obscures that some vloggers are paid, while others are not. It obscures that much of YouTube’s political potential is never realized. All in all there seems to be a myth of freedom that bolsters the political, social and economic uses of YouTube that needs to be uncovered. Therefore this thesis inquires into the ‘values’ (political, social and economic) of YouTube. It examines how the arrival of the Sony Portapak camera in the 1960s foreshadowed YouTube when it provided the enabling technology for “ordinary” people to express themselves free from the constraints of broadcast media. Potential parallels are drawn between the ambitions and values of the activists in the 60s and those of modern day content creators on YouTube. The gig economy and the new working relationships it has spawned raises new questions, most notably how the dramatic changes of the post-industrial era have created economic opportunities online, not only for businesses but equally for the individual vlogger on YouTube. Today’s YouTube represents an interesting mix of the idealist free maker space imagined in the mid noughties, and a platform capitalist arena where vloggers straddle both the embodiments of ‘idealists’ who vlog for fun and more serious “gig economy” workers. With this being said, the various freedoms that may exist in the YouTube ecosphere might well be ideological artefacts. Therefore the thesis will inquire into the values of YouTube in order to demythologise what passes for ‘freedom’ when we think of this online social network.
3 INTRODUCTION
The original intent of this thesis was to explore and challenge the concept of video blogging or “vlogging” as it is more commonly known among consumers of online video content. Vloggers, the people who create these video blogs, occasionally do so for fun not expecting that what they produce for their YouTube channel would develop into anything more than a hobby. However, for some it can become a rewarding career, garnering significant audiences measured in terms of view- counts on their videos, reaching figures that are comparable to or often exceed those of certain traditional television programs. This new form of entertainment, if it can be described as such, invites questions in terms of how it should be defined and valued for the wide range of actors involved. This is particularly relevant today because it can be argued a form of symbiotic relationship has developed between content producers and YouTube as the online platform and distributor of their content. As will be discussed in more detail in the third chapter, over the last year, YouTube has changed its rules on advertising after the advertisements of a number of major brands found their way on to undesirable websites and inappropriate content. Whilst developing the original concept, I gained further interest in combining my media studies together with the Platform Capitalism studies I chose as an elective. Hence, the decision to reorientate the research object of this thesis was made in order to take a broader and more inclusive approach — to consider YouTube as a media platform and how it should be valued historically, socially and economically.
What first sparked my interest in carrying out a historical-economical study of YouTube was the way in which the media industry of the American counterculture in the late 1960s and early 70s was brought under pressure from anti-establishment activists to achieve freedoms that are, at face value, parallel to those espoused by YouTube today. For instance, the counterculture video collective Top Value Television (TVTV) attempted to challenge broadcast media conventions in 1972 by taking their portable Portapak cameras into areas that would have been inaccessible even to experienced journalists (Joselit 99). In this way, TVTV fought to tell the world new stories that were not being told through broadcast television. The About section of YouTube states that they believe “everyone deserves to have a voice, and that the world is a better place when we listen, share and build community through our stories” (YouTube, 2017). YouTube was created as an idealist space for anyone with an internet connection to produce and share their stories. Something that was presumably dreamed of in the American counterculture era of classical broadcast television. Had they been provided with the internet technologies that are available — and perhaps taken for
4 granted — in the modern media landscape, I believe hippie culture would have developed a space like YouTube.
While success for YouTube and those that produce content for it may appear self-evident, the value and benefits that accrue from this activity in a wider context are not. For the purpose of this thesis, value is considered in three forms, namely historical/political value, social value and economic value. Additionally, it will consider the question of value using elements from David Graeber’s “anthropological theories of value” in an attempt to clarify precisely what these are and how they relate to modern platform corporations. To do so, it will briefly consider his different (yet closely related) uses of the term value; which include: moral values, market values and value as a meaningful difference. According to YouTube’s About section, the four “freedoms” or values that their platform provides its users are: freedom of expression, freedom of information, freedom of opportunity and freedom to belong (YouTube, 2017).
So, how is it that counterculture ideology came to be embodied in what is also known as ‘digital capitalism’? In this regard, a statement made in 1985 by US President Ronald Reagan caught my attention. He declared, “we have lived through the age of big industry and the age of the giant corporation. But I believe that this is the age of the entrepreneur” (qtd. in Streeter 69). His statement can arguably be seen to illustrate the transition between working practices of the counterculture era and those that we see today in the evolving digital economy. Whether he could have imagined how things would materialise must be in doubt. In particular, I question whether he could have foreseen the new breed of entrepreneur evident today, that is the “digital entrepreneur”. It might, however, be argued that there is nothing new about the plethora of “cottage industries” that have emerged since he made the statement except for their dependence on technology. This thesis explores how some of the events that preceded his statement might have shaped or at least influenced what followed and how his vision transpired, particularly with the emergence of the developing digital economy.
My findings are presented in three separate essays. The logic behind organising them this way is that they are intended to emphasise the historical connections, parallels and overlaps (in terms of media production, consumption and distribution) of the video-sharing platform that claims to make the world a better place. My particular selection of periods recognises a ‘pre-history’ to YouTube both in the history of the counter culture and how broadcast television developed
5 throughout the second half of the last century and into this one. A second period could be called ‘YouTube’s early years’; a third period regards the years to come and the future of YouTube. The first essay, chapter 1, engages with the history of broadcast television and the utopian energy of the counterculture regarding free access media production. The second essay demonstrates an important turning point in terms of finding value in entertainment. It starts from a key moment in the 1990s that marks a growing interest in ‘civic journalism’, which YouTube never capitalised on. On the contrary in its early years YouTube can be seen to be closely related to genres developing in film and television in the same period: Mumblecore in film and reality TV in television. The third essay starts in the here and now, and looks at (amongst other things) how YouTube is a prime example of the ‘gig economy’: individuals shoulder entrepreneurial risk at little reward, bar a few, while YouTube nets profit for its owner Google (Alphabet Inc.). This is platform capitalism at work, which I will argue, will have a large part to play in shaping YouTube’s future. I keep the three periods of time separate whilst acknowledging that freedom of expression carries all the way through — whether people are fighting for it, exploiting it or attempting to control it.
Understanding YouTube politically benefits from comparing it to one of its closest neighbours; broadcast television. YouTube can be seen as an alternative that offers more ‘say’ to viewers and offers them the position of producer/broadcaster as well. Essay one explores a time when the counterculture youth of the 1960s attempted to reject a number of cultural norms that had governed the 1950s. However, the technology and the structure of the media industry during that period in time meant it was not easily accessible to them. Activists at the time often had a political message they wanted to share, but what lacked was a platform from which the voices of minority groups could be heard. Access to the public sphere was granted to professional broadcast institutions who would act as gatekeepers and tended to favour the establishment over its countercultural critics. The problem the counterculture faced seems almost non-existent now, with the arrival and the continuous growth of social media platforms and, as I argue here, the more closely-related platform of YouTube. This chapter uses secondary sources to explore the counterculture period and contrasts its values with the possible values of convergence technologies today. These secondary sources include the work of David Joselit, Fred Turner, Henry Jenkins and others.
Essay two keeps in mind certain aspects of the counterculture era that might have shaped the platform of YouTube. However, it queries whether and how YouTube can be seen as a site of
6 social exchange and assess how social value may result from the labour of YouTube’s signature producers who make content and “broadcast” themselves via the online platform and those who follow them. Looking from the perspective of those who create and upload content daily, weekly or sporadically helps in understanding the social values accrued to sharing video content online. Interviewing these creators would perhaps have been the best method for research, but I found it difficult to get access to “social” creators today so alternative attempted methods were found. I base this chapter on previous studies carried out by theorists such as José van Dijck, Mark Andrejevic & Hye Jin Lee and Alice Marwick. Although the original intention was to use primary sources (interviewees) to answer the question of this essay, secondary sources are used as a means to piece together the social value of YouTube.
Essay three evaluates the platform as it operates in the current media landscape. It places YouTube within the emerging phenomenon of platform capitalism. My focus will be on economic value. I challenge the idea of YouTube being - as it appears at face value - simply a social or an entertainment medium. Instead, I argue the platform as we see it today is an economic endeavour for all involved, with multiple parties that cannot exist (to varying extents) without each other contributing to the online space that connects them. Here it is important to consider both the economic and social value of YouTube together with the regulatory issues that threaten YouTube in the present day. I draw on the possible issues that arise from both good and bad actors contributing to, interacting with and shaping an online space where freedom of expression is strongly encouraged. In doing so, the thesis explores how the platform should be moderated to “iron out” flaws and violations carried out by the bad actors. The chapter combines theories presented by James Gillespie, Nick Srnicek, David Graeber and others in order to establish how YouTube can be said to have joined the new online world of platform capitalism since its creation in 2006.
Finally, the conclusion will summarise how the dramatic changes of the post-industrial era have created new opportunities for both content creators and the YouTube platform. It critically examines how they have been implemented in the digital era and in the context of platform capitalism. In doing so, it will inquire into the values of YouTube in order to demythologise what passes for ‘freedom’ when we think of this online social network.
7 1) GUERRILLA TV: THE HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ROOTS OF YOUTUBE
How to understand YouTube politically is a question that can only be answered by situating the platform historically. Political here refers to the affordance of greater freedom of expression. Firstly, understanding YouTube politically benefits from comparing it to one of its closest neighbours, which remarkably enough is broadcast television. This is remarkable because television predominantly is an institutionalised medium dictated by commercial logic even in its public broadcast forms. YouTube can be seen as an alternative that offers more ‘say’ to viewers and offers them the position of producer/broadcaster as well. To further examine whether and how it is useful to understand YouTube in such a way, this chapter will offer a short history of broadcast television and its evolution. There is a second useful approach to understanding the political value of YouTube. This is also a historicising exercise as there is an earlier historical period in which the groundwork for YouTube’s arguably anarchist structure is foreshadowed. In the 1960s and 70s, a more or less anarchist ideology was celebrated in the American counter culture for audio-visual media that proposed that voice and agency should never be institutionally ‘hoarded’ but should be the free right of all.
This chapter will inquire into the political value of YouTube by describing broadcast television (Williams) and how it has changed (Lotz, Jenner) to show how YouTube could be seen as a historically logical alternative to the power of broadcast media. Important to note is that television perhaps did change but rather late and perhaps — despite new forms of dissemination — didn’t change much at all. YouTube’s political value is in the offer it extends (or was felt to extend), earlier in its now a little over a decade-long history to marginalised and oppressed groups in society to have a voice and gain agency. That appeal would have been impossible without the advent of the counterculture of the 1960s which I will turn to later in this chapter after having briefly described the evolution of broadcast television as the key and dominant form for audio- visual media.
The exercise of reviewing television from where we are today and looking back to some of its original characteristics will help to establish the major differences between what television came to be and what exactly YouTube provides instead. The elements most relevant to the analysis of YouTube coming from traditional television are convergence, audience migration and cybernetics. In other words, developments in media production, distribution and consumption that have the capacity to offer the audience more freedom which, as we will see, did not in the end 8 translate into either voice or agency — when, in theory, they might have. The work of Fred Turner, Henry Jenkins and Amanda Lotz helps to trace and theorise the most relevant changes to television that have occurred in the past and more recently as the media landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace.
CONVERGENCE CULTURE: THE FRAGMENTATION OF BROADCAST TV
The advent of technological media convergence helped simplify the process of exchanging goods and content electronically. To define convergence in Convergence Culture (2006), Jenkins refers to: …the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behaviour of media audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of all kinds of entertainment experiences they want (2).
A decade after Jenkins published title, the current media landscape provides significant evidence of many more possibilities for viewers to exercise agency over their consumption of television, particularly with the emergence of television that can be consumed online and through a wide variety of devices. Together with the coming into being of social media platforms the conventional boundaries between consumers, producers and distributors are blurred. Platforms such as YouTube, Netflix and Amazon facilitated this “blurring” process that radically changes the one-to-many single platform broadcast medium television used to be into a less easy to define phenomenon. Although this chapter is not concerned with the future of television, or indeed how to properly define broadcast television today, the history of television will help understand what YouTube continues to stand for. For, despite the promise of convergence culture and the blurring of the boundaries between consumers and producers, it is mostly the choice to consume whenever and wherever that has changed, rather than the deep logic of television itself — which is to keep tight control over the professional production of formats and texts (Janssen 220-221).
In order to properly define how media convergence (and the presumed end of television’s monopoly in audiovisual storytelling) has lead to the success of a platform like YouTube, I will begin by looking into the history of traditional broadcast television (Jenner). This evolution lead to an increased control in consumption habits by viewers, enabled by online platforms with databases of watchable content (Bennet). Following this, I discuss the disruption of traditional television flow (Williams) by looking at the post-network period of television (Lotz, Caldwell). It is my suggestion that YouTube benefited from the fact that ultimately television did not change
9 where it counts most: in terms of institutional versus civic power.
THE HISTORY OF TRADITIONAL BROADCAST TELEVISION
To better understand the history and developments in traditional broadcast television which lead to the period of post-network television, I consider the work of Mareike Jenner. She examines the concept of binge-watching in relation to Netflix to establish whether this represents a shift to a fourth era of television. In the interest of the thesis topic, I would argue that YouTube — perhaps more so than Netflix — constitutes this fourth era of television. To be clear about the most significant changes that Jenner considers in television, I will briefly outline all four of the time periods she considers. Periods of US television are used as summarised by Roberta Pearson, in which TVI — the first period of television — dated from 1950s to early 1980s and was the era of “channel scarcity, the mass audience and three-network hegemony” (Jenner 4). The next development according to Pearson was TVII, dating from the early 1980s to late 1990s, which represented “the era of channel/network expansion, quality television, and network branding strategies” (4). Finally, Pearson’s TVIII dates from the 1990s to the present day, and is distinguished by “proliferating digital distribution platforms and further audience fragmentation” (4).
In her work, Jenner describes TVIV as being a movement away from “associated viewing, technologies, industry structures or programming” (3). Its characteristics therefore seem applicable to platforms in the current media landscape. This description in particular fits YouTube, through which consumers are finding themselves with control over their consumption habits as well as gaining new production and distribution opportunities. If consumers want to watch content such as video blogs which would arguably fit into the category of “daytime television” in a ‘binge-session’, the service offered by a platform such as YouTube allows them to do so.
THE RISE OF ONLINE PLATFORMS
The freedom of choice given by platforms to consumers of online video is arguably created because of their functionality as databases or libraries. As James Bennett suggests of BBC’s iPlayer, it is an online database or library of watchable content (161). Netflix developed out of what was originally a video rental service. In the case of YouTube the library is being extended daily, or even hourly and benefits most from its powerful search engine capabilities. Interesting to note, YouTube’s CEO Susan Wojcicki recently described the online space as “an
10 entertainment destination and a video library for the world” (YouTube Blog, 2017). Of course a crucial element that sets apart YouTube from Netflix and BBC i-player is the level of “professionalism” in its content — professional versus semi professional and amateur production as will be considered later in the chapter.
Today — with the fragmentation of broadcast television — production, distribution and consumption processes are considerably less linear, or structured, than they once were. Viewing television content can now be a far more active process, where previously it was a relatively passive one. Convergence television and its relationship to production and consumption in the media industries constitutes important groundwork as a means to establish how internet television is growing in a media landscape that continues to evolve. It acts as an important turning point in terms of consumers starting to take control of their own consumption, which allows people to choose what they want to watch, when and where. For YouTube, it could be said that the changing relationship between consumption and production is what enables the platform to succeed on an entirely different level to traditional television. Therefore, the remaining difference here is that whilst previously passive viewers of traditional television have also gained agency over what they are viewing and where, their opportunities to become producers have not increased or developed in any way.
THE DISRUPTION OF FLOW IN TELEVISION
In her 2008 book The Television will be Revolutionised, similarly to Jenner/Pearson, Amanda Lotz begins by determining three central periods of transformation in television’s history, starting with the Network-Era, followed by a Multi-Channel Transition period and then the period of Post-Network television in which YouTube plays an arguably central role. For Lotz, the latter, most recent era is defined by viewers’ ability to “increasingly select what, when and where to view from abundant options” (15). This, as opposed to the previously static and passive relationship viewers had with television. Television audiences could only watch scheduled programmes at a certain time, on a certain channel and in a defined space where a stationary television set was installed (for example the family living room). In this sense, the concept of planned televisual flow, a term first coined by Raymond Williams in 1974 as “perhaps the defining characteristic of broadcasting” (Williams 80) has been somewhat disrupted in the Post- Network era. Williams considered a certain level of ‘flowing’ sequence that at the time defined broadcast television — including conscious scheduling choices that determined the way viewers
11 experienced television and its content.
To describe audience fragmentation and autonomy, Caldwell states that “what actually occurs in TV-Net usage is that users migrate in all sorts of directions that can only be loosely encouraged with incentives, rather than controlled in any sense” (Caldwell 139). He uses the same focus of fragmentation but in relation to the “flow” being disrupted by certain developments that have come about in television history, “cable, the VCR [videocassette recorders], the remote- control, multichannel cable and satellite services, Video-on-Demand and finally the Internet all promoted a fragmentation of the flow” (Caldwell 134). Critically, these changes prove crucial for consumers and advertisers as will be analysed further in essay three.
One could argue that evolutions in traditional television have lead to the rise of online media platforms like YouTube. Consumers today look elsewhere to fulfil a wish for further control over the content they view. Modern day platforms grant an entirely new relationship to the medium; they provide more freedom, more choice and even the possibility to produce and share content oneself. This does, however, disrupt the flow that could be seen in traditional television. Disruption of flow, of course, first begun with technologies like the remote control — allowing viewers first to easily switch from channel to channel and later record, pause or rewind running programs as they air. YouTube is the next step in a chain of technological advancements leading to convergence and the disruption of flow. That said, in essay three, the thesis explores how in some ways it could be said that YouTube is trying to bring back its own form of flow and control with artificial intelligence.
DEMOGRAPHIC SHIFTS: AUDIENCE MIGRATION
Analysing demographic shifts shows that what the audience consumes, when and where is continuously altering. Although overall, “traditional television” viewing has not yet been rivalled by “time-shifted” television — content that is not watched on a predetermined schedule, and typically watched at the liberty of the viewer — it is possible to see that one day it is likely to do so. In particular, the below graph (figure 1) shows this shift is arguably a generational one, and one that shows most specifically a clear decline in the viewing of traditional television by those in the 18-24 year-old category. Moreover, the graph states that in its definition of traditional television both live and time-shifted viewing are included, making the scale of change even more compelling for this age group.
12 Figure 1:Viewing Trends Among 18-24-Year-Olds, Source: MarketingCharts.com
This very recent shift has most likely been influenced by new services such as those provided by Netflix, YouTube, Amazon and others. These providers have a certain competitive advantage because unlike television channels on classical cable TV they can provide one globally accessible, content rich service. In other words, their services have far greater reach and appeal than cable or broadcast television. That said, on further analysis it can also be seen that this rich content is highly differentiated. In the case of Netflix its service can be seen as complementary to traditional television in some respects whereas YouTube is arguably not. This is primarily because Netflix and other existing platforms (such as i-player) come with a certain guarantee of providing quality content. YouTube began as something different in that it didn’t guarantee that same level of quality. Netflix can be seen to be closely aligned to traditional television in the sense that they source, and sometimes commission, high quality, professionally produced content, whether it’s movies or series such as House of Cards (2013) and The Crown (2016). Until very recently, YouTube’s content was quite different in so far as most of it is not professionally produced. Instead, they have relied almost exclusively on user-generated content of varying forms. It is perhaps this distinction that has enabled YouTube to become a rich and fertile ground on which content producers, consumers and advertisers can operate.
In today’s media landscape, it could be said that the gap between these platforms in terms of quality of production is becoming smaller as YouTube content creators are professionalising. As Netflix, Amazon and others grow in strength, if YouTube continued to depend exclusively on free user-generated ‘amateur’ content they would likely come under increased commercial pressure. Notwithstanding the fact that their unique amateur content most likely lead to their
13 initial success because this style appeals to the youth of today. These more social and economical arguments will be covered further in essays two and three.
THE EFFECTS OF PRODUCTION QUALITY
In comparison to film, television was seen as a medium of intimacy where domestic spaces were featured in the production and televised content was also consumed in a domestic space rather than a cinema room (Creeber 593). Equally, lower quality was associated with television, until it underwent a shift to a more “cinematic” style as technology progressed – by the 1980s more televised content became highly stylized with computer generated imagery (CGI) and heavier use of post-production techniques (595). The device on which people consumed it also saw a shift, many televisions are now high definition (HD), people have “home theatres” and for a lot of viewers visual style is important. Today, television is competing with film in many ways— at present a significant number of actors and directors who were well known in the film industry are switching over to create high-quality television series.
Vlogs and vloggers are a good example of this “amateur” production, displaying personal expression and indeed personal content. The use of webcams, mobile phones and home editing software instead of professional cameras and CGI it can be argued constitute a return to the television of an older era which amongst other things is defined by poorer visual quality. Creeber argues that what he refers to as online drama (YouTube vlogs) are “fighting back against contemporary television’s increasingly ‘cinematic’ aspirations” (603). Considering the ideological implications of low visual quality (television is not the privileged sphere of professional makers) and its consequences for understanding TV as the “intimate” screen, user generated content such as vlogs, which are often made as talking head TV, might illustrate these suitably. In this form of online entertainment there is a form of amateur intimacy. For instance, it is very clear that big studios and hired professionals are not required to produce a vlog. In terms of the content itself, the non-scripted, “raw” nature of the footage and the ‘talking heads’ format that they take on all create a sense of connection with a real person. Amateurism signals authenticity.
CYBERNETICS: A NEW VISION OF INTERACTION
Following this notion of audiences feeling a connection with what and who they are viewing, it seems evident that one of the essential problems to overcome was the lack of interactivity in traditional television formats. The American counterculture (1960s-1970s) offered
14 a first explicit alternative to the one-sidedness of broadcast television and its privileging of producers over consumers. Arguably an early sign of what was possible with technological advancements was the discovery of cybernetics. The cybernetic perspective offers a useful way of framing what broadcast television is about — getting eyeballs, i.e. the selling of audience to advertisers. Professional production, it would seem, is felt to do better at this than amateur production or indeed interactive television. Cybernetics is defined by Norbert Wiener as “the study of messages as a means of controlling machinery and society,” (qtd. in Turner 2005 22). In his 2014 article “The Corporation and the Counterculture” Fred Turner suggests that: For artists, cybernetics offered a new vision of the ways that artworks, audiences, and technologies interact. Individuals made their own choices about how to act and react but within constraints set by their environment. In this sense among others, Wiener depicted the use of communication as a form of control… the environment never exerted instrumental force; rather, it merely set the stage (Turner 69).
As we will see later, control over users’ navigation of the platform and how that is and is not achieved by YouTube is crucial. Nevertheless, it is questionable whether communication as a form of control, as considered by Turner and Norbert Wiener, is present in this media environment — which in itself does not seek to influence user behaviour, rather it continuously attempts to incite engagement and activity. Creators of video content are certainly using the “stage” set by the platform’s technologies to freely express themselves and interact with their audience, but as I will return to in more detail in chapter three, some influencing technologies (specifically algorithms) and constraints set within the platform of YouTube exercise control over what users do and do not see.
Having looked back at the history of traditional television it becomes evident that the convergence of media, thanks to technological advancements, has paved the way for a space like YouTube. However, YouTube would never be successful without an audience willing to watch its lower quality content over broadcast television programs of higher production value. Audience migration shows that a younger generation is indeed migrating to online video formats. They can do so because YouTube and others now exist. Of course, this is not because young people themselves invented the platforms, but more because the notion of an ‘audience’ or consumer- controlled form of ‘television’ was made available in the 1960s among countercultural activists. With this being said, in order understand how YouTube could be seen to have developed as an alternative to linear television, it is useful to go back in time again to 1960’s American
15 Counterculture.
AMERICAN COUNTERCULTURE: HOW YOUTUBE COULD HAVE COME INTO BEING
Here, a period is explored when activists tried to ensure that minority groups could have a voice. However, by today’s standards the technology available to them was limited. Often there was a political message activists wanted to share. The problem they faced seems almost non- existent now, with the arrival and the continuous growth of social media platforms and, as I argue, the more closely-related platform of YouTube. What I argue in this essay is that perhaps the enabling technology from the 60s — the Sony Portapak camera — somewhat ‘provided the idea’ for lack of a better expression, for video sharing platforms as we experience them today. It is argued that platforms can be compared with the creation of a ‘stage’ that gives those who operate through them “leverage, durability, and visibility” (Schwarz 4). The online space that YouTube provides its users can be seen as a stage from which to express themselves, whether the message a user wants to share is a political one or something more mundane. By comparison, broadcast television during the counterculture movement never was such a stage. Indeed, the fact that such a stage was sought is evidenced by independent productions of the early 70s such as The World's Largest TV Studio (1972) and Four More Years (1972) which aimed to “show viewers the underbelly of broadcast TV” (MediaBurn, 2013).
Although the motivation behind the historical events that took place — particularly in the counterculture era — no doubt differs from the motivation of YouTubers today, this essay argues that it laid the foundations for the activities of self expression that YouTube and other video- sharing platforms encourage today. The counterculture explored different means to express a wish for emancipation as well as open access to the public sphere in and via broadcast-style media. These explorations have become part of our cultural heritage and sense of what individuals/ amateurs can and might want to achieve.
During the American counterculture movement, small but significant steps were made towards a participatory format of video production very similar to what can be seen today on video-sharing platforms. A number of events that occurred in the age prior to the internet could be seen to have shaped the online forms of self-expression that are practiced today. In other words, there is a potential ‘hidden history’ of participatory or “grassroots” journalism that started with a number of video collectives. Using key theories presented by David Joselit and Fred Turner
16 among others, these transformational foundations will propose the contemporary phenomenon of user generated content or participatory video production as a potentially pre-existing concept that was set back due to a lack of technology.
One of the first examples of self-enabling popular media content could potentially have been the Whole Earth Catalog (1969) which Steve Jobs referred to in 2005 as “sort of like Google in paperback form [during the counterculture era], 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions" (WEC Website). In a similar sense, YouTube today ‘overflows’ with how-to videos, experiments and new ideas of all kinds. The catalog was published by Stewart Brand and represented a form of do-it-yourself handbook, a “bible for the counterculture” (Dubberly & Pangaro 8). Within the first edition of the catalog (1969) it is stated that: So far, remotely driven power and glory—as via government, big business, formal education, church—has succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains, a realm of intimate, personal power is developing — power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share adventure with whoever is interested (Portola Institute 1).
This statement illustrates the motivation and desire for change that was present. In itself it suggests even at the time of writing the catalog in 1969 that there was an increasing desire to create environments in which power for ordinary individuals was granted rather than power belonging only to large corporations and institutions. This could be seen as a forerunner to the modern ‘how-to’ videos that are posted online today, but participants to the WEC would most likely have been motivated by social or political — antiestablishment — reasons rather than capitalist ones. Moreover, it is argued that WEC “not only showed them the tools, but it became an access device and, for many hippies, an early model of the virtual communities that would later flourish online” (Alexandre, 2014).
In 1970, Michael Shamberg published a book titled Guerrilla Television, and according to David Joselit, the “Media-America” Shamberg describes is a form of sovereignty that has arisen from the increasing amount of information that is in “private hands” (87). In response to this, Guerrilla Television’s aim, using Cable Access Television, was “transforming passive video consumers into active video producers” (Joselit 87). Similarly, Top Value Television (TVTV) was another project Shamberg was associated with, the original aim of which was to offer an alternative viewpoint on the 1972 Democratic and Republican conventions. One of the
17 characteristics of it was making no effort to hide the interviewer from the shot, and the hand-held nature of the portable Sony Portapak cameras they used meant they could access locations and report stories other journalists using older methods would likely miss (Joselit 99).
To briefly elaborate on this before returning to video collectives, the concept of citizen journalism involves ordinary members of the community being given the tools to publish content of their own (Miller 23). A form of citizen journalism evident in today’s media landscape is the use of mobile phones to capture the very early stages and unfolding of newsworthy events. These moments are often recorded and uploaded to social media accounts such as Twitter and YouTube by eye-witnesses even before emergency services or indeed professional journalists have reached the scene. There are apparent parallels between the actions of TVTV and citizen journalism as it is experienced today in terms of producing newsworthy video footage. However, a crucial difference is the ability to easily distribute that content. It is this difference in technological power that enables YouTube to flourish today as a desire for ordinary people to share media content lives on.
One of the video collectives that features in the work of David Joselit is the Raindance Corporation, who “sought to redress the imbalance of power between video producers and video consumers” (93). The alternative video magazine Radical Software (1970-1976), suggested that, “videotape can be to television what writing is to language. And television, in turn, has subsumed written language as the globe’s dominant communications medium. Soon accessible VTR [video tape recorder] systems and videocassettes . . . will make alternate networks a reality” (Korot & Gershuny 1). This statement from within the magazine is a potential indication or prediction of what powerful tools for sharing content video recorders would eventually prove to be. The same could be said about a platform like YouTube and the political power that comes with it, something that will be addressed more in depth in essay two of this thesis.
Members of the video collective Videofreex believed that “placing video cameras…in the hands of ordinary people would make the world a better and more beautiful place” (Greenwald 2). This idea further reinforces the notion that ordinary people might produce content that simply wouldn’t be possible within the rigid corporate structure associated with scheduled television programming. The collective “believed media should be interactive and participatory, and broadcast their phone number so that viewers could call in and comment on the broadcast” (Greenwald 3). In an age preceding the internet, it is interesting to note that offering a phone number was the only feasible way to allow this kind of interactive feedback between 18 producers and their consumers.
Like WEC before it, Spaghetti City Video Manual (1973) is a form of “how-to guide” associated with Videofreex which notably included a section empowering those who used the Portapak camera to be able to fix it for themselves rather than relying on Sony — in itself a form of anti-establishment behaviour. In addition, Videofreex, also established a private production facility where creators could go to “learn new skills and contribute to Lanesville TV [1972, the first pirate TV station]” (Greenwald 3). An equivalent service, whereby users can go to a facility and learn how to produce better quality videos can be found today. Evidently, the service which is known as “YouTube Spaces” is not a new concept, however, the reasons for YouTube providing it now are arguably driven more by commercial imperatives.
Overall, the social climate at the time and the arrival of new technologies arguably had the power to change the world in such a way that it had a democratising effect. In particular, the arrival of the Sony Portapak camera together with new channels for delivering video content could be considered a highly significant social and cultural step towards challenging the status quo during the anti-establishment period. With these new devices, activists potentially had for the first time the tools they needed to strategically challenge the existing modes of authority that the big media corporations represented. The ability to capture and record video provided a new means for people to express themselves which was arguably driven by the politically motivated desire for greater freedom of expression. However, one of the key challenges that remained in the counterculture era was the distribution of content.
HISTORICAL ROOTS: HOW SHOULD YOUTUBE BE VALUED POLITICALLY?
The actions of activists during the era of the American counterculture represent a possible origin for what we see today in creative forms of self-expression. It is argued for example that the ‘co-creative’ platform of YouTube is “produced dynamically (that is, as an ongoing process, over time) as a result of many interconnected instances of participation, by many different people” (Burgess and Green 90). A strong connection can be seen between this and the attempts made by activists and academics in the late 1960s in America, for whom the participation of many individuals was essential if they were to be successful in achieving the level of freedom they desired.
Referring to two of YouTube’s own values; when providing a description of freedom of 19 expression their About section states “we believe people should be able to speak freely, share opinions, foster open dialogue, and that creative freedom leads to new voices, formats and possibilities” (YouTube, 2017). Further, they define freedom of information as their belief that “everyone should have easy, open access to information and that video is a powerful force for education, building understanding, and documenting world events, big and small” (YouTube, 2017). Both of these values seem to suggest that YouTube hopes to be seen not only as a space for users to openly express themselves, but equally a space for citizen journalism to flourish.
This leads one to conclude that the struggle for greater freedom of expression in the counterculture era together with the transformation of broadcast TV can be argued to have laid the foundations for what is visible in the new digital era. This is not to say that had broadcast television become more interactive and offered more opportunities for amateur producers we would not have had YouTube. It could be argued, rather, that if television had become a medium that opened more opportunities for amateur production, YouTube would perhaps not have found the same success or would have remained entirely “community based” the way it started in 2006. I discuss this further in the chapter that follows — most notably considering the creation and development of an open and transparent form of video production and distribution. However, a crucial difference is apparent between the 1960s and today in terms of the motivation and desired outcome. Activists had a more political agenda, wanted minority groups to be given a chance to have their voices heard, and to break free from the constraints of the large media institutions that dominated at the time. For vloggers in the present day this is not so much the case, they do of course have an expansive space to express themselves, something that would have been put to good use in the 60s. Therefore, the real difference that sits between then and now is the invention of powerful, enabling technologies. This, of course, in combination with the less politically charged ideology that in today’s society, producing and sharing video can be seen as a good, creative and fun activity.
Whether viewer experience is enhanced online in a way that broadcast television cannot achieve, or indeed whether the two have begun to overlap is open to debate. Evidently it would depend what is truly desirable in an audience’s experience of watching television. Vlogs are presented in a way that viewers feel invited into the lives of the characters they observe, which is not really the case even with reality television. One could say that the countercultural roots are still alive today, although perhaps not manifested in the same way as they were in the 1960s
20 where the status quo was being directly challenged. In the modern media landscape this might be much more repressed, but by increasingly choosing to consume “amateur” video on platforms such as YouTube, todays youth to some extent continue to challenge the status quo of modern television and high production value.
A shared desire to create environments in which ordinary individuals could take a position of power rather than large corporations was expressed within the pages of the Whole Earth Catalog in 1969. Almost five decades on, YouTube can be seen to liberate people in a similar sense from the dominance of large media corporations who decide what is presented to their audiences and when. Indeed, it can be seen as an idealistic space, where producers of user- generated content can tell their own stories, without any real form of review or censorship. Thus, providing the individual with power to express themselves as they wish, with whoever might be interested free from any establishment constraints. In the case of Videofreex, the collective essentially stored content produced by ordinary people which mirrors almost exactly the characteristics and functionality of YouTube today. As has been emphasised before, the content could be stored at this point but not so easily shared. More notably, the same collective mirrored the functionality of video sharing platforms in so far as they encouraged audience participation and interactivity by sharing their phone numbers. These capabilities have now arguably been replicated, not only through YouTube’s interfaces but through most other forms of social media that allow users to comment and re-post content from elsewhere. That said, however, YouTube’s comments section is a far more simplified — less demanding some might say — way of motivating audiences to make a contribution by clicking one of a number of pre- defined buttons. In the case of interactivity on YouTube, a user can simply like, dislike, comment on a video or share that video to another website or platform.
This essay has traced what I argue is the ‘hidden history’ behind the platform of YouTube and the values it stands for today. So, what is the political value of YouTube? The answer to this would be ‘not much’ if one were to consider only the dominant content it displays today (video blogs and other amateur-produced content). However, a lot of political value can be found in its historical roots — if those are to be seen as the outcome of an alternative vision for broadcast television developed in the 1960s. With that being said, what is needed at this point is further analysis of the pivotal developments in media production that have given rise to the growing popularity of user generated content as a source of entertainment. In essay two,
21 what I call a ‘turning point’ during YouTube’s early years is more specifically explored.
22 2) CREATING YOUTUBE CONTENT: PURSUING ENTERTAINMENT VALUE
This chapter queries whether and how YouTube can be seen as a site of an ongoing audiovisual conversation, assessing how social value may result from the labour of YouTube’s signature producers who make content and “broadcast” themselves via the online platform and the immaterial labour of those who follow them. The social value of YouTube is related to its unique entertainment value (Juhasz 147) rather than its political and civic usefulness or interaction. This chapter will point to two groups of YouTube producers: the semi-professionals and the ‘incidental uploaders' as it were — and it will also suggest that YouTube’s form allows for more than mere entertainment (even if it is not used for anything more). Interviewing these creators would perhaps have been the best method for carrying out research for this particular chapter; likewise a ‘picture’ of inventory of all that YouTube offers would help answer the question of YouTube’s social value. However, making contact with successful YouTubers is very challenging and YouTube does not allow an easy overview of its vast amount of content. Therefore I will take a more aesthetic approach as a means to gauge YouTube’s attractiveness for users and/or viewers.
In theoretical terms, a large amount has been published regarding YouTube producer- consumer audiences (Burgess & Green). Similarly, much has been written in terms of YouTube as a platform provider and its business model. Here however I will focus on YouTube aesthetics to find out what it is that makes its defining content (the vlog) attractive. Intimacy has an important role to play here, which is explored through the work of Glen Creeber, and the decisions made by YouTuber Casey Neistat, who takes a particularly self-reflexive approach to creating content. Such research is best done using existing literature. To justify this course of action, I will also briefly discuss how YouTube has changed its search functions (some of which were removed). Fortunately from my perspective, there is research literature for which data were collected prior to the mysterious removal of some of YouTubes more targeted search functions.
To begin, a brief description of the platform and the developments it has made to become what it is today. YouTube is a digital platform through which people can create an account and upload videos to be viewed publicly. According to José Van Dijck, when YouTube started in 2005 it worked as a community of volunteers on a non-profit basis (155). This being said, with Google’s acquisition of YouTube in 2006 and advertising company DoubleClick in 2007, Google as YouTube’s owner gained the power and control to sell online ads, and for advertisers and ad agencies to buy them. It is for this reason that in comparison to its original form, the online space
23 users experience today could be seen as “less community based and more commercially based” (155).
From a production perspective, YouTube itself doesn’t have any input in developing, filming or editing the content on which their business model depends (149). The platform has always relied on user generated content to garner the huge audiences necessary to attract advertisers. Some scholars believe that encouraging the growth of online content creators will render YouTube a real competitor for traditional broadcast mechanisms, “potentially pushing television into obscurity” (Yeung 7), whilst others argue the platform should not be considered an “equivalent or even a derivative of television” (Van Dijck 148). Van Dijck separates terms related to broadcast television and terms more fitting for its convergence with the computer, defining YouTube as a homecast platform and the short videos people upload to the platform as ‘snippets’ (154). She reiterates that “homecasting will never replace broadcasting, just as broadcasting never disappeared when narrowcasting gained popularity” (150). Although YouTube may not have strict programming schedules and in a basic sense cannot decide what is being consumed and when, they maintain control through “metadata, search engines, ranking and profiling systems, which are all employed by users” (150). Users are somewhat guided, creating their own flow through clicks, which Van Dijck describes as a “staccato flow” (152). While YouTube policy and the possibility to upload longer videos has changed, this characteristic still stands.
To continue on the same topic, however, there are some characteristics of the platform, both in its format and its aesthetics that positions YouTube as something that perhaps “attempted” to be a more democratic version of broadcast television, the historical possibility of which I argued for in chapter one. Clearly there is a relation here to YouTube’s social value: as a more democratic form of broadcast television, YouTube would be a means to both connect and discuss directly and indirectly what concerns us. The process of connecting with people through communities has also been referred to as cultural citizenship (Hermes 303). After briefly indicating how its aesthetics and architecture could afford a more political and democratic use, I will turn to how YouTube actually developed its social value as primarily a space for entertainment.
COULD YOUTUBE HAVE BECOME A DEMOCRATIC VERSION OF BROADCAST TELEVISION?
This section discusses the early case of Rodney King as a means to illustrate an alternative
24 future for YouTube; but instead of citizen journalism, it gave vlogs instead. Vlogs will be further defined including discussion of one of their key characteristics which is intimacy: remediating an earlier genre of film based a concept known as ‘mumblecore’, and reality TV. Both will be discussed as well as a case study example of vlogger Casey Neistat, who explains the vlogging techniques he uses within his vlogs. In doing so, it will become clear where YouTube’s entertainment value is located. Further, YouTube is considered in this section as a forum for voices other than those from media institutions. YouTube’s notion of its users gaining the freedom to belong states “everyone should be able to find communities of support, break down barriers, transcend borders and come together around shared interests and passions” (YouTube, 2017).
As mentioned previously, with this example, I discuss YouTube as having the affordance to potentially be a more political forum. Arguably, in the early 90s the world saw a glimpse of what potential freedoms a space like YouTube might allow. An early case in which the lack of agility of the institutionalised media (broadcast television, print news) was most apparent is that of Rodney King, where a member of the public filmed him being mistreated by police. In Los Angeles in 1991, King was beaten by police officers, and unbeknown to them their actions were caught on a home- video camera. This is an example a new type of citizen journalism, which was to have profound effect. When George Holliday, the owner of the footage, sent it to the police department itself they showed no interest in watching it. As a result, he copied the footage to a USB stick and sent it by post to a television company who then broadcast it for him. The footage was used to bring criminal charges against the police officers in a case that would otherwise have simply been their word against King’s.
Had YouTube existed at this time, the footage would no doubt have been much more easily shared with the masses. Through a platform like YouTube, transparency would have been granted from seeing what happened through the lens of somebody who was present. In the past, it has been argued that the mass media — broadcast television — are not generally very transparent in their choices of and for news coverage and other content. In other words, within the content they broadcast it is difficult to establish if a bias exists. Contrastingly, it could be said that although a creator’s opinion may lean one way or another on any given channel or vlog, YouTube as a vast participatory space is more easily seen to allow for a mix of voices to be heard. A consumer could watch many video blogs that cover the same issues, events or products and their opinion would not necessarily be swayed in any particular direction by the overall content offered. While individual
25 vloggers might prove persuasive there would also be easily available contradicting views. Thus, they would be able to form their own, arguably more educated decision, moulding the platform of YouTube into a highly valuable place for consumers to find information on just about any subject.
Undoubtedly, this also resembles somewhat the use that the platform would have had if it had been in the hands of young activists during the American counterculture. In essay three, a counterargument is offered to the “non-bias” of YouTube (one is able to watch numerous videos of different opinions), as YouTube has become an increasingly striking success for platform capitalism (their algorithm pushes viewers towards videos of a similar opinion to the ones they have previously been watching which will provide a certain level of bias). However, here I will continue trying to understand the social value of YouTube as both entertainment and citizen journalism forum that derives part of its strength and significance from echoing earlier attempts to break the monopoly of broadcast institutions.
Over 25 years after Rodney King, YouTube is not filled with video recordings from the scene of unfolding incidents or similarly politically explosive materials — proving it never did become a tool for citizen journalism. Instead it overflows primarily with content from creators, entertainers, people who opt to share much of their lives online. This is often done in the form of video blogs on a daily, weekly or less frequent basis. While a potentially politically important space, its main identity is one of a place where fun might be found. My question for the next part of this chapter is what makes YouTube videos attractive. What is it that makes the specific aesthetics of YouTube vlogs (which arguably have become YouTube’s defining content) so attractive?
INTIMACY AND YOUTUBE’S AESTHETICS
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (2017), a vlog is a personal website or social media account on which blog posts are made in the form of short videos. A vlogger is the person who regularly posts short videos to a vlog. Vlogging can therefore be defined as the activity or practice of posting short videos to or maintaining a vlog. They tend to take a “talking head” format and discuss personal information topics. It can therefore be described as an intimate format (strengthened by the use of small and affordable mobile devices to film them). Intimacy can be said to play a relatively crucial role in the ‘success’ of vlogs, but it was equally an apparent element in creating different and compelling styles for television and film in the decades prior to YouTube. Aymar Jean Christian writes a compelling article which draws parallels between the intimacy seen
26 in what are known as “mumblecore” films, and those seen in vlogs. Mumblecore is described by Christian as a film movement which started in 2002, prior to the creation of YouTube, and its films are distinguished by “handheld cinematography, natural lighting, real locations, simple set-ups, an emphasis on facial close-ups, and few takes” (San Filippo 5). Interestingly, the influence of films under the category of mumblecore was the French New Wave, and also the DIY culture. The former was an avant-garde movement in filmmaking in which the camera became a shaky hand-held object that would change the overall aesthetic of the finished film. Among many other characteristics of the New Wave, these films were generally made up of improvised dialogues that were provided by non-professional actors. Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami suggested that where usually professional superstars and expensive equipment were associated with cinema, “with the New Wave, I saw myself and my neighbours in films” (qtd. in Darke 445).
The DIY culture, or being able to produce something for oneself without relying on hired specialists, is something that the historical analysis of this thesis touched upon — the increasing desire to make this transition was in its early stages during the counterculture era. Christian’s analysis, which uses specifically Joe Swanberg’s 2006 mumblecore film LOL illustrates how the characteristics that describe mumblecore relate to vlogs:
…even the mundane is given close-up treatment. This focus on the mundane owes much to the style of the vlog and the webcam, which broadcast the dull details of another life. . . Before the web, people generally saw only lovers so closely, but vlogs and webcams made ordinary the “close-up” connection between strangers (124).
When YouTube was first created, it could arguably have been idealised as an intimate space that would allow a greater number of ordinary people to do the same things that these experimental filmmakers sought to do with film — to create a more personal feel to cinema on a low budget and bring actors with little previous experience into the spotlight. Not dissimilar to the value many creators have found in YouTube, it could be argued that they are empowered by the platform to “broadcast” themselves, their talents and their interests. YouTube originally carried the slogan “Broadcast Yourself”, but this has since been removed:
We modified it a little bit when I came to YouTube [in 2014]. We started talking about different freedoms that we believed in—freedom of expression, freedom of information, freedom of opportunity. And I think what this year has really shown is that sometimes those freedoms are in conflict with each other (Susan Wojcicki, qtd. in Thompson 2018).
27 CASE STUDY EXAMPLE: NEISTAT CREATING INTIMACY
Having reviewed the current landscape of television production and consumption in chapter one and now this slightly older ‘mumblecore’ technique for creating intimacy in video production, I turn to a specific YouTube channel that suitably represents the blurring of boundaries between the rigidly structured world of traditional television production, and that of user-generated content to understand YouTube vloggers' drive to entertain as creating social value. Casey Neistat is a highly self-reflexive YouTuber who is a ‘professional’ in the sense that he worked as a filmmaker and had experience in the television industry prior to starting his YouTube channel and publishing a series of daily vlogs. This can perhaps be seen as Neistat “challenging the status quo”, and using the power provided by video sharing platforms to connect more with his fans. Essentially, he has brought his previous experience as a filmmaker into video blogging. He has since inspired many other content creators to experiment and use different techniques including new camera angles and creative editing techniques. In a video on his channel titled How To Vlog, he describes the way that for him, the purpose of producing this content “isn’t and has never been to share all the intimacies of my life, it has always just been to create a good or entertaining piece of content every day”.
Much of his content takes the format of a ‘how-to’ video. In one of his uploads, under the title of WHY I ALWAYS WEAR SUNGLASSES, Neistat explains that he wears sunglasses on camera because it maintains the appearance that he is looking directly at his audience and not at his view- finder, “its the only way I can check my framing without making it look weird”. This is essentially a technique for making his audience feel more connected to him, and ensure that they are not distracted by his eyes looking elsewhere whilst he addresses them. The issue of not being able to look directly at the camera at all times, which Neistat attempts to overcome, does not arise when professional camera crews are filming actors for a television show or movie. Typically, in television shows such as series and soap operas actors do not ‘break the fourth wall’ by looking directly at their audience and the footage captured only airs after an extensive process of editing. Although describing it as an issue is perhaps unjust because what it truly represents is the positive level of intimacy that hand-held, close-up video blogs exhibit. A level that television would arguably struggle to replicate.
VLOGGING VS REALITY TELEVISION
In terms of providing a way for people to show their lives and others to observe it, vlogging can be considered very similar to reality television shows. The main difference is that in actual fact, 28 a creator of user-generated content is in complete control of what they are filming, and even after it is filmed it is theirs to do with what they wish. The literature on reality television shows this to be the complete opposite of the fate of contestants on reality shows — whose portrayal is decided on in post-scripting over which they have no control whatsoever. In fact, due to the ‘unpredictability’ that comes with filming ordinary people, television production teams attempt to ‘manage’ those people and “make them behave so that participants become interesting television subjects” (Teurlings 100). In vlogging there are no other parties (generally) who are going to take footage and decide what to include and what to edit out. They can leave out pieces of footage they don’t like, edit out any mistakes they have made or skip something that was said but shouldn’t necessarily have been shared with their audience. So in that sense, reality television has a far less “genuine” aesthetic than what is visible in daily, weekly or occasional vlogs because reality TV content would have gone through some form of screening before being distributed.
Vlogs display many parallels with reality TV shows that appear on traditional television. Reality TV was seen as something that brought “ordinary” people and put them “on stage”. Equally it made audiences feel as though they could relate to the people they were observing - whether they were performing on a talent show or participating in a “Big Brother” style of programme. It has been questioned many times whether these performances are contrived or real. Arguably, vlogging actually brings audiences even closer to those they are watching because for the most part vlogs are filmed by only one person at a time and are produced in a private space, often a bedroom. The nature of vlogs being filmed on hand-held devices, usually framing a central character or focal point, means people feel that they themselves could perform the same tasks as vloggers are just like them. As John Hartley put it:
One of the internet’s more popular innovations was the camera sited in someone’s bedroom, allowing users to check out domestic banalities (with a promise of intimacies normally banned from broadcast TV) in real time, all done for nothing by private individuals in their own home (179).
Arguably, video bloggers posting on YouTube could be compared to talent show contestants, another type of reality television than that which was researched by Teurlings, quoted above, who put themselves on stage to be judged. Participants in the world of user-generated content presumably want to be famous and would hope to be spotted and elevated to stardom though their videos. There may be no panel of professional judges, but the principle mimics TV shows like
29 Britain’s Got Talent (ITV, 2007-Present) and others; only in the online world, everyone is a judge and everyone can vote. It is interesting to note in this sense how broadcasters have possibly learnt a lesson now and are starting to involve their audience in these talent shows through the use of apps that can be downloaded to their digital devices. Second-screen apps now accompany many talent shows, allowing audience members to cast their own votes whilst the show is airing. The second- screen app “adds an interactive layer to television viewing, delivering on the monitoring, sorting and customising preferences treasured by marketers and advertisers in the digital era” (Andrejevic and Lee 41). In this sense it seems that second screen apps may be less about inviting the audience to interact with what they are viewing, and more about broadcasters having greater means to control their audiences.
To conclude this section, YouTube vlogs can be seen more as a new aesthetic form of their own, and not a new form of broadcast television. YouTube assures its continuing attractiveness and thus social value by introducing a new type of celebrity and even a new relationship between those celebrities and their fans.
GIVEN YOUTUBE NEVER BECAME CITIZEN JOURNALISM, WHY SHOULD IT BE VALUED SOCIALLY?
Trying to find out about the social value of YouTube it has proven useful to distinguish YouTube from broadcast television (as discussed in chapter 1) — even if aesthetically YouTube borrows heavily from the older medium as has become clear in this chapter. Indeed, YouTube can also be linked to film genres, notably Mumblecore. Social value is ultimately generated in the exchange between vloggers offering their personal lives and participatory fandom — this is turns out is hard to research at an aggregate level. Other types of social value may well be generated too as in the uses that are possibly made of the amateur and professional content provided on the YouTube platform.
In summary, the conclusion can be drawn that to be an audience for online content differs from being one of traditional television in a number of ways. Looking at the wider concepts of transparency, authenticity and intimacy, the YouTube audience appears more engaged and in control. This sets the context for the chapter that follows where I will inquire whether that is actually true. Whether the subject of a video blog is something mundane or something highly controversial, what vlogs bring is the ability to comment and interact on current and archived content. Vlogs can indeed produce something that is uniquely different — public and personal —
30 that could not be achieved via conventional broadcast television.
I argue, therefore, that the ‘dream’ democratic version of YouTube would have been used as a transparent and open space for newsworthy stories like that of Rodney King to be published, discussed and shared — supported by real video footage from the scene. However, as I consider in the chapter that follows, if this is indeed how YouTube was dreamed to be, then in reality it has evolved to be something much different in the modern media landscape. As YouTube grows within the new multi-media ecosystem, it could be said that it is modelling itself more and more on the originally more dominant, traditional media modes of binding audiences.
Vlogging could be seen as the ultimate tool for those that wish to pursue greater freedom of expression, a much sought after democratising capability one might imagine. Those that use it for political purposes no doubt feel liberated and for some it is an ideal platform for their extreme views which may, for example, include anti-capitalist opinions. Predominantly though, the aesthetics of YouTube are part of a logic of social value that is geared towards entertainment rather than politics. It can even be seen to be the case that those who are highly successful in terms of establishing a significant audience can themselves, without necessarily being conscious of it, become key participants in the capitalist system I discuss further in chapter three; particularly through the political-economic logic that YouTube brings.
31 3) PLATFORM CAPITALISM: CREATING ECONOMIC VALUE
This third and final essay researches how the YouTube platform operates in the current media landscape in such a way as to position itself within the emerging capitalist world of platform businesses. YouTube provides their vision for freedom of opportunity, stating that “everyone should have a chance to be discovered, build a business and succeed on their own terms, and that people — not gatekeepers — decide what’s popular” (YouTube, 2017). Here I will challenge the idea of YouTube being — as it appeared at face value — a political or even an entertainment medium. Instead, I argue that the platform as it operates today should primarily be seen as an economic endeavour for all involved, with multiple parties that cannot exist (to varying extents) without each other contributing to the online space that connects them.
The parties involved that I will focus on here are creators, viewers, YouTube itself and Multi- channel Networks. It is not sufficient to only consider the economic value of YouTube for these different parties without taking account of the reputational and regulatory policies that are in place in the present day. This discussion is of course necessary because YouTube as a platform provider must be seen to govern and be in control of what is and is not allowed to take place within their online ‘territory’. Finally, the essay concludes by examining whether the idealist spirit and open community ethos valued by many YouTubers can survive being subsumed under the encroaching market logic of platform capitalism. While the term platform capitalism perhaps explains itself, I will define it here for the sake of the argument. By platform capitalism I mean the idea that in recent years, data which is most easily shared via online platforms, has “become increasingly central to firms and their relations with workers, customers, and other capitalists” (Srnicek 5). Data are turned into dollars since they allow access to user behaviour which can then be targeted to extend their online presence into consumer behaviour. Under platform capitalism, the main drive for media organizations is to know where viewers and users are, in order to track them and in order to make sure that targeted advertising reaches them.
The remodelling of Google, which saw it become a wholly owned subsidiary of the new company Alphabet Inc. in 2015 heralded significant new offerings from YouTube. This essay considers how content creators — including highly successful ones who are already producing the most valuable content, those who are in the process of building a following and those that are just starting out — might all be affected by the remodelling, introduction of stricter policies and launch of new products such as the YouTube Red subscription service. YouTube’s latest subscription
32 system (which was first launched in October 2015 as YouTube Red but since rebranded as YouTube Premium in May 2018) removes adverts and allows access to extra original content and channels at a fee of $9.99 per month. To understand how these changes might affect producers of content, YouTube’s benefit level system (through which successful vloggers are rewarded by YouTube) will be briefly explored to establish what content creators can expect to achieve as they attain certain numbers of subscribers. In addition, the section that follows assesses what economic value YouTube brings — how the platform may be seen as a powerful asset going forward as it competes with new developments from Amazon, Netflix and more generally Internet television providers.
There is evidence to suggest that YouTube content creation is a successful business enterprise. Research gathered in 2016 states that: Globally, 44% of all internet users watch a vlog each month. As a result, vlogging today is big business. With digital video advertising budgets set to continue growing at a faster pace than their TV counterparts, advertising partnerships with popular vloggers represent an attractive option for marketers that want to reach a young, affluent and digitally savvy audience. (MediaKix, What is vlogging?)
A considerable volume of academic and media material is available to show that whilst vlogging and the YouTube platform are both relatively recent developments, they have already achieved a significant level of success. In fact, vlogs are the third most popular category of video on YouTube after product reviews and how-to guides (MediaKix, Most Popular). However, this participatory eco-sphere involves many actors and it is therefore necessary to determine how success can be defined for them in the broadest context. Here I explore examples of how success can very quickly turn into failure for individuals (and how this does not hurt the overall economic success of YouTube). It is important to review the overlapping roles that are now played in the production, distribution and consumption of online content. Specifically, how content creators, advertisers, distributors and consumers all co-exist and interact with the end goal of establishing the economic value that is accrued to YouTube.
Through the work of theorists such as Gillespie, Helmond and Schwarz I distinguish the main features of digital platforms, starting with Gillespie who creates an effective argument for determining how YouTube fits into the area of platform capitalism. He describes how as an intermediary YouTube controls the exchange and activities of its users and multiple stakeholder groups. He describes platform companies as those that “provide storage, navigation and delivery of
33 the digital content of others” (Gillespie 348). In doing so there exists a symbiotic relationship between all parties involved including content providers, distributors, advertisers and consumers.
At this point, it is useful to critically assesses both the challenges and opportunities outlined in the abstract of Gillespie’s Politics of Platforms (2010) in particular how:
Online content providers such as YouTube are carefully positioning themselves to users, clients, advertisers and policymakers, making strategic claims for what they do and do not do, and how their place in the information landscape should be understood. (Gillespie Abstract)
Gillespie continues to define the term platform more specifically, with the primary aim of placing YouTube within it. Platforms are referred to “sometimes as technical ‘platforms’, sometimes as ‘platforms’ from which to speak, sometimes as ‘platforms’ of opportunity” (Ibid. Abstract) and YouTube can be argued to fit into all three in different ways. However, perhaps more important to this final essay is Gillespie’s emphasis on the way in which platforms like YouTube wish to be considered in regulatory terms:
…they seek protection for facilitating user expression, yet also seek limited liability for what those users say. As these providers become the curators of public discourse, we must examine the roles they aim to play, and the terms by which they hope to be judged. (Ibid. Abstract)
The contemporary media landscape abides by regulatory responsibilities that are historically defined on a national basis which are difficult if not impossible to implement globally. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to expect that YouTube accept they have a moral and ethical responsibility to act when producers upload inappropriate content. Whether they do so will be analysed by referring to some recent examples which are presented as brief case studies toward the end of this essay.
THE POWER OF PLATFORMS
Major platform actors like YouTube have come to dominate through the characteristics that digital platforms share as described by Martens:
Network effects and economies of scale create a strong tendency towards market concentration around a few big firms. Moreover, strong network effects can be persistent and increase the risk of lock-in. [...] A monopoly platform can be efficient because network effects are maximized when all agents manage to coordinate over a single platform. (qtd. in Schwarz 12)
34 Network effects work with information that users provide to any given platform and the example of Facebook works well to illustrate this. The more Facebook is actively used (meaning the more posts and updates to information that users make), the more valuable it becomes. On the surface it might seem valuable only to connected users, but it is even more so to the business itself and other parties who choose to work through Facebook’s platform — namely advertisers. Individual users are encouraged by the platform to input increasing amounts of data. They are prompted, for instance to update their personal information, to write a status or to try out a new feature. These prompts, it could be argued, are driven simply by the fact that Facebook benefits from each new piece of information it collects about individual users. The data collected can be relayed to advertisers, allowing them to target the most relevant audiences. Network effects according to Bratton, make collected information “more visible, more structured, and more extensible for the individual User or in relation to other Users who make further use of it, . . . it is likely the platform itself that derives the most significant net profit from these circulations in total” (48).
Specifically, YouTube falls into the category of advertising platforms, those whose revenue streams depend entirely on advertising. As Nick Srnicek notes on profits made through platforms of this type, namely Facebook and Google, “users are unwaged labourers who produce goods (data and content) that are then taken and sold by the companies to advertisers and other interested parties” (53). Concretely, what is referred to here are user data trails which can be sold for marketing and advertising purposes. In the same way as other advertising platforms, YouTube functions as a form of intermediary connecting “users, advertisers, and third-party developers and experiences network effects where value increases for all parties as more people use it” (Hagiu qtd. in Helmond 2). Thus, bringing more content together on one platform, and cleverly connecting through that content in an automated form of viewer recommendation makes optimal use of the network. Srnicek also describes how these platforms that drive the gig economy share other characteristics “which attempt to reduce their ownership of assets to a minimum and to profit by reducing costs as much as possible” (Srnicek 49).
Since the contrast has been made throughout these three essays between the activities of online video producers and those of activists in the 1960s, it could be argued that YouTube, if it did indeed start with the vision of being an idealist space for citizen journalism, has been transformed and changed as a consequence of network effects. Facebook shows how network effects
35 dramatically increase the value of a platform insofar as it has “become the default social networking platform simply by virtue of the sheer number of people on it” (Srnicek 65).
YouTube currently has over a billion users according to their online press pages and for those of them who find success the reward can be substantial. Users on YouTube include not only those who create, but also viewers and subscribers. As opposed to those who simply view YouTube content without interaction, those who actively subscribe to a channel compare more accurately to followers, people who opt in to receive updates from the platform when a particular channel uploads new content. A 2016 article stated that YouTube had seen almost 1,500 creators on the platform reach the level of 1 million subscribers (Dredge 1).
COMMERCIALISATION OF YOUTUBE
In this section, Alice Marwick shows how YouTube developed into a space of greater commercial value. Furthermore, Van Dijck concurs and adds that for the benefit of advertisers, a new form of Williams’ flow could be drawn up to fit a more fragmented viewing process, whilst Jin Kim confirms that growing digital platforms open up valuable new opportunities for advertising revenue.
In December 2007, YouTube launched its Partner Program, which allowed creators who earned a large enough following (this will be discussed later in the chapter) to monetise and make profits from the content they upload to YouTube. The business transitioned from originally being a website that hosted amateur content (primarily user-generated content or funny home videos), to a platform on which serious commercial content is now found. Without monetising creator’s content, YouTube would not make a profit for the distribution service they provide. In order to turn creator’s content into views and subscribers, that content must be suitable for monetisation, so that advertising arrangements can be made. This section considers Multi-Channel Networks and the role they play as well as the services YouTube offers to its creators to benefit more from producing content, for example their Partner Program and the global YouTube Spaces facilities. The idea being that strong creators bring more views, which allows the raise of advertising tariffs and ultimately higher profits. All of this depends on the concrete social, cultural, aesthetic, experiential or other types of value that creators bring to the platform.
The value creators bring to YouTube according to Marwick (2013 Profound Women) consists of authenticity as a form of commercial value, suggesting that “authenticity as a boundary 36 strategy between selfhood and neoliberal capitalism is a common feature of entrepreneurial online communities, such as self-branders, camgirls, and lifecasters” (2). José Van Dijck sees the value of YouTube in a new type of flow. For Van Dijck, it is therefore essential that an “upgraded and expanded Williams 2.0” (157) be drawn out in order to understand the full implications of YouTube as a platform in terms of audience and advertiser attention. Williams’ notion of flow takes into account the programmed television that audiences view passively. Williams 2.0 would have to address the more fragmented flow of online video, where viewers create their own flow through clicking from one short video to the next, particularly in the interests of advertisers looking to target specified audiences. Furthermore, the attraction of digital platforms for advertisers — that is how they produce value — can be seen through the work carried out by Jin Kim on the institutionalisation of YouTube. Kim states that “for major content providers, including broadcasting networks, video sharing sites function as a promotion tool, and for advertising companies online video services open up valuable new ad revenue” (Kim 65). What is meant by a promotional tool in this sense is that rather than seeing YouTube as direct competition, media companies consider it a new space for re-transmitting and promoting their own content, and as an additional means for gaining profit through advertising (57).
HOW YOUTUBE PRODUCES ECONOMIC VALUE
Around YouTube an auxiliary industry has grown, that consists of Multi-Channel Networks (MCNs) which is not a reference to the television industry but instead to intermediaries that serve to further ‘professionalise’ users of video-sharing platforms. Most of these ‘provide non-professional creators with technical, promotional and advertising services, in exchange for a share of customer’s ad revenue’ (Lobato 351). This helps illustrate how economic revenue is created and amplified, and how YouTube turns out to be an entire industry. Lobato, Vondereau and Cunningham all present their findings surrounding MCNs and their relation to the commercialisation of platforms such as YouTube. Multi-Channel Networks (such as Zoomin.TV in the Netherlands and Defy Media in the USA) are “intermediary companies selling advertising, cross-promoting affiliated YouTube channels, and developing video brands” (Vondereau 2016). Cunningham uses ‘NoCal’ and ‘SoCal’ to illustrate a clash between platforms such as Netflix/Amazon and Hollywood’s established media industry practices, but concludes that YouTube falls somewhere in between these two categories (382). The distinctions ‘NoCal’ and ‘SoCal’ are used metaphorically, referring to a “notorious rivalry in popular culture between Northern and Southern California” (378). Furthermore, he states:
37 The fundamental difference between Google/YouTube, Apple’s iTunes, Netflix, Amazon, Yahoo!, Facebook (NoCal) and Hollywood’s incumbents (SoCal) – one which optimizes their chances of being able to formulate successful business models and better monetise screen content online – is that they have built the underlying platforms and affordances that largely enable connected viewing. (379)
MCNs are intermediaries ‘bridging’ the gap between “NoCal” and “SoCal”. For Vondereau, this ‘connected viewing’ — which integrates “digital technology and socially networked communication with traditional screen media practices” (362) shapes his arguments, and describes in a number of ways how MCNs affect media markets. Lobato compares the problems faced by todays MCNs to those faced by Hollywood agents in the past, suggesting the issues faced by each have not really changed (355).
Services such as the Partner Program, offered by YouTube since December 2007, are put in place to allow content creators — who are invited once they reach ten thousand subscribers — to monetise and profit from the videos they upload. It is important to note that content creators can only begin earning monetary rewards upon invitation to join what YouTube names its “Partner Program”, through which they are enabled to share in the profits made byYouTube when an advert is placed on or near their content (Postigo 339). Of creators who make commentaries over video- gameplay, Postigo states that for them “the advertising system and the YouTube Partners Program form the central financial driver” (339). It could be argued that this is equally the motivation for producers of many other genres of content. However, with the original model it was possible to manipulate the system and monetize copyrighted content. The company has in the past introduced a control mechanism called ContentID “which allows copyright owners to automatically search for audio or video they believe matches their intellectual property and automatically issue takedown notices to those users” (Gillespie 359). Furthermore, regarding their Partner Program (YPP), YouTube recently announced that it would “no longer serve ads on YPP videos until the channel reaches 10k lifetime views” (Bardin 1), a move that was made since the remodelling of the company. This could be seen as an attempt to assure advertisers they are in control of the platform and only the most serious and suitable content is given the opportunity to host advertisements.
Alongside this, YouTube Spaces is an initiative that was introduced by YouTube in July 2012 and encourages content creators to produce content of higher quality by providing camera equipment, a professional studio space and editing suites. The Spaces facility was created with the
38 intention of helping creators improve their production skills. It offers some creators access to “events, workshops, as well as the latest production resources to help bring your biggest ideas to life” (YouTube, 2017). The facilities to foster high quality, arguably more attractive and therefore more valuable content, are only available to YouTube creators — or YouTubers as they are commonly known — once they have surpassed a certain number of subscribers (ten thousand subscribers are required to access the full range of facilities). This facilitation in producing higher quality videos further supports the argument that there is a continued shift from amateur footage to professionally produced content on the platform. This is exactly where YouTube can be seen to be a form of platform capitalism, rather than an amateur-maker co-owned endeavour. In relation to the Multi Channel Networks discussed by Lobato, Vondereau and Cunningham, YouTube Spaces can be seen as something comparable to a Hollywood (SoCal) production facility, only in this case producers of YouTube content are able to do it for themselves, at no extra cost to them, in a space that is virtually on their doorstep. Observing the commercialisation of YouTube has shown that a form of symbiotic relationship exists between YouTubers as the producers of content and YouTube as the distributor of that content.
THE “GIG” ECONOMY
Analysing the gig economy more closely, this section explores the working relationship between the creators and YouTube. The gig economy can be described as a system that offers digital channels to facilitate freelance work. It creates the opportunity and the freedom for people to work by the hour in short term “gigs” as they so wish. These services can include but are not limited to providing taxi services as an Uber driver (who are hired through a dedicated app), hosting somebody in your home as an Airbnb host (for which you advertise on a dedicated website), or cycling to deliver somebody their meals as a rider for Deliveroo (who also stream orders through an app). What is central to this essay is exploring where video bloggers might fit? Can they be compared to those working for Uber and Airbnb or do they need their own category? Paying attention to the gig economy is important in understanding economic value creation and YouTube as it will make clear whether and how the platform is indeed an exploitative capitalist undertaking.
Whether YouTube is part of the gig economy is not entirely clear, however people involved would potentially find themselves in a position of precarious, uncertain cultural labour. Of precarious labour, Deuze notes that “the dominant theme in the literature [of creative industries] is a 39 notion of media workers as free agents, constantly searching for new challenges and better guarantees for their creative autonomy” (112). Understanding where content creators for YouTube and other platforms might fit into worker categories is an important consideration today and in the future. A study has proven that, “more than any other form, the vlog as a genre of communication invites critique, debate and discussion” (Burgess and Green 94). As discussion and debate, or “traffic” on a certain video is what contributes to YouTube’s growth, it seems that the people who create this vlogged content should perhaps be considered to be more valuable as workers. After all critique, debate and discussion all promote traffic and traffic offers advertising opportunities. Never mind the political, public sphere value of vlogs, they are part of a way of making money. As such, similarly to gig economy workers, the creators are not necessarily well rewarded, if at all, for the essential work they do.
From the perspective of companies, the gig economy can be seen a less expensive and more efficient way for them to do business and find workers. Andrew Ross states it is creatives who are “the new model workers — self directed, entrepreneurial, accustomed to precarious, non-standard employment, and attuned to producing career hits” (10). The employees of gig economy businesses are arguably granted a better work-life balance, but along with this comes the increased blurring of lines between professional and personal activities — something that is becoming more and more difficult to avoid in todays society, where most people have a personal mobile, rendering them constantly “available” to be contacted. Melissa Gregg critiques the idea of work-life balance and argues “technology platforms are supporting the resulting out-of-work hour, providing their justification…” (6). Overall, gig economy jobs are beneficial for consumers and are certainly beneficial to businesses in terms of reducing operating costs, however it has been argued, most notably in the case of Uber recently that those carrying out the work are exploited in the process.
The gig economy can be seen to “offer important benefits, such as the freedom and flexibility to work at a time and place of one’s choosing or the ability to turn a hobby or pastime into a source of income” (Smith, 2016). It also offers consumers more choice and better value, but a major issue that has arisen is that workers in these services are perhaps not treated correctly. Uber has been under fire about the treatment of its employees. Ultimately these are self-employed workers and essentially none of the benefits that would be associated with regular employed work. As stated by Steven Hill, the cost-cutting advantage for businesses who use these workers is in the opportunity to remove themselves from responsibilities such as “providing health benefits, Social 40 Security, unemployment or injured workers’ compensation, paid sick leave or vacation” (49). Self- employed contractors are also not allowed to set their own rates, the platform company usually decides how much they have to charge and that can then be seen as a hazy area. The main problem is that people working within the gig economy have very little power, the platforms themselves are the ones who exercise power, they set the rates, they tell employees when is the most lucrative time to work.
Although some argue that the gig economy is a great answer to providing a better work-life balance, the issue is that like so many aspects of the digital world, the legal aspects haven’t been properly defined or determined yet. As discussed at great length by Harris and Krueger who call for innovative policies that better-suit twenty-first century work, this form of labour needs to be regulated, and protection needs to be instigated for those who work in the gig economy. Harris and Krueger argue that a third category of worker, the “independent worker” has become necessary to fill the grey area between “employee” or “self-employed” to ensure that these workers receive the appropriate benefits. They suggest that work and non-work cannot accurately be determined for workers in the online gig economy (13). Rogers argues that adding a new category would create added and unnecessary confusion, “forcing courts to delineate the boundaries between three legal categories rather than two.” (5) He suggests that a redefinition of the current employment category is needed instead, ensuring that it functions to “enhance rather than limit their rights” (10).
Arguably, the issue of worker status is also somewhat problematic in the context of online content creators — the boundaries between work and non-work are significantly blurred. Although independent content providers can also be required to put in many work hours (comparable to contemporary full-time work), the reward is less predictable and somewhat irregular. Florian Schmidt identifies a key distinction between forms of work for dedicated labour platforms and work such as uploading videos to YouTube — the latter is “done without assignment or brief, without any deadlines or specific demands by a third party defining what should be produced, when and how” (13). In this sense, it can be said that vloggers do not classify for the title of independent worker to the same extent as those working under the direction of Uber and Airbnb. YouTube creators can receive benefits and are free to work when they like.
VALUES, BENEFITS AND SUCCESS
41 The first step here was to understand YouTube in terms of capitalist value creation — which is based on exploiting vloggers — and when in fact this first started. It has become clear that around vloggers and vlogging, an entire industry has grown — confirming that this is overall a capitalist undertaking. While vloggers were first seen as happy amateur producers; it is becoming more clear what they earn in comparison to what they give to the platform — little exact information is known about this, but it no doubt varies from creator to creator. They may not pay to upload to the space in the first place, but they do take on the challenge of planning, producing and filming the content. This makes them part of the gig economy and confirms that they will be exploited. Having summarised what has been considered so far, we can return to YouTube and value with a focus on YouTube’s economic value creation from the perspective of producers, touching briefly upon the impact for advertisers and the platform itself as a business.
As a starting point, Graeber distinguishes three different (yet closely related) uses of the term value; which include: Moral values, Market values and value as a meaningful difference. Just as importantly, he discusses ‘regimes of value’, and a “symbolic system that defines the world in terms of what is important, meaningful, desirable or worthwhile in it.” (Graeber 439) These four terms will be referred to, especially when discussing the moral and ethical issues associated with vlogging.
According to YouTube’s Creator Hub (a guide for those wanting to create a successful channel on the platform) a system of four main “benefit level” tiers, is used to reward creators. These are: Graphite, Opal, Bronze and Silver. The tiers are ranked based on the channel’s number of subscribers, Graphite being the level at which all channels begin, Opal is attained once a channel surpasses one thousand subscribers and Bronze as described above is achieved when a channels gains at least ten thousand. Those channels with over one hundred thousand (Silver), one million (Gold) and ten million (Diamond) subscribers receive physical trophies or awards in the form of Silver, Gold and Diamond Play Buttons. The benefit levels are essentially visible to all users in the way that their subscriber counts are present on their profile so the benefit category could be calculated — rankings are made publicly available through the Creator Hub. However, a user’s ranking is not automatically stated on their channel or videos. An absence of automation in this sense thwarted efforts to select channels based on defined tiers.
YouTube itself uses this tiered mechanism for evaluating how its creators are “measured”. Graeber made the observation that “meaning arises from making conceptual distinctions that, in 42 turn, are ranked and hence always contain an element of value” (449). In the case of YouTube, they prescribe a range of hierarchical tiers based on subscriber-counts, which evidently are influenced by how the audience rates a particular video or channel. The content creators might therefore see value in the rankings. It is equally important to consider additional value that could be seen in content produced by ‘ordinary’ people, “the capacity of a good not simply to be appraised but to evoke a sense of amazement, to inspire, to be an object that connects or conveys the user to a world of imagination” (Stark 326). Evidence of Starks observations can be seen for video bloggers in the way that a large number of them are becoming increasingly well-known, with some even becoming celebrities in their own right. A Variety article titled ‘YouTube Stars More Popular Than Mainstream Celebs Among U.S. Teens’, provides survey results in which 6 of the top 10 are YouTube stars rather than “traditional celebrities”. According to their survey responses, compared with these traditional celebrities, “teens enjoy an intimate and authentic experience with YouTube celebrities, who aren’t subject to image strategies carefully orchestrated by PR pros” (Ault 2). In addition, a recent documentary called Rise of the Superstar Vloggers (2016) aired on the BBC, which highlights the fact that “vloggers now sell out stadiums and have fanbases boy bands would kill for” (BBC 3 Online). An example given within the documentary is vlogger KSI, whose show sold out online in the space of two minutes. Vloggers such as KSI — who has a subscriber count of over 17 million) — equally have their own product lines, and are paid to attend meet-ups, usually hosted by annual media industry events such as Insomnia, Playlist Live and VidCon. All of these events bring fans into the same room as popular creators of online content.
For content creators, whose YouTube careers could almost be considered business endeavours, success might be considered muliti-layered. Success could partly be due to the fact the YouTube allows expansion into new niche markets that were once difficult to target. If audience work time (labour time) can be seen as a commodity to be sold (Smythe 243) then the increased and very precise “traffic” from these niche audiences is highly valuable to YouTube and its creators. In addition, it would seem that if video bloggers upload on a regular basis and establish a regular “upload schedule”, they harness more and more views. This said, views alone don’t really count. Indeed, in this sense it can be argued that the channels which achieve marketable content (in terms of both quality and adhering to regulation) and attract advertisers are key to YouTube’s business continuing to grow in terms of revenue and profit.
Success for advertisers, similarly to YouTube can be assessed in a number of different ways.
43 One particular way is that YouTubers, vloggers in particular, are amongst some of the most valuable people to promote products due to the fact that their audiences appear to build relationships with them which are based on trust. Another way would be that it provides them the opportunity to push advertising at specific demographic groups such as people who are interested in a specific subject, hobby or regime. Such as pushing high protein drinks at viewers who watch fitness vlogs, for example.
Ultimately, the value that comes from gaining public recognition (Graeber 452) would perhaps in itself be enough to satisfy vloggers. As Stark notes, “online ratings and rankings by consumers now provide new sources of data on prizing and appraising - new means to register value judgments in the economy” (325) So for the vloggers themselves (who often ask that viewers like comment and/or subscribe to see more of the same content) the like and subscribe functions in particular are a distinct method for calculating the worth or value of what they are producing. Another point to reinforce this additional, but non-monetary notion of value, “they can be quantified but these metrics of personal value need not be expressed in terms of money” (Stark 325) For YouTube themselves this is also a visible indicator of value — rankings play a huge role in how successful their creators can become — those with high enough rankings are invited to join the Partner Program enabling them to monetize their content.
MORALS AND ETHICS
Having considered YouTube and value with a focus on YouTube’s economic value creation from the perspective of producers, advertisers and YouTube, I now turn to some examples of the difficulties faced by the platform in terms of control. For all parties involved — producers, consumers and advertisers — it is essential that a trustworthy relationship is maintained. As I discuss here, however, whether a creator gets carried away by capitalist goals or other personal gain, YouTube overall, must take ownership and responsibility for activities occurring on its platform. But, how can ownership be determined when the content YouTube distributes is not created by them but increasingly professionalised creators? This requires consideration of real moral and ethical values.
Discussing the stories of Dr Andrew Wakefield and DaddyOFive provides a critique of something different to monetary values, looking more specifically at ethical and moral values that come into play in the current, participatory media landscape. What follows aims to illustrate certain elements of misinformation and unintended consequences of content creators starting to believe that 44 what they are doing is authoritative.
A challenge to the notion of ethical values has been illustrated to good effect recently by Dr Andrew Wakefield’s appearances on multiple YouTube channels. Dr Andrew Wakefield is a discredited English doctor, struck off by the British Medical Council (BMC) for his misleading representation of the link between autism and multiple vaccines, most notably Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR). He subsequently changed location by moving to Texas in the US and continues to promote his contested and unproven claims. He actively exploits the openness of YouTube, having previously attempted to distribute a reality TV show, before producing a documentary, and finally distributing his rejected television show in a series on a YouTube channel. His arguably irresponsible anti-establishment behaviour is being actively enabled without constraint on the YouTube platform. Whether his actions can be considered morally questionable is open for debate, however there is no question within the medical profession that what he continues to do is harmful. That said, amongst a select group of people he still has some credibility, particularly since Donald Trump, the new President of the United States of America, has leant his support to the argument.
To illustrate the potential consequences of morally questionable content, the actions of one of parents who published YouTube content under the channel name of DaddyOFive. What started as a seemingly harmless set of “prankster” video blogs turned into a moral battle when they published videos in which the parents would trick, provoke and allow their children to harm each other on camera. Due to the nature of a platform like YouTube, the family’s vlogs were flagged by viewers and other content creators as containing abusive content. According to an article published by The Independent, they then gained “attention from mainstream news outlets and TV stations, who covered the controversial channel and the accusations that were swirling around it.” (Griffin 3). This media coverage resulted in the parents being taken to court and losing custody of two of their children. With a subscriber count of 760,000 the family were benefitting from the support of YouTube’s Partner Program, which, among other things meant collecting advertising revenue from each of their videos. The clips that were deemed inappropriate had been viewed over 176 million times (Cresci 1). The parents could often be heard offering incentives to their children if they earned the channel a specific number of views.
Not only were the children in this family being abused by their parents, that abuse was being filmed and uploaded to YouTube for profit. It can only be assumed at this point that with 400 hours of video being uploaded every minute, YouTube were not fully aware, nor seemingly able to 45 respond quickly enough. Perhaps YouTube lacks the capabilities required to respond in the correct manner, despite vast quantities of feedback and concern being made directly on the content that DaddyOFive shared. This is where the regulation of online service providers such as YouTube remains an area that requires further development. Eventually YouTube did remove a number of the family’s videos, before the family decided to remove all of their channel content themselves.
All of the above examples demonstrate that the video-sharing platform faces a moral and ethical dilemma unlike any experienced by their forebears in the days of classical TV. This is because conventional broadcasters had and still maintain total control over what was produced, distributed and consumed on their channels. Control in this sense is something that the likes of YouTube could only dream of in today’s highly “participatory“ media landscape. Moreover, there is conflict between their obligation to exercise control and their fiduciary commitment to their shareholders. As a platform they are not in a unique position in this new digital era. Their dilemma is shared by the likes of Uber and Airbnb who are also facing unique and specific regulatory challenges all over the world — having to now negotiate policies on a city-by-city basis.
A MODERN MEDIA LANDSCAPE: WHY SHOULD YOUTUBE BE VALUED ECONOMICALLY?
Platform Capitalism has helped to describe how vloggers as individuals and YouTube as a business interact in a symbiotic relationship. The two thrive off of each other in the sense that without the power of YouTube, video bloggers would arguably still be fighting a similar battle to that of activists of the counterculture. As for whether the job of content creators should qualify them to be classed as independent workers of the digital era, what this essay has shown is that they should not. The work they do and the reward they receive functions very differently to other workers in the gig economy, who are genuinely exploited by the company under which they operate.
Whilst advances in technology are key enablers that have been critical to YouTube’s success over the last decade, it isn’t exclusively so. The emergence of video-on-demand services and the creation of user-generated content have evidently contributed too. At the same time, major demographic changes have been seen to occur most notably amongst millennials, or Generation Y. These groups’ viewing habits are shifting away from conventional television. Consequently, advertising dollars have followed these viewers in their shift away from conventional television to the new service providers.
46 Overall, YouTube has been highly successful since its launch in 2006 — as was demonstrated by the 26 million plus views on just one person’s videos uploaded in that year. Just over a decade on, it has grown in strength with its most “successful” creator PewDiePie (Felix Kjellberg) maintaining a following of over 56 million. League tables show that successful vloggers tend to follow a pattern of specialising in a particular “genre” for want of a better term, and staying with that speciality; whether it be music, gaming, makeup or something else. This once again provides evidence of a particular appeal to certain demographic groups.
47 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
This thesis has researched theories relating to the production, distribution and consumption of media content since the American counterculture of the late 1960s. It has subsequently examined how they have been implemented during what can only be described as a period of massive transformation for the media industry in general. In doing so, it has inquired into the values of YouTube in order to demythologise what passes for ‘freedom’ when we think of this online social network. As it developed further, this research demonstrated that the different ways in which YouTube has value (and produces value) are in fact locked into one another.
Specifically, this research has focused on why UGC and its producers are so important to YouTube. In this manner, the function of the platform in society and the way it should be valued in today’s media landscape are more accurately pinpointed. Burgess and Green carried out a study that showed how UGC made up “more than two-thirds of the content coded in both the Most Responded and Most Discussed categories” (51). Their research approach has been made technically impossible by YouTube. Interestingly content uploaded by non-professionals was not only being watched, but it was the content that was receiving the most interaction from its audience. Furthermore, the categories remained available in 2013, when Lorenc et al. “reviewed the top 241 most subscribed channels and found ~68% were from user-generated channels” (Welbourne and Grant 4). I am not sure whether this is still the case today. I have chosen to focus on the professionalisation of YouTube rather than on the development of UGC as the turn towards a more intense platform capitalism that can be seen in how the platform is increasingly regulated restrictively at the back end, would seem to be the dominant trend.
Going back in time, this trend towards platform capitalism is in direct opposition to the counterculture era that can be seen to have laid the foundations for the freedom of expression and choice that can be seen in the (social) media industry today. People wanted to express themselves and reach an audience that felt disenfranchised, to push back against large media corporations. Although limited by the video tape format, the opportunity was established to produce content free from the commercial and regulatory constraints of the dominant media corporations, particularly those governing broadcast television. That said, the challenge remained to easily distribute the content which served to inhibit its consumption. A number of video collectives were established to partly fill the gap but more needed to be done if the widest possible audience were to be reached. The enabling technology from the 1960s American counterculture the Sony Portapak camera could
48 be seen as a precursor to the eventual success of video sharing platforms.
The capability for individuals to produce and distribute — share — content without review is directly comparable to the functionality provided by video-sharing platforms today. In this sense, it can be argued that the historical or political values of the counterculture era helped shape and influence the YouTube platform we see today. That said, however, the values that once drove the desire for change and those that drive people to contribute to video-sharing today are not entirely the same. Indeed, as this research has shown, they are quite different. Today those who produce, create and upload content are also adding to the entertainment value of YouTube. Interviewing these creators would perhaps have been the best method for an investigation into potential reasons for providing YouTube with an endless supply of “free” content. This could be a method used in future to gain further insights over an extended period of time.
There is no question the platform has opened highly ‘democratising’ possibilities in terms of freedom of expression to an extent that activists of the counterculture era could only dream of. But those opportunities have been put to better use through, for example, Twitter which turned out to be the technologically less demanding medium, for example during the 2010 Arab Spring (Papacharissi 276). YouTube in principle provided an idealist, indiscriminate, dream-like space. However, it never really made good on it. Arguably there is also a hidden story in terms of how the content producers who navigate this space might be considered an exploited resource.
Dramatic changes of the post-industrial era have created new opportunities for both content creators and the YouTube platform. Creators who started out as ordinary members of the public or members of the audience are able to turn their YouTube channel into a form of business venture. On top of earning money from ad-revenue they enter into brand deals, sell their own merchandise and host meet-ups that sell out stadiums. At the same time, the opportunities gained by YouTube include an ever-expanding library of attractive content on which to host adverts aimed at the more specific or niche online audience advertisers wish to target.
Since YouTube was acquired by Google in 2006 it has been an economic ‘powerhouse’ with revenue growing year on year. This phenomenal success has been based almost entirely on revenue derived from advertising and ‘free’ labour. In spite of its inevitable capitalist origins: YouTube paradoxically flourishes as a highly valued platform socially. Today, it is a platform for everyone and everything, from a hobby to a career, from the innocent to the immoral and everything in
49 between, including parents exploiting their own children. Only time will tell and how YouTube respond to emerging challenges and threats is something that would merit further research in future, more specifically, wether the freedom they espouse is going too far. The paradox of choice that this business creates applies to all involved; to consumers, to producers, to advertisers and to Youtube itself. Producers of content have the choice to stay put or take their skills elsewhere, advertisers must choose whether they can risk appearing alongside content that nobody can guarantee is appropriate and audiences are provided with what looks like an abundance of choice at face value, but are they really choosing or are they being guided to exactly where they are wanted.
What happens to YouTube in future is in their hands, they have the responsibility of acting in the best interests of all involved before someone else — an external regulator for instance — has to do it for them. It is evident that YouTube cannot trust content creators to always act responsibly in terms of the morals, ethics and values that society would consider the norm in an ‘offline’ world. Equally, and arguably more importantly for YouTube it is evident that advertisers are becoming increasingly concerned about whether the platform can be trusted to keep their brands safe. Like its consumers, YouTube now needs to face the mythology it helped to build and either change their historical ‘don’t blame us’ mentality or wait until a yet-to-be-defined “global regulator” is forced to step in. It turns out there is preciously little freedom in the world of YouTube. More and more its value tilts away from its political potential to entertainment uses that bring economic value to its owner. Quite the contrary to what Reagan forecast in 1985, this essay argues it still is the age of the giant corporation (such as Google) even if it has spawned a new generation of digital entrepreneurs. Whether it remains the case, for good or bad, provides a whole new field to be researched.
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