Identity and Representation on the Neoliberal Platform of YouTube

Andra Teodora Pacuraru Student Number: 11693436 30/08/2018 Supervisor: Alberto Cossu Second Reader: Bernhard Rieder MA New Media and Digital Culture University of Amsterdam

Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 2 Chapter 1: Theoretical Framework ...... 4 Neoliberalism & Personal Branding ...... 4 Mass Self-Communication & Identity ...... 8 YouTube & Micro-Celebrities ...... 10 Chapter 2: Case Studies ...... 21 Methodology ...... 21 Who They Are ...... 21 Video Evolution ...... 22 Audience Statistics ...... 41 Collaborations ...... 49 Sponsorships & Off-YouTube Endeavours ...... 51 Chapter 3: Discussion ...... 57 Neoliberalism ...... 57 Identity and the Importance of Representation ...... 57 Conclusion ...... 65 Bibliography...... 67 Videos ...... 77

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Introduction

YouTube is a great example of neoliberalism with each person responsible for their own capital, and introducing the notion of personal branding. This all leads to each individual’s own identity, which they build for themselves and heavily depend on. This plays a crucial role in their quest towards becoming micro celebrities. Advertising and monetization eventually became the heart of YouTube’s capital, all of which are highly dependent on the aforementioned. The goal of this paper is to show how all of these factors come into play, by analysing three cases of YouTube celebrities who all have minority identities of different sorts; how they have applied themselves, how it was received, what kind of social impact they aim to make and why YouTube is their chosen platform. Through all of this, we can begin to answer the question of, can people with underrepresented identities stand out and showcase their unique voices in the neoliberal world of YouTube?

The first chapter of this research paper will consist of the theoretical framework. It will discuss relevant aspects of neoliberalism, such as homo economicus and human capital, the emergence of personal branding and micro-celebrities, as well as the concept of identity and how that is constructed, and how the emergence of the Internet and mass self- communication have made an impact on how people construct their identities. The chapter will also introduce YouTube, from its inception to how it has changed in order to best monetize its content, the way it positions itself as a platform, and how it can affect its users’ visibility and marketability. Lastly, it will take a general look at how YouTube micro-celebrities can turn their presence on the website into a money maker.

The second chapter analyses the three chosen case studies: Lilly Singh, Hannah Witton and Alex Bertie. This will be done through a mix of data analysis of various aspects of their YouTube channels (such as monthly subscribers gained, monthly views, total subscribers and views growth) from the website Social Blade and content analysis of their channels which tracks the evolution of the users in terms of video quality, topics and so on. Other relevant topics included in this analysis are the users’ collaborations, their sponsorships and endeavours outside of YouTube.

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The third chapter will focus on discussion, tying together theoretical aspects introduced in the first chapter with findings from the case studies’ analysis. It looks at the way the chosen users construct their identities and use them for different reasons, from building their brand to simply building a community, and what effect their visibility potentially has.

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Chapter 1: Theoretical Framework

Neoliberalism & Personal Branding

For Foucault, the difference between classical liberalism and neoliberalism is based on how each mode of governmentality focuses on economic activity. In classical liberalism, that is based on exchange: in the marketplace, that means an exchange of goods and services for money or other goods, but also socially and for the state, an exchange of some freedoms for rights and liberties. Neoliberalism, however, changes the focus of economic activity from that of exchange to that of competition. This change is important: exchange was considered natural, while competition is seen by neo-liberals as an artificial relation which requires the constant intervention from the state on the conditions of the market (Read 28).

Both types of liberalism have the notion of homo economicus, which is “the way in which they place a particular “anthropology” of man as an economic subject at the basis of politics” (Read 28), but once again, this changes from exchange to competition. In classical liberalism, homo economicus is “the man of exchange, one of the two partners in the process of exchange” (Foucault 225). In neoliberalism, homo economicus is an entrepreneur of himself, who is his own capital, producer, and source of his own income (Foucault 226).

In neoliberalism, every person has their own human capital, which includes innate elements and acquired elements. Innate elements are biological and hereditary, such as race, class, or hereditary medical conditions. There is nothing anyone can do to change some of these elements, and they can be viewed as advantages or disadvantages from the perspective of employers. From this point of view, people coming from minorities or from a lower class background may have an automatic disadvantage in many situations where they are looking for employment or other opportunities. Some of these innate elements can also affect acquired elements such as someone’s education, training, and other additions to their knowledge. While human capital analysts assume that a person decides on these things by weighing the pros and cons of them for their future, some people may not even have the means to reach their full potential in these areas because of other circumstances.

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Human capital also includes the individual’s body of work, their habits, even harmful ones like smoking and other addictions. Some of these aspects can be changed if someone chooses to actively invest in their human capital by giving up something harmful or changing their lifestyle (Becker, Foucault). “The theory of human capital investment relates inequality in earnings to differences in talents, family background, and bequests and other assets” (Becker 12). Van Doorn sees human capital as “a machine that advances a rationality in which a plethora of different qualities, capacities, attributes, and values are integrated into one common measure – or a set of interrelated measures – thus rendering them comparable and measurable in terms of their market value” (360).

In this view of the world, the worker becomes human capital and their salary is a revenue earned in the worker’s investment in their skills and abilities. Activities that increase their human capital and their potential revenue are also investments in oneself. Neoliberalism operates on “interests, desires and aspirations rather than through rights and obligations” (Read 29). One way in which labour has changed under this world of competition is the trend of moving away from long term contracts, towards temporary, part-time or freelance labour. This strategy can be seen as more beneficial to companies, who do not have to commit to long-term contracts and expensive health care plans for their employees. By making workers consider themselves as their own companies or entrepreneurs, this way of thinking also makes it less likely for them to come together and organise themselves as a group against their employer, because they are all in competition with each other (Read 28; van Doorn 359). Read sees neoliberalism as a “restoration not only of class power, of capitalism as the only possible economic system” but also as a “restoration of capitalism as synonymous with rationality.” (Read 32).

Increasing one’s human capital can become more important than the actual profit of one’s current human capital, as it can open up more opportunities in the future. The purpose of the worker in this environment becomes increasing the value of their human capital, or at least preventing the depreciation of it, more than it is making money in the moment (Feher, in van Doorn 358). The tricky part is that the valuation of human capital in neoliberal conditions is speculation and is dependent on the judgments of others (van Doorn 358).

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Rankings and ratings, particularly online, have also changed the way people present themselves, even in a more personal setting. Everything becomes public performance on the Internet. This has led to the appearance of the reputation economy online, where the entrepreneur has to be careful with how they manage their reputation in order to increase their human capital, it is an important asset that can become profitable under the right circumstances (van Doorn 362).

The concept of personal branding was first introduced by Tom Peters in a 1997 article titled ‘The Brand Called You’. In it, he said “We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketers for the brand called You” (Peters). Under this logic, anyone, no matter what they do, is capable of being their own brand and their own manager. Just like a company, a person needs to have a selling point, which in this case would be something unique about their personality. According to Arruda (in Chen), the personal branding process needs to follow three steps: extract, express, and exude. First, the person in question has to identify a unique attribute, or attributes, within themselves, that can hold value. Second, they need to create a “person brand statement” around this attribute. Lastly, they need to create a strategy in order to make this brand visible to other people (Chen, Exploring Personal Branding on YouTube 334). It can be seen how personal, or self-branding, ties into the neoliberal concepts of homo economicus and human capital, where a person has to be its own entrepreneur

The concept of personal branding has grown in recent times thanks to the rising presence and importance of social media, with platforms such as Twitter, Instagram or YouTube offering everyone the potential to reach a very large audience. YouTube is an important space in this conversation, where people can post all kinds of videos that would reflect their personality, their uniqueness, and their self-expression in a public space that can attract attention. They can directly target a certain type of audience that can identify with them or be interested in what they have to say. They can continue to promote themselves and thanks to the metrics available on social media, such as subscribers, followers, views and ratings, they can present themselves as commercially viable for advertisers, sponsors, etc. Social media also offers a direct line of communication between the person, or the brand, and their audience or consumer, through which they can receive feedback and insight into what

6 they are doing right and what they might be doing wrong, how they can improve, what the audience may want to see.

Gandini calls self-branding a “form of digital work”, where the worker invests in social relationships and expects a return in the form of a reputation (124). He equates self-branding with social capital, which can be used by the worker to make themselves appear more attractive to employers, or in the case of social media celebrities, advertisers, as well as using any relevant contacts acquired through this work in order to continue raising their capital or reputation. Thanks to social media, reputation can now be put into tangible indicators such as numbers and rankings, making it a very important aspect of people’s profiles.

Khamis et al argue that there are three reasons for the rise of personal branding: the promise of fame to ordinary people who aspire to become micro-celebrities, if not more; the potential for a reward for them doing this, thanks to neoliberal individualism; and witnessing the commercial success of other micro-celebrities and social media influencers (194).

Page (in Khamis et al) believes that there is “particular emphasis on the construction of identity as a product to be consumed by others, and on interaction which treats the audience as an aggregated fan base to be developed and maintained in order to achieve social or economic benefit” (196). The people looking for some sort of success through social media, be it becoming micro-celebrities or building up their profile to have a higher chance of finding employment, use (or attempt to use) this tactic strategically; their public persona is highly curated and it represents only a small part of their actual life.

Turner identifies what he calls the ‘demotic turn’ as a change in media, where there is a growing visibility of ordinary people. This idea applies to social media, where people do not need to be part of an existing narrative structure, but they can create their own brand which can be whatever they want it to be. In this way, social media is a very different way for ordinary people to reach celebrity status or visibility from reality television, which before social media was one of the rare ways for people who were not working as entertainers to be seen by an audience. Another difference between the two is that by using social media, people do not need to have an affiliation with anyone in the industry (like a reality television contestant would, with the reality show or network they appeared on), and while they are

7 hoping to reach that point through their work, their initial goal is to get the attention of an audience (Khamis et al 197).

Mass Self-Communication & Identity

In Communication, Power and Counter-Power in the Network Society, Castells discusses concepts of politics, power, counter-power and a new system of self mass- communication. He says that the way the majority of the people in a society thinks determines that society’s set of values and norms. These are reflected in that society’s politics, which uses the mass media system available to influence the minds of its citizens. “What does not exist in the media does not exist in the public mind” (241), which means that it is important to have visibility, especially for groups of people or growing social movements who are marginalized in one way or another and need to be seen in order to be understood by the majority. Castells defines power as “the structural capacity of a social actor to impose its will over other social actors” (239) and counter-power as “the capacity by social actors to challenge and eventually change the power relations institutionalized in society” (239). The media system in each society is where power is decided. Due to the diffusion of the Internet and the growth of access to tools equipped with mobile communication and digital media devices, a very high percentage of the world’s population has access to the Internet and mobile communications, and these people can now connect with each other on a global scale as well as a local one. Castells calls this mass self-communication. This helps the growth of social movements around the world, as well as minorities of different types finding a community online if they cannot find one locally.

Similarly, the emergence of the Internet, combined with globalization, has caused a shift in the public sphere, creating a global one in addition to a local one. In The New Public Sphere, Castells defines the public sphere as “the space of communication of ideas and projects that emerge from society and are addressed to the decision makers in the institutions of society” (78). Just as previously mentioned in the case of politics, the media is also the biggest part of the public sphere as the society in question organizes its public sphere thanks to media communication networks. The digital era has only made this easier. The Internet can

8 help organize societies or groups of people, but it is also a space for debate and constructive dialogue on a bigger level than what was possible before, which can affect public opinion in both good and bad ways.

Identity, as defined by Castells in The Power of Identity, is “the process of construction of meaning on the basis of a cultural attribute, or a related set of cultural attributes, that is given priority over other sources of meaning” (6), but they only become identities when the person in question internalizes them and constructs meaning around that. A person can also have a plurality of identities. In order to construct their identity, a person uses aspects of their biology, their history, their geography, their religion, their institutions, their personal fantasies and so on and rearrange their meaning. The culture of societies is defined by the opposition between communalism (which “roots itself in religion, nation, territoriality, ethnicity, gender and environment) and individualism (which spreads “as a market-driven consumerism, as a new pattern of sociality based on networked individualism and as the desire for individual autonomy based on self-defined projects of life”) (Castells, Communication, Power and Counter-Power in the Network Society 240). Tubella (2005) also points out two types of identity building, individual identity (“the sense of oneself as an individual endowed with certain characteristics and potentialities” (257)) and collective identity (“the sense of oneself as a member of a social group, a sense of belonging, a sense of being part of a collectivity” (257)).

Castells sees three forms and origins of identity building. The first one is the legitimizing identity, “introduced by the dominant institutions of society to extend and rationalize their domination vis a vis social actors” (The Power of Identity, 8). The second one is the resistance identity, “generated by those [social] actors who are in positions/conditions devalued and/or stigmatized by the logic of domination, thus building trenches of resistance and survival on the basis of principles from, or opposed to, those permeating the institutions of society” (8). The third one is the project identity, “when social actors, on the basis of whatever cultural materials are available to them, build a new identity that redefines their position in society and, by so doing, seek the transformation of overall social structure” (8). Resistance identities can induce projects and eventually become legitimizing identities by becoming dominant in society. On the other hand, they can also help form communities and forms of collective resistance against society’s oppression.

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Because the Internet spans cultural and geographical boundaries, it has a big impact on the expression and perception of social identities. People can now find resources by themselves in order to construct their own identities, and they have increasing access to “non-local knowledge”. In the case of minorities and resistance identities, this can be a huge help in understanding themselves, becoming more seen and increasing the awareness of their identity if they are in a society where they are not seen in the general public.

YouTube & Micro-Celebrities

YouTube was founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim. In just a few months, investors were already interested in buying into the company. YouTube started gaining attention from advertisers once a video of Brazilian football player Ronaldinho doing tricks, which was actually an advertisement from Nike disguised as an amateur video of the player during training, went viral in October 2005 (Cloud). This was the first video to reach a million views on the website (Dracott). Despite pressure from advertisers, Chen and Hurley decided against having ads play before videos (Cloud). While that would have been better for them financially, the move helped make YouTube a community-driven space.

In October 2006, Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion, keeping the brand’s identity and leaving Chen and Hurley with some independence in managing the platform (Sorkin and Peters). Because of legal worries around copyright infringement among the millions of videos, the website signed agreements with companies such as NBC Universal (Cloud), CBS, Universal Music and Sony BMG Music that would allow them to share their content online (Sorkin and Peters). YouTube’s global impact was acknowledged by the media when TIME Magazine named ‘You’ as their 2006 Person of the Year, referring to all the user- generated content uploaded to websites such as YouTube, Wikipedia, MySpace, etc. (Grossman). Burgess and Green described YouTube as “video content from a wide range of sources is uploaded [on the site] for an equally wide range of communication purposes, embedded in various existing or emerging taste communities, media subcultures, and fandoms” (58).

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After acquiring YouTube, Google soon started looking for ways to monetize it and appeal to advertisers, making that a priority over the amateur, community-driven style of website it was before. The company’s intention to make YouTube more attractive to advertisers was clear from the beginning, as Google stated in the press release announcing the acquisition of YouTube that it combined “one of the largest and fastest growing online video entertainment communities with Google’s expertise in organizing information and creating new models for advertising on the Internet” (Wasko and Erickson 374). Some ways they developed were adapting their keyword advertising system so certain search terms on YouTube, bid on by various advertisers, would bring up sponsored videos, or linking relevant retailers to videos (like iTunes or Amazon for music videos).

In 2007, Google introduced its Video ID system which would help the rightful owners of a piece of content to find any videos that illegally included the content they owned, which they could request to be taken down due to copyright infringement or they could get a share of the advertising revenue (Gerhards 3). Monetization through professional content remained the focus for a few years but YouTubers started emerging as stars in 2009, following the first amateur content creator reaching one million subscribers. This started a shift in the mind set of advertisers, who started recognizing that content creators on YouTube had built their subscriber base through authenticity and would make for excellent ambassadors of their brands thanks to the credibility they obtained (Gerhards 4). Lobato, in his observations around the changes YouTube has gone through since its inception, now sees it as a “structurally complex, managed ecosystem designed to monetize both amateur and professional content” (348). Kim (quoted in Morreale) recognized a double function of YouTube, which “reflects a hegemonic tension between an amateur led, individually driven mediascape and a professionally led, institutionally driven professional media landscape” (114).

As one of the world’s major online content providers, YouTube is careful in the way it positions itself differently to different groups, such as its users and advertisers, in order to frame itself and sound appealing to them in different ways. The use of the term “platform” helps in that regard, as YouTube and other spaces that use the “platform” label can give it different meanings and sound neutral in the face of different interest groups: users, advertisers, media producers and policy makers. By combining the four categories of use of

11 the term “platform” (computational, architectural, figurative and political), Gillespie comes up with a new meaning for the term, in the context of online content providers: “it suggests a progressive and egalitarian arrangement, promising to support those who stand upon it” (350) and it affords “an opportunity to communicate, interact or sell” (351). This new, conceptual use of “platform” draws on all four of the previously mentioned categories of meaning: computational, “something to build upon and innovate from” (352), architectural, as “YouTube is designed as an open-armed, egalitarian facilitation of expression, not an elitist gatekeeper with normative and technical restrictions” (352) (differentiating itself from television and Hollywood), figurative, in that “the opportunity [for visibility] is an abstract promise as much as a practical one” (352) and political, as “a place from which to speak and be heard” (352). This view of YouTube helps the company downplay things like its reliance on advertisers and the way it has created partnerships with media companies to its regular users, focusing on the participatory aspects instead.

The term “platform” helps intermediaries such as YouTube approach their different audiences through a single term: advertisers have a space to showcase their brands and create awareness, possibly reaching target groups that are harder to reach through other means; professional media producers have a space that can make their content more visible and even strategically push it towards the desired audiences; and the regular users have a space where they are all perceived (or perceive themselves) as equals, with the opportunity to make themselves heard on a level they could not have been before. On the back of user- generated content and this egalitarian perception of its website, YouTube can try to become the new television, even as it acts as the anti-television (which as seen with its reliance on advertising and professionally produced content, is not actually true) (Gillespie 355). That has become more apparent in recent years with the emergence of services such as YouTube Red, the paid premium service that offers exclusive, professionally produced series, some from the website’s biggest YouTubers, and YouTube TV, an actual television service that is provided online instead of through cable.

YouTube itself positions itself as a neutral platform whose job is to help all types of users. Through this positioning, ordinary users will see YouTube as an empowering force that can be used for them to speak freely on any matter; for professional creators and advertisers, YouTube helps them earn money and, thanks to the user data it owns, makes it easy to target

12 a particular audience in order to maximize their success (Hou 5). YouTube still appears as a democratic space where amateur and professional users can coexist and it relies on that perception. In the early days of YouTube after its acquisition by Google, its marketing director stated that they are “really focused on democratizing the entertainment experience, so whether it’s a user-generated content from aspiring filmmakers or from one of the networks, it’s the users who are in control” (Wasko and Erickson 384). The appearance of a democratic space perpetuates the belief that with continued hard work to create content in order to get noticed, and some luck, any amateur user can became at least a micro-celebrity and earn their living by making videos, but only a few of those users are actually able to make that come true (Morreale 125).

YouTube’s algorithm can discriminate against certain videos or users, making them less visible, all in accordance with advertisers’ needs (Bishop 71).Through its search mechanism, rankings and recommendations YouTube in fact mediates what videos can be most easily found on their website. In the early 2010s it was found that only 4% of users provided 73% of the videos, and the algorithms would help create the popularity of some videos based on how highly they would be displayed (Morreale 118). Because of the way the algorithm is constantly changing, it can unintentionally have negative consequences on certain types of videos: In 2017, videos around LGBT topics were hidden under YouTube’s restricted view because they were deemed to be “potentially offensive”, which caused an outrage among the LGBT community on the website (Hunt). Another instance of this also happened in 2017. When some major advertisers discovered that their ads were played before videos related to extremism, hate speech, and other offensive content, they pulled out their ads. This led YouTube to take a tougher stance on that type of content in order to keep their advertisers, but this had some unforeseen consequences: videos ranging from comedy and political commentary to gun experts and gamers, who did not present any offensive or extremist views, had ads pulled out, causing their creators to lose a steady income from their channels (Hess). The algorithm has also been at fault for technical issues like channels suddenly losing thousands or even millions of subscribers overnight, causing outrage among those affected (Cunningham, Craig and Silver 381).

There are numerous factors that decide video rankings through the search function of YouTube. The most important one appears to be watch time, while others are the total

13 number of views, the title, the description, the number of likes and dislikes, the length of the description (ideally over 350 words), the inclusion of at least three or four keywords through the video title and tags, and less importantly the age of the video, the uploader’s channel’s number of total views and subscribers, its addition to any playlists, and its engagement with the community in the form of embeds, shares, etc. (Pietrobruno 6). Meanwhile, Bärtl (18) discovered that the factors with the largest impact on video popularity are the total number of previous views of that user and video age (with newer videos doing better), which only contributes to the “rich-get-richer phenomenon”. Older channels also have a higher probability of being in the top most viewed channels because it is easier for them to get new views as they already have plenty of content for other users to find, and that is how they build an audience, while it is harder to find videos from newer channels if the user is not even aware of the channel in question. YouTube’s algorithms (both the search and recommendation ones) also keep the focus on a few channels, helping them maintain their monopoly on the users. His entire study concludes that there is an overwhelming dominance of a few big and successful channels over the rest of channels and content on YouTube.

As YouTubers grow accustomed to how the algorithm works based on experience, they can find ways to make their videos fit better with advertisers’ needs. Videos that will be the most attractive to advertisers from the algorithm’s point of view will have a high audio and video quality, a topic that the brand can support, and will not include profanity or any other non-family-friendly content (Bishop 72). With all the user data at YouTube’s disposal, the algorithm can also easily target an audience based on their age, gender, location or the type of videos that they watch (Bishop) 72. Through the Creator Studio, YouTubers have access to various kinds of data about their views, subscriber count and how it changes, comments or the amount of money they have earned through the Partnership programme. They can see which of their videos were the most successful in all of these different categories, which can push them towards creating more commercially viable content in order to increase their visibility and earnings (Bishop 73). This hub also has directions that encourage users to ‘connect with fans’ or ‘build a business and get help to grow’, nudging users towards uploading videos with the purpose of attracting followers and turning their channel into a profitable venture (Hou 5).

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While YouTube has evolved into a commercial platform, built on both amateur and professional content, “the idea of it as an open platform for amateur expression is buried deep into the DNA of the brand” (Burgess, YouTube and the formalisation of amateur media 1). One of the most popular types of videos on YouTube is the vlog (video blog), a staple of user-created content that is “fundamental to YouTube’s sense of community” and an “emblematic form of YouTube participation” (Burgess and Green, The Entrepreneurial Vlogger: Participatory Culture Beyond the Professional - Amateur Divide 94). This type of video is easy to make, only requiring a video camera and basic editing skills, the vlogger simply talking to the camera about their chosen topic. It also establishes a direct connection with the audience, as the dialogue addresses the viewers themselves, who can respond, add to the conversation or give the vlogger feedback through the comments. Vloggers use these videos as a way to earn money, but they are a different type of YouTube user than companies that use the video platform as a space to host their professional content, they are active participants in the community that has grown around YouTube and with their subscribers, they create their own, smaller community, understanding the importance of that in YouTube’s ecology (Burgess and Green, The Entrepreneurial Vlogger: Participatory Culture Beyond the Professional - Amateur Divide).

In 2007, YouTube created the Partner Program in order to play ads before YouTubers’ videos while having an agreement with them over the advertising revenue coming from that, splitting it between the company and the creator. Their premium content creators used to have a split of 70/30 with the company, but now that has changed to a standardized 55/45 split for everyone in the program (Cunningham, Craig and Silver 381). Following the changes to the eligibility requirements announced in January 2018, a channel needs to have four thousand watch hours in the previous 12 months and at least one thousand subscribers to be considered for the Partner Program (Google Support). Google used the traditional algorithm in advertising that was based on cost per thousand views (CPMs). This system is more beneficial to advertisers than to creators (Hou). That same year, they added their AdSense technology to YouTube, so users could put up advertising on their channels, which was aided by the various types of data from Google Analytics. In 2008, Google purchased and put into use DoubleClick, an automated ad buying program. All of these things made advertising on YouTube easy (Cunningham, Craig and Silver 380). However, in the early days of the Partner

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Program, it was professional media companies and advertisers who benefited the most from it, as, in combination with the Video ID system, it let copyright owners monetize their content even if they were not the video’s uploader. This was an important moment in attracting advertisers to YouTube. In 2007, there were only 30 amateur creators who were signed into the Partner Program (Gerhards 3).

Because of YouTube’s growth in terms of content and highly subscribed channels, with more than a million channels signed into the Partner Program and over 1500 channels with at least one million subscribers, the revenue obtained through AdSense has gotten smaller and smaller, not being able to keep pace with the increasing amount of content available that is seeking advertising. This means that content creators could not make a living just off the revenue they receive through this program, and they started seeking other modes of advertising and using other platforms, such as Instagram, to make more money (Cunningham, Craig and Silver 381).

A multi-channel network (also referred to as MCN) is a “Google/YouTube approved intermediary aggregating, affiliated with, and/or managing YouTube channels by offering their assistance in diverse areas, ranging from production to monetisation, in exchange for a percentage of the ad revenue”, who hire both traditional and digital media managers (Cunningham, Craig and Silver 377). In a way, these networks are simply a modernized, aggregated extension of agents, advertising agencies, managers and media buyers in the traditional entertainment landscape, but they operate in very different ways from their older counterparts thanks to the “automated and scalable nature” of the companies, as well as the current lack of regulations surrounding them (Lobato 350; Hou). The rise of multi-channel networks reflects the increasingly commercialized nature of YouTube and its turn into a formalized marketplace (Lobato; Vonderau).

Any revenue that is made through an MCN (outside of the pre-roll ads that get monetized through AdSense) does not need to be split with YouTube, cutting the platform out of the equation completely, making other forms of monetization more enticing to both users and multi-channel networks (Gerhards 7). These companies have networks of creators putting up content across multiple channels and platforms, they can create their own production companies and studios in order to help professionalize amateur creators, and the

16 managers look for ways to monetize all of their clients’ content through both digital and traditional means. However, there are different types of strategies among multi-channel networks. Some are horizontal aggregators, which are scale driven, some are vertical aggregators which focus on niche markets, which offer passionate and strong communities of fans, some use strategies that are commonly seen in traditional talent development agencies, and some are attempting to lead in technology (Cunningham, Craig and Silver 382). With the constant changes in YouTube’s ecology, MCNs need to be able to change and keep up at an even faster pace in order to stay on top. They do not, however, only work around YouTube; their clients will create a multi-platform presence using other social media sites like Instagram, Twitter, etc. in order to gain more fans, promote their content or hope that a post they make will attract the attention of a brand featured who will later on want to collaborate with them (Hou 16).

As previously mentioned, multi-channel networks also assist YouTubers with monetization, as they look for brands that fit with the type of content a specific creator is putting out there. That fit is an important factor, especially in a medium where authenticity (or appeared authenticity) is key in the relationship with the audience. Some creators have walked away from very rich offers from advertisers if they felt like that brand did not work with the type of content they made, or if they did not agree with what that brand did. Through these means, there are different types of content that a YouTuber will produce in a deal with an advertiser. It can be something like traditional product placement in a video, a sponsored video, or a more organic integration of a brand, fitting seamlessly into a video (Cunningham, Craig and Silver 386). In brand integration videos, the advertiser is the one with control over the content of the video, even if the video itself might be that YouTuber’s usual style. In contrast with that, the YouTuber has control of videos that include paid-for product placement. Some of the more successful creators might also receive free products from companies in the hopes that they will talk about them in their videos or even post about them or simply include them in a post on a different social network. YouTubers can also integrate brands that they are affiliated with by adding links in their video description box sending their viewers to a page including a specific code from that YouTuber, where people can purchase that brand’s products and through that code, they could receive a discount on the products as well. The YouTuber then receives compensation for the amount of traffic or purchases they

17 gave that company thanks to their unique link. This type of integration does not require the creator and the brand to partner for that particular video, instead the creator can become part of the brand’s affiliate programme (Gerhards; Hou). Some multi-channel networks can also have the function of a search-optimization service, as they develop systems that can offer users advice on the best titles, keywords, metadata and frequently searched-for terms related to the topic, in order to make those videos stand out and be attractive to YouTube’s algorithm (Lobato 356).

MCNs also help creators with other strategies for monetization: through sales and distribution strategies, they can repackage content from that creator for a different platform, such as television or an international platform, looking to expand their audience; and through windowing strategies, through which an MCN will offer a video on-demand platform either first look at content from a YouTuber, or additional content from their channel. Offline, fan conferences and live tours have become more and more popular, becoming highly profitable for creators with a good following, as well as developing and selling merchandise referring to a specific YouTuber, and last but not least, the books written by YouTubers in recent years have seen a good return, some becoming best sellers (Cunningham, Craig and Silver 386).

Some multi-channel networks have the necessary infrastructure and equipment to help their clients improve their production quality. This reinforces the idea of the professionalization of amateurs on YouTube (Cunningham, Craig and Silver 386). However, most MCNs prioritize their top-level clients, giving them most of the attention and their best services, in a personal manner, while their lower-level clients will only get help through impersonal services, with the company simply offering them online tutorials and other similar kinds of help (Hou 6).

Because MCNs tend to focus on their bigger clients and have a certain threshold for users to be signed, smaller channels can get paid for advertising and product placement through online marketplaces. These marketplaces provide users with smaller amounts of subscribers with brands that are interested in these types of collaborations and the two parties can work out a deal. Different marketplaces have different starting points in terms of subscribers, but it can be as low as one thousand. Importantly, the marketplace does not take any share of the revenue from the content creator. This concept can be seen as democratizing

18 the advertising business on YouTube because it gives smaller channels who would be ignored by multi-channel networks a chance to earn some additional money (Gerhards 7-8).

Thanks to the emergence of social media and social media platforms’ participatory affordances celebrity culture has changed in recent years, allowing ordinary people to gain a certain level of celebrity through self-branding and DYI practices and gaining fans or followers. This type of celebrity is called ‘micro-celebrity’, defined by Turner as celebrities who “operate within a relatively limited and localized virtual space, drawing on small numbers of fans such as the followers of a particular subcultural practice” (Hou 2). Jerslev calls micro-celebrity a “particular online performance designed for self-branding” (5239). Marwick further sees it as “the presentation of oneself as a celebrity regardless of who is paying attention” and a “way of thinking of oneself as a celebrity, and treating others accordingly” (Marwick, in Jerslev, 5239).

This is a big shift from the celebrity we can observe from traditional stars, who are known for their extraordinariness in a particular field, glamour, untouchable perfection, and who keep their personal life private, not allowing fans to know much about them outside of their work. In contrast with that, micro-celebrities are known for their ordinariness, intimacy, and often times a relationship of equals between them and their followers. This gives micro- celebrities a sense of authenticity (that does not mean it shows all the realities of someone’s life, but it is mediated as a way for these celebrities to represent themselves), which is something that advertisers are highly interested in for their brands’ promotion. Thanks to this authenticity and a closer relationship between micro-celebrities and their fans (as opposed to traditional celebrities), this type of people can be immensely valuable as a brand ambassador or collaborator (Hou 8). Another factor that makes micro-celebrities seem authentic and trustworthy is the idea that they are self-governed and are not part of the commercial system around celebrity culture (Jerslev). Thanks to the affordances of the platform and the way in which creators interact with their fans, they are able to keep them engaged both with the creators and, from advertisers’ point of view, the brands that they promote, which is another valuable factor in the connection between the two through partnerships (Morreale). This relationship between YouTubers and advertisers is mutually beneficial, as the creators who work with big brands not only earn money, but they can also increase their celebrity status through these types of deals.

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Hou calls this type of authenticity performed by social media celebrities ‘staged authenticity’ (15). Through unscripted vlogs (or at least perceived as unscripted), these celebrities perform the role of themselves in a staged version of their life. While it appears like the viewers are welcomed into all aspects of that person’s life, it is important to remember that not only are these videos edited by the vlogger, letting them choose what to include and what to leave out, but they also choose what to film or talk about to begin with. Additionally, everything else they post on other social media websites is curated in order for them to portray the image that they want in front of their followers (Khamis, Ang and Welling 196). Jerslev argues that “attention-creating performances of a private authentic self are the most valuable commodity in social media celebrification” (5240).

Celebrification through social media establishes a “temporality of permanent updating, of immediacy and of instantaneity” while also presupposing a quick response from the audience through likes, views, comments and subscriptions (Jerslev 5233).

YouTube fits into the neoliberal view for multiple reasons. First, it is a platform of competition, as all the users and all the videos on it are competing with each other for views, subscriptions and the attention of the public. Second, YouTubers are entrepreneurs of themselves, making (or attempting to make) their money as their own enterprise, through YouTube’s Partnership Program, sponsorships and any other opportunities that arise from their channels and how they present themselves. They are their own bosses, working to give themselves the most money and opportunities that they can. Lastly, these people can use YouTube to increase their human capital, by increasing their reputation and appeal to others, as well as investing in their own practical skills in terms of video editing and producing, and using a leading online space like YouTube. Because of all of this, YouTube can be called a neoliberal platform.

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Chapter 2: Case Studies

Methodology

This chapter will take a closer look at three case studies of YouTubers on different levels of success in terms of their subscriber count, all with unique types of content: Lilly Singh, a Canadian comedian and vlogger, Hannah Witton, a British vlogger who mostly focuses on sex education, relationship issues and lifestyle vlogging, and Alex Bertie, a British vlogger who has been documenting his transition from female to male, as well as giving advice and talking about issues surrounding the transgender community. Each case study will be based on content analysis of their YouTube channels, examining their evolution in terms of content, topics tackled and the look of the videos themselves. They will also include some data analysis, looking at the evolution of factors such as daily subscriptions gained, total subscribers, daily video views, total video views, average views per day per month and total views per month. This data is provided by the website Social Blade. However, there are limitations on this, as the data available only starts in August 2015, limiting the data set to less than three years. The available data only goes back three years because of EU privacy regulations, as the website had previously offered data from as far back as when the user was in their system (Social Blade, FAQ).

These three case studies were picked as they are all either part of minorities, tackling taboo subjects, or both, which tend to be underrepresented in the media. Their existence and success from YouTube is important in order to highlight their underrepresented experiences and bring awareness to certain things that are not usually in the spotlight.

Who They Are

Lilly Singh, also known by her YouTube username as IISuperwomanII is a Canadian comedian and vlogger who has over 13.3 million subscribers. Her main channel has over two billion total views, whereas her vlogging channel, SuperwomanVlogs, has over 2.3 million

21 subscribers (Social Blade). At the moment, she is estimated to be making millions of dollars with $10.5 million in 2017 alone (Forbes). She is best known for her comedy skits, her impersonations of her parents, and her positive persona. Lilly Singh herself described her own humour as feel-good and relatable (Vogue), which is reflected in the type of videos that she does. Unlike many content creators of her calibre, Singh is not signed with a multi-channel network. Instead, she signed with Sarah Weichel Management, a company that calls itself a “full-service management company” (Sarah Weichel Management), which despite having a focus on digital talent, appears to still position itself in the more traditional category of talent management.

Hannah Witton is a British vlogger who focuses on issues such as sex education, sex positivity, feminism and literature. She has almost half a million subscribers and over 51 million views on her channel (Social Blade), and she is one of the most popular sex education YouTubers on the website. She is signed with FreeFocus Talent Management, a company which manages a variety of UK-based digital stars from all kinds of different backgrounds, who are all known for tackling different topics both online and offline (FreeFocus).

Alex Bertie is a British vlogger who discusses transgender and queer issues, as he has been documenting his own transition through YouTube. He currently has a little over 300,000 subscribers and over 11 million views on his YouTube channel (Socialblade). His first public video is from May 2013, and since then he has become one of the better known female to male transgender content creators on the website.

Video Evolution

Singh’s first YouTube video that is currently public was uploaded on the 9th of December 2010, when she posted a tutorial called How to Tie a Side Turla Bhangra Pagh (Turban) (Singh, 2010). The amateurship of the video is clear from the beginning and reflective of the way YouTube videos looked at the time, before being a content creator became a genuine path to success. Some of the video is shot vertically, there is no additional audio or lighting equipment used, therefore the lighting and audio are not very good and there are very basic text graphics included. In the video description, Singh states that she

22 created this video because she felt like there was a lack of tutorials on this particular topic on the Internet, and she was not looking to gain anything from posting it other than helping others out who might be looking for this kind of tutorial. That already changes with her second upload, an amateur music video of an original rap called I’m Ill (Singh, 2011), followed by Official Guide to Brown Girls (Singh, 2011), a comedic video in the style that she will later become known for. A lot of her early videos are related to her Indian heritage, but that slowly changed, with the topics becoming less about that, and more relatable to a larger audience.

Figure 1 Screenshots of How to Tie a Side Turla Bhangra Pagh (Turban)

A closer analysis of some of Singh’s earlier videos shows how she has maintained a similar style of video and comedy from 2011 to 2018, with the biggest change being the video quality itself. In Bollywood Movies Are Evil (Singh, 2011), from March 2011, she already exhibits the style of video that her viewers will grow accustomed to. The video is partly a rant directly to the camera, partly separate scenes exemplifying what she is talking about, cutting between the two numerous times. This is already a departure from just talking in front of the camera, perhaps seen as a way to make the video more engaging and entertaining, to give the viewer a better picture of what she is talking about, and a way to add comedy. The actual video is still not of good quality, making it obvious it is being filmed by an amateur. While the audio quality appears to have improved from her first efforts, the video still relies on natural lighting, diminishing its quality. Additionally, there is the framing of the images in the parts

23 where Singh talks directly to the camera: she appears from the waist up, making herself look smaller, there are noticeable objects around her such as the light switch on the wall and a stand with an empty picture frame, and the green colour of the wall behind her is hard on the eyes, especially without proper lighting. At this point, plenty of her videos still focus on her Indian heritage and she appears to address the audience with the expectation that they are also of the same heritage or at least have some knowledge of Indian culture. All in all, at this early point in her YouTube career (not seen as a career at the time), Singh appears to be more interested in the content of her videos than the production value of them. This could be for a variety of reasons, including the fact that being a YouTube star was not a career path at the time, meaning that videos did not need to look as professional as they do right now, and making an investment in video and audio equipment was not particularly necessary; also, considering the topics of her videos, she gave more importance to putting up content that could give more representation to people of Indian heritage.

Figure 2 Screenshots of Bollywood Movies are Evil

Additionally, Singh already started her annual ’12 Collabs of Christmas’ series in December 2011. Most of the videos in this series, all the way up to 2017, are not actually about Christmas or the holidays, but are a way to set up collaborations with other people, mostly YouTubers but more recently, some bigger celebrities too. Special or more frequent videos in December have become a frequent occurrence among YouTubers, mostly through

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Vlogmas, a different type of series where YouTubers film their daily life throughout December, all the way up to Christmas, giving their viewers more content. As the name might suggest, this is most popular with vloggers, who are already posting this type of video but on this occasion, they might simply increase the frequency of their uploads, but other creators who do different types of videos might also post Vlogmas videos in order to give their fans more content, and a different kind of content than what they are used to. By starting ’12 Collabs of Christmas’, Singh manages to stand out with her content during that time of year, while staying true to the types of videos she was already putting out. The content itself could be mutually beneficial for her and her collaborators, attempting to familiarize their followers with each other. The structure of the series may have also helped add more subscribers, as they would await the next day of collaborations. Her posting these videos instead of Vlogmas ones could also be at least partly because, at least at the time, she did not want to put too much personal information online.

By January 2012, Singh’s regular uploads start looking less like amateur work. While most of them are still the same easy to film style, where she either just talks directly to the camera and the audience, or she dresses up as her parents, the quality is clearly improved: the video quality is good, the audio is clear and the lighting is enhanced. The types of videos she uploads at this point are still easy to produce and do not require any expert knowledge in video production, but there are clearly some investments being made in order to increase the quality of the videos. The content of her comedic rants and skits also starts shaping up more, with numerous videos having similar structures: describing annoying people in certain places (e.g. Annoying People at the Movies), things certain types of people do not understand (e.g. Things Parents Don’t Understand), types of people in certain situations (e.g. Types of Kids at School), or how to’s (e.g. How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse) among other things. These kinds of topics not only have plenty of comedic potential in this format, but they are accessible and relatable to a large number of people, and the regular uploading of videos in this mould could be a big reason for Singh’s increasing popularity, especially at a time when content creators on YouTube were experiencing perhaps an unexpected surge in popularity.

In April 2012, she started a monthly series called Ask Superwoman, where she would answer her viewers’ questions, mostly about relationships. This type of video can help make a more personal connection between her and her followers, as they would tell her about a

25 personal story or situation in their question, to which she would give advice, even if some of it would be more comedy than actual useful advice. While the series has ended in this format, she has been doing regular Ask Superwoman live streams on her YouTube channel, usually lasting around an hour.

Some of Singh’s most viewed videos as of May 2018 come from 2013-2014, when her YouTube fame started growing. Her most viewed video is How Girls Get Ready… from March 2013, which currently has over 26 million views. It is a short comedic skit of around three minutes in which Singh (who could be seen as playing a more exaggerate version of herself for comedic effect) takes hours to get through the process of getting ready for a night out. There is no voiceover and no talking directly to the camera or ranting in this video, which has become a more common style for her in more recent times. An even earlier video is part of her top 10 most viewed videos, Types of Kids At School, from September 2012.This is more of the type of video she was making in this period: having a longer length, in this case of over nine minutes, talking to the camera, listing and describing types of people in a situation, in this case kids at school. As she states in the introduction, Singh made the video after a lot of her fans told her they were just about to start school again, so the timing of this video could have also helped propel it into her most viewed ones. Her second most viewed video, How To Stop Parents from Comparing Kids (ft. Miranda Sings), is also from this time period, posted in April 2014. In this case, the almost eight minute long video is also a comedic skit but features fellow YouTuber Miranda Sings who was also an emerging micro-celebrity at the time, and Singh’s fan favourite impressions of her parents. This particular video shows her growing understanding of filming and editing techniques, as it includes a scene of Singh, Miranda Sings, and Singh’s parents (both played by herself) having a conversation sitting at a dinner table. Being able to successfully film that, taking into account the framing of the scene, the camera angles and the editing required to put it all together shows her evolving knowledge in this area as someone who had not had any formal training on filming and editing video content.

In the summer of 2016, Singh started a series called Girl Love which she described as “dedicated to ending and reversing the culture of girl-on-girl hatred” (Goodbye Hate, Hello #GirlLove, Singh, 2016). The videos in this series included collaborations with some well known celebrities: the first episode was an interview with Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis and Kathryn

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Hahn filmed during the press tour for their film Bad Moms in which the actresses answered questions about and discussed being mothers (Are You a Bad Mom? ft. Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell & Kathryn Hahn | #GirlLove (Ep. 1)). In an instance that showed both the fact that Singh was seen as a legitimate voice in the online world and someone invested in causes such as better education, and the fact that YouTube as a platform, and YouTubers as micro-celebrities, are something that people involved in ‘serious’ things such as politics can tap into, Singh interviewed Michelle Obama, at the time the First Lady of the United States of America for her series (Getting Schooled By Michelle Obama | #GirlLove (Ep.3)). The two discussed Obama’s education initiative Reach Higher to make college more accessible for people and inspire young people to get a college degree. They also play a game of Reach Higher-themed Heads Up alongside two Howard University students, where the interview was filmed, and a game Singh called Compliment Quick fire which is in tune with her Girl Love message. Combining an important conversation with a major American figure that is relevant and aimed at a lot of Singh’s audience with the typical style of YouTube videos involving games and a fun atmosphere is a great way to capture the attention of the YouTube audience.

By 2018, she has ended up making this type of honest, relatable and positive comedy her brand. She still posts mostly comedy skits but the production value has increased tremendously, as she has been keeping up with the demands of YouTube. Nowadays, many of them are full-on acting skits, instead of Singh just talking directly to the camera throughout, with short cuts to whatever she was describing. While that might be more impersonal now, she still includes moments of talking directly to the audience and thanking them, at least at the end of her videos. And while the vast majority of her videos now are not about her Indian heritage, she still posts videos of herself acting as her parents and sometimes collaborates with Indian artists, such as fellow YouTuber and spoken word artist Humble the Poet, or actress Priyanka Chopra.

An example of this new style of video from Singh is If Job Interviews Were Honest, from February 2018, a two and a half minute long video acting out a job interview (with both parts being played by Singh herself) where both the interviewer and interviewee are honest, saying things like “As you can see here, I made up six years of experience” and “Why do you want this job?/ I like money”. The quality of the video is high, it is on a topic that most people can relate to and it is short.

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Figure 3 Screenshots of If Job Interviews Were Honest

While most of her videos have a light atmosphere and fun or funny topics, Singh posted a more political video in June 2017 titled A Geography Class for Racist People. As Islamophobia and racism against brown people has been rampant this century particularly in the United States, with the political climate getting even more tense since the 2016 presidential election, it is sadly no surprise that Singh has also been a victim of racism through social media comments. In this video, she starts by reading an anonymous, grammatically incorrect, racist comment from one of her videos and jumps into a ‘lesson’ about brown people, some of the countries in South Asian and the Middle East and Americans’ irrational arguments for their racism and Islamophobia. While the topic of the video is a departure from her usual material, her tone is still light and fun, while highly sarcastic, appearing friendly as she takes down unfounded arguments and fears of racist people. At almost ten million views, this is another not only topical video in the current climate, but also one that can be appealing to people who do not make up Singh’s usual audience.

The first publicly available video on Witton’s channel dates back to June 2011 and is titled The Solution to a Bad Day. It is a short video portraying her as having a bad day, which only gets better once she eats some chocolate, the aforementioned solution to the bad day. It does not include any talking, it just shows her doing various activities around the house

28 while an instrumental track plays in the background of the video. Her second video, Hannah Dreams…SAVE THE BABY!, uploaded the day following her first one, is of a different style while remaining comedic. In it, Witton tells the story of an odd dream of hers while re-enacting parts of it. She addresses the viewers directly and asks them if they know what her dream could mean at the end of the video. This video, like all of Witton’s early ones, is of amateur quality.

Figure 4 Screenshot of Hannah Dreams...SAVE THE BABY!

Witton’s tens of videos during 2011 are quite different from the types of videos that she has become known for. Her first video about sex education was posted in January 2012. Titled Sex Education 01 – Contraception, it is the beginning of a series of videos she made around this topic because she found that sex education in the United Kingdom was not very good and she wanted to put more information out. In this first episode, she and a male friend of hers discuss contraception. They list different methods of contraception, physically showing a few of the most common ones and telling the audience how they can get them (at least in the UK), and they also take down a few of the myths around the topic. In the video description Witton included links to websites from the UK, the United States and Australia with more information around contraception. The description also contains a disclaimer that the two of them are not professionals, but are passionate about teaching others about this

29 topic. The series continued with videos on topics such as ‘virginity and the logistics of sex’, puberty and body image, sexual orientation and the anatomy of sexual organs.

Due to her starting this educational series, Witton started receiving questions from her viewers about sex education topics, for which she started making specific videos independent of the series itself. In videos like Sexual opinions [sex before marriage & boobs] and Sexual opinions [friends with benefits & asexuality], she answers those questions, giving advice or simply her opinion on issues that her viewers might be experiencing.

While she continued making dozens of videos about other topics such as short vlogs, stories from her personal life, comedic skits and songs, she was still uploading the occasional video related to sex education or relationship advice, outside of the Sex Education series. In a video from October 2012 titled My Childhood Sex Ed, Witton talks about the sex education she received as a child, both at school and from her parents. She asks her viewers to respond either in the comments section or through a video response with stories of their childhood sex education, as she wanted to hear more stories from people with different experiences. In June 2013, she posted a video called Masturbation in which she talks about female masturbation in particular in a very open and positive fashion. Five years later, this video is still one of her most popular uploads, with over 600,000 views, much higher than any of her other videos around that time. That can be credited to the fact that it is a topic that is not usually talked about, and people looking for content on the topic will both be interested and have an easier time finding the video. With the increasing presence of sex education videos on the platform, the number of videos on this topic has certainly increased, but it is still an important video to note.

By the latter part of 2013, Witton’s videos became much more focused around the topics of sex education, body image, relationships and feminism, as well as generally looking more polished and of better overall quality. The videos around that time include Sexual Fantasies, My First Time, Let’s Talk About Sex, The Kama Sutra, Can Women Have Hairy Legs?! | Hannah Witton and Old Fashioned Sex Advice. She also attempted to include non- heteronormative content, like in her collaborations with lesbian YouTuber Arielle Scarcella titled What Is Lesbian Sex? Ft. Arielle Scarcella and Lesbian Stereotypes with Arielle | Hannah Witton, or her collaboration with transgender YouTubers Alex Bertie and Jake Edwards in

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Being Trans and Testosterone | The Hormone Diaries Ep. 14 | Hannah Witton, which is the type of content that is not only informative to heterosexual viewers, but also appeals to the minorities in question, in this case lesbian and bisexual women or transgender people. It can also be noted that for these videos, Witton did not just speak on the topics presented on her own, instead inviting others who are parts of the groups discussed to give the information. There, she is learning just as much as the viewers and she voices the point of view of people who might not be as familiar with such issues. However, she still posted videos related to other aspects of her life, public issues or pop culture items, such as Divergent Movie Review, How to Cure a Hangover , Disney’s Frozen Elsa Makeup Tutorial or Gap Between the Rich and the Poor #SwingTheVote | Hannah Witton (a sponsored video encouraging young people to go vote in the 2015 British general election).

In 2015, Witton started a series called Drunk Advice, in which she collaborates with other vloggers. In each episode, she and a fellow YouTuber get drunk and give advice to fans who send them questions. The questions are usually about sex and relationships, keeping in tune with most of her videos. Most of the other YouTubers who appear in this series appear to be part of Witton’s London-based group of friends, based on her social media posts, while other collaborations happen thanks to events like big YouTube conferences. Around the same time, she also started posting monthly ‘Favourites’ videos, in which she talks about her favourite things and objects for a certain month. Unlike other vloggers who usually make these videos focused on one area such as make-up, she brings up all different kind of objects or experiences, such as books, television shows and movies, beauty products and even travel spots.

Witton continued making videos about sensitive or taboo topics, some even sponsored by brands or campaigns attempting to bring awareness to those issues. Some examples of this are Period Taboos | Hannah Witton | ad, Inside a Sex Toy Warehouse | Hannah Witton | ad, Let’s Talk About Relationship Abuse | Hannah Witton | ad and My Relationship with Religion | Hannah Witton. She also used occasions such as International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month to promote other female YouTubers with smaller subscriber bases (10 Small Female YouTubers You Should Watch | Hannah Witton) and bring up other feminist issues in videos like The History of Women’s History + Giveaway | Hannah Witton and Feminism Q&A | Hannah Witton.

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In 2016, Witton started another series called The Hormone Diaries, in which after stopping taking contraceptive pills, she goes on a quest to find the right contraceptive method for her. When introducing the series, she called it ‘probably the most personal thing’ she has ever done on YouTube, as she tries out different contraceptive methods and talks about them, while also discussing other related issues.

Figure 5 Screenshots of Why I'm Coming Off the Pill | The Hormone Diaries Ep. 1

In June 2017, Witton revealed that she had ulcerative colitis, a form of inflammatory bowel disease, which she was diagnosed with as a child. Her initial video, I have ulcerative colitis | Hannah Witton, simply explained what this illness was and her experience with it, which she decided to do because not many people openly discussed this type of illness. In February 2018, after an almost two month absence from YouTube, Witton came back to reveal that after another flare up of her illness, she spent four weeks in the hospital and required surgery to get her colon removed, replacing it with a stoma bag (I spent 4 weeks in hospital | Hannah Witton). In the 23 minute-long video, she discusses all the details of what happened and her health status. Following the incident, she returned to her regular YouTube uploads, but started also uploading videos related to her surgery and her new way of living due to her stoma bag (Stoma, Surgery Recovery & 2018 Q&A | Hannah Witton, What’s In My Stoma Care Bag? | Hannah Witton, What the heck is a stoma? (showing you my ileostomy) | Hannah Witton). Her decision to reveal and openly talk about her health issue and its

32 consequences not only continued to maintain the close relationship between her and her viewers, which is already quite personal as she shares a lot of intimate details about her life on her channel, but was also seen in a positive light for bringing attention to an illness that is not very well known, helping people be more educated on it, and showing the ‘uglier’ side of what it entails.

Looking at the comments on her videos, Witton’s viewers appear to be highly appreciative of her discussing topics that are not often discussed, that are seen as taboo or shameful to talk about, and her general openness to talking about all things related to sexuality, including intimate aspects of her own experiences. Her attitude is seen as a stark contrast to the approach to sex education in a school setting, or coming from a lot of parents

Bertie’s first currently public video, from the 14th of May 2013, is titled Transgender: The Little Things (Bertie, 2013) and is a short video of around 2 minutes of him venting about things that make living as a transgender person difficult. There is evidence in the video and its description of that not being the first video he has ever uploaded, from the description explaining the need to vent and telling the audience that this is a “less bubbly, more down to Earth Alex”, to Bertie, in the video, starting things off by acknowledging the audience he must have known he had by then. In some interviews, Bertie has said that he started posting videos on YouTube that were the type of video he thought could bring him fame, unrelated to his gender identity, and once he started posting videos about being transgender he even had his channel taken down at the request of his school in order to stop Bertie’s classmates from bullying him. The video itself is amateur-ish in nature: judging by the quality and framing of the video, it was probably filmed on a web camera, with no additional equipment such as proper lighting. As the nature of the video’s topic might suggest, this is not the sort of video that would appeal to a massive audience, especially at the time it was uploaded when the understanding and acceptance of transgender people was even lower than it is today. His next video, We Hate Yourselves (Bertie, 2013), tackles another difficult and potentially controversial subject, discussing self-harm, self-hate and suicide. In it, Bertie encourages his viewers to be kind to people and not judge anyone, reminding them that they are not alone and offering to always be there for anyone reaching out in need of help. Through this kind of

33 discussion, he can build a close rapport and relationship with his viewers, and share a genuine connection with them.

Figure 6 Screenshot of Transgender: The Little Things.

In the early days of his channel, Bertie also did not have any sort of set schedule for videos, like a sort of routine that would keep subscribers engaged and help them remember the channel, instead uploading sporadically. He also did not only upload videos related to his gender identity and helping others, also including a few vlogs filmed with friends, showing his day to day life or other aspects of his life such as introducing his dog, discussing getting his first tattoo or doing a ‘sibling tag’, one of the types of videos that was popular among YouTubers at the time.

However, throughout Bertie’s channel history, his videos have remained primarily about his identity as a transgender man. Some of them are about documenting his own transition, such as the physical changes he has gone through or giving out information about the medical aspect of his transition (Transgender Suffering 2 Years Later, First Appointment 06), some are discussing issues that most transgender men can identify with (Transman Problems, Transgender Coming Out Guide, Binding For Beginners), and some are about specific products that transgender men use and reviewing them (988 vs. Tritop Binder Review/Comparison, STP Review: Peecock Gen 2). By the summer of 2014, he was already

34 reaching a decent level of recognition in the YouTube LGBT community, participating in (and later posting on his channel) the LGBTQ panel at Summer in the City, one of the biggest YouTube conventions in Europe which has been taking place every summer starting in 2009 in London.

Taking a closer look at one of his review videos, 988 vs. Tritop Binder Review (Bertie, 2014), it is obvious that this is a video that will only appeal to other transgender men. In it, Bertie shows off the two different kinds of binders (a type of top used by trans men to flatten their chest and give it a more male appearance) that he owns, discusses his experiences with the products and their pros and cons and giving some tips to the viewers. This type of video is a very important resource for other transgender men for multiple reasons. First of all, information about different aspects of living as a transgender person is not easy to come by. Most people do not really understand it and it is not a topic that is at the forefront of people’s minds if it does not directly affect them. Thanks to the online space, this has changed and trans people have managed to find their voices through social media accounts and blogs, helping educate others and giving guidance to people just like them. It is also important particularly for younger people who go on the Internet looking for answers about who they are and are now able to find others just like them, and can learn from their experiences. In the specific case of binding, that is even more important because the process of binding can be dangerous to one’s health if not done properly and without enough information.

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Figure 7 Screenshot of 988 VS TRITOP Binder Review/Comparison

Offending Trans People (Bertie, 2014) is a different kind of video, which cisgender people are more likely to watch than the type previously mentioned. Bertie acknowledges that and even addresses the people who are watching the video but are not transgender or do not know someone who is trans, and who might not have the proper understanding of what is and is not offensive to them. In the video, he talks about different things he has been told related to his gender identity that he finds offensive. The video is both a sort of rant at the camera over a frustrating situation and a way to educate others stumbling upon the video, who might simply not known any better. Through the different types of videos he has uploaded, Bertie has remained focused on discussing issues surround his identity as transgender while also making at least some of the videos relevant enough for people outside of that community to be able to watch and learn from.

Once he started the process of medically transitioning, Bertie also started posting more videos relating specifically to that, and giving out updates, from his medical appointments to the changes he was experiencing due to hormone replacement therapy (HRT). The start of that is in February 2016 with the video Huge Transition News! 12 (Bertie, 2016), in which Bertie reveals details about his first doctor’s appointment and the fact that

36 he would soon start taking hormones and will be able to get surgery. After he actually started hormones, he posted monthly updates on the changes that brought, for a few months. He also posted videos regarding preparations for his surgery, doctor’s appointments, and after the surgery, more updates on its status and results.

In October 2017, Bertie started a series called Trans Advice, in which he answers questions from his followers regarding various aspects of being transgender such as dysphoria, the medical side of transitioning or practical tips about passing as male. As of May 2018, there are three videos in this series: Passing, Bubble Baths, Dysphoria and GPs | Trans Advice (Bertie, 2017), I Feel Fake | Trans Advice (Bertie, 2018) and Breaking Up, Dads and Surgery Prep | Trans Advice (Bertie, 2018). The videos are all uploaded a few months apart, showing that there is not a set schedule to the series as Bertie initially intended in the first video, where he stated that he would try to make this type of video once a month. As with other YouTubers who post advice videos, Bertie manages to establish a personal and close relationship with his audience by answering their questions in a thoughtful manner, using his own experiences and talking about them.

Figure 8 Screenshots of Passing, Bubble Baths, Dysphoria and GP’s | Trans Advice

In February 2018, Bertie posted a long video of over 20 minutes titled Trans Around The World: Trans Tubers (Bertie, 2018), which helps emphasize his work in building a community around his channel. He states that goal himself in the beginning of the video, saying that he wants to be able to have a more diverse discussion about the transitioning

37 experience around the world. For the video, he invited other transgender YouTubers to answer questions about their experience in different countries: Mann from Singapore and India, Adrian from France, Danni from The Netherlands and living in the United Kingdom, Richard from Italy, Stef, Jeydon and Ollie from Canada. They are not just from different parts of the world, but they also identify in different ways, showing more than just the experiences of female to male transgender people. Not only does this bring a variety of different perspectives together, but it also exposes Bertie’s audience to other trans vloggers of varying degrees of popularity: from Jeydon, who has over 900.000 subscribers to Ollie, who has under 100 subscribers. In the video, Bertie asks a variety of questions to the other vloggers, which he answers himself. They include asking about the way all the different societies feel about transgender people and how transitioning is accepted, the LGBT community and the transgender community in the different countries and the way someone can medically transition in each country. In his intro, Bertie announced this video as the beginning of the series and even though there has not been a second part of it yet, there is the possibility of a continuation of the series. Unlike most of his videos, this type of content is harder to make as it requires different people from all over the world to coordinate and work together, as well as finding new creators from diverse backgrounds.

Bertie’s user created playlists reflect the types of videos he posts, as he has organized them for anyone who is looking for content regarding a specific side of being transgender. The playlist The Quest to Alex’s Beard includes all the videos related to Bertie’s medical transition, from receiving his first doctor’s appointment to assessing the changes he has gone through from hormone replacement therapy or showing the results of his chest surgery after various milestones. He also has a separate playlist specifically about his chest surgery, titled Top Surgery. He also has individual playlists for the previously mentioned series Trans Advice and Trans Tubers. The longest playlist available is FTM Topics, which includes a lot of his videos about transgender issues that are not medical. This playlist includes a lot of videos that have been made private in the meantime. Two other short playlists, Trans Guys Talk, and Q+A’s, are made up entirely of videos that have been made private. This shows the amount of videos Bertie has taken off his channel for reasons unknown, but their inclusion in these playlists means that they were still focused on his gender identity or community building (in the case of Q&As) like most of his videos. The last two playlists available are Art, made up of just one

38 early video of Bertie’s drawings, and Friends which includes vlogs of him meeting friends and his previously mentioned Summer In The City panels, but once again there is a large number of videos that have been made private.

The style of Bertie’s videos has remained primarily the same through the years, filmed in his room and talking directly to the camera, usually about personal issues. The increase in the quality of the videos is evident, Bertie having clearly invested in a better camera and other equipment, and getting an understanding of ways to film a video with good lighting, even in this type of sit-down vlog. As of March 2018, Bertie is one of many YouTubers to create merchandise for his followers to buy, which he announced in the video I Have Merch Now (A Dance Celebration) (Bertie, 2018). As of May 2018, the merchandise website has four items which all relate to being transgender or being against bigotry, instead of focusing on Bertie’s personal image that he has put out through his various social media accounts.

There are a few different reasons why Bertie has established a close relationship with his viewers. First of all, the nature of most of his videos is clearly quite personal, touching on deep issues and important steps in his life. Second of all, there are other videos which show off Bertie’s personal relationships outside of his transition: videos with family members such as his sister or his mother, and videos discussing his romantic relationship or including his boyfriend. Naturally, this aspect is heightened with the use of other social media platforms like Instagram or Twitter, but even someone who only follows Bertie on YouTube can get an understanding of his personal life just through his videos. This all means that there is a level of intimacy established between Bertie and his viewers, an understanding of personal issues, making him feel more like a friend or brother than a micro-celebrity.

While there are some hateful comments on there, the majority of the comments sections on Bertie’s videos emphasizes the sense of community around his channel. The content of the videos sometimes encourages viewers to post comments about their own experience even if they are not out as transgender in their real life. Other comments are from cisgender people who will express how useful some of these videos can be in order to understand what transgender people go through. Other comments will simply be in support of Bertie and what he is going through. All in all, the comments section on his videos provides

39 a space of support between the viewers themselves, and the viewers and Bertie, that some might not be able to get anywhere else due to their personal circumstances.

O’Neill (2014) has classified identifiable transgender youth narratives into five categories. The first category is ‘transitional videos’, consisting of “images that have been taken throughout the transition process.” The second one is ‘D.I.Y. gender’, where the person in the video shows the best ways in which to present as the gender you want to be perceived as, such as what clothes to wear, how to hide your breasts or long hair (for female to male individuals), or how to apply make-up (for male to female individuals). The third category is ‘trans video blogging’, “video diaries of daily living experiences”, including updates on the changes the vloggers are experiencing due to hormone replacement therapy. The fourth one is ‘trans anti-bullying videos’, where the creators discuss their experiences with transphobia and bullying, and ways through which others going through the same experiences can make it through. The last category is ‘celebrity trans video blogging’, which is the same as the third category but in this case, the vloggers are celebrities. However, they might not be active YouTube users, instead doing a video on this particular topic in order to bring awareness or help with a project, such as Stephen Ira Beatty (Warren Beatty and Annette Benning’s son). Out of these five categories of transgender youth narratives, the only one that cannot be found in Bertie’s videos is the final one, ‘celebrity trans video blogging’, as he is not a celebrity. The other four categories all appear on his channel, some more than others: transitional videos (1 Year on T: FTM Transgender, Transgender: 2 Years on Testosterone), D.I.Y. gender (Transgender Facial Hair & Minoxidil, How I Cut My Own Hair), trans video blogging (the majority of Bertie’s videos), and trans anti-bullying videos (Transgender: The Little Things, We Hate Ourselves).

By analysing Bertie’s channel, it can be seen that he has remained authentic through the years, maintaining the same kind of content which he puts out there to tell his story and help others in similar situations. He still has a job outside of YouTube, working as a graphic designer (Turner, 2017) and while he has reached a certain level of fame as a micro-celebrity in the online transgender community, the goal of his videos remains the same. As O’Neill’s work in identifying trans narratives on YouTube shows, most transgender content creators post videos in order to help others like them, help increase awareness of issues about being transgender and hopefully increase the visibility of trans people and acceptance among

40 cisgender people. It cannot be concluded if trans vloggers who focus on their gender identity in their videos do not receive the same commercial opportunities as cisgender vloggers because of the topics they talk about, or if that simply causes them to have a smaller audience because most people are not interested in watching videos on these topics or simply do not know about them, but Bertie is an example of someone who still uses his channel and YouTube presence to build a community and help others, not necessarily taking into account the financial potential that YouTube stardom has.

Audience Statistics

The following data has been obtained from the statistics website Social Blade, which tracks different factors and measures growth across different social media platforms such as YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. For this study, the data used is the available YouTube statistics for the three case studies, which fall under the categories of “Daily Subs Gained”, “Total Subscribers Gained”, “Daily Video Views”, “Total Video Views”, “Average Views Per Day Per Month” and “Total Views Per Month”. According to Social Blade’s Frequently Asked Questions page, they pull the data using YouTube’s API (Social Blade, FAQ).

The first category to examine is that of daily subscriptions gained by each of the three users.

Figure 9 Daily Subscriptions Gained for Lilly Singh (Social Blade)

Most of the activity for Singh’s new daily subscriptions does not seem out of the ordinary, as she posts new videos several times a week and the varied topics of those videos can bring it new subscribers every day. Throughout the three years of available data, the daily subscribers are almost always in the thousands. The biggest spike in new subscriptions

41 occurred on September 16th 2015, with 63.020 new subscribers. This spike does not seem directly related to a new video, as she did not post one on that day. Her most recent previous videos are from September 14th (Why I’m A Cheap Person and #AskSuperwomanLIVE (14/09/15) ) and September 10th (How Single Girls Discuss Relationships (ft. Shay Mitchell) ). While none of those videos have an uncharacteristically high number of views that would draw more new subscribers, it is possible that the collaboration with actress Shay Mitchell could have brought some of her fans to Singh’s channel. While this was days after the posting of that video, it could have been found by a new legion of fans through other social media platforms. Singh’s biggest drop in daily subscribers gained was on June 27th 2016, when she had -16.340 subscribers gained. She did post a new video that day, titled My Thoughts While Scrolling Through Instagram, but that is a video that fits into her style and does not present a controversial topic, making the negative new subscriptions an oddity. Her other big upwards spike came on July 19th-20th 2016, a case which makes more sense in this context as it followed her first collaboration with Dwayne Johnson, How To Be a YouTube Star (ft. The Rock), which as of July 2018 has over 15 million views.

Figure 10 Daily Subscriptions Gained for Hannah Witton (Social Blade)

Witton’s daily subscriptions gained are on a much smaller level than Singh’s, and they remain usually in the lower hundreds, with some exceptions. In the data through 2015, some days were just in the tens. This resulted in a much slower audience growth. Her biggest spike in new subscriptions, of 3.810, was on January 1st 2017, when she posted the video New Years Resolutions 2017 | Hannah Witton. The video does not have an unusually high number of views, but it is the type of video that plenty of other YouTubers make, and perhaps people found her video when searching for various videos under this topic. While there are a few instances of days with negative daily subscriptions, they were not that significant, as it can be seen in the above graph.

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Figure 11 Daily Subscriptions Gained for Alex Bertie (Social Blade)

Similarly to Witton, Bertie’s daily subscriptions gained tend to be in the low hundreds and have rarely gotten to the thousands. They were only over a thousand per day on October 26th 2016 and between December 26th and 29th 2016.He had no new videos on either of those days. In October, his most recent video had been on the 23rd, Meeting the Top Surgeon, which is on a topic that many transgender men could have been interested in and found it through the YouTube search function. On the other hand, in December, his most recent video before that time frame was on the 18th, Painting Christmas Baubles. This video has more appeal to a larger audience and could have been found by people searching for Christmas related videos, which could have been the cause for the influx of new subscriptions in that short time frame.

The next category is total subscribers gained.

Figure 12 Total Subscribers Gained for Lilly Singh (Social Blade)

While the overall progression of Singh’s total subs reflects the trends of the daily subscribers gained, the rate at which she has grown her total subscribers is interesting. At the beginning of the data set, in the beginning of August 2015, she had a little over six million subscribers which she had gained in her almost five years of activity on YouTube. In the past three years however, that number has more than doubled, with Singh now a few thousand away from reaching 14 million subscribers. While she is part of the “older” group of YouTubers

43 to become micro-celebrities, the increasing emergence of YouTube as an entertainment medium and her other endeavours have certainly benefited her channel.

Figure 13 Total Subscribers Gained for Hannah Witton (Social Blade)

Witton presents a similar situation. She has also more than doubled her subscribers in the last three years: in the beginning of August 2015 she had around 133.000 subscribers; by the beginning of August 2018, she is passing 490.000 subscribers.

Figure 14 Total Subscribers Gained for Alex Bertie (Social Blade)

Bertie also managed to increase his subscriber count significantly but he had the smallest progress, perhaps reflecting the more niche aspect of his channel. In the beginning of August 2015 he was at a similar point as Witton, having around 128.000 subscribers, and after three years he has reached around 311.000 subscribers.

The next category is daily video views. An important note here is about the negative numbers that appear in all three case studies. According to Social Blade’s FAQ page, that is due to the users switching one or more of their videos to unlisted, private, or deleting it or them entirely, as YouTube only counts public videos to the view count of a user.

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Figure 15 Daily Video Views for Lilly Singh (Social Blade)

Singh regularly has between one and two million daily views, with some days higher, between two and even five million. The day with her most daily views was January 14th 2017, when she received 21.75 million views. This, however, does not seem to be tied to a new video, as the only video from that day is her monthly live stream where she answers questions from fans, which only has a little over half a million views. Similarly, the three videos she had posted in the two weeks prior, from the beginning of 2017, do not have an uncharacteristically high number of views either (5.6 million for Why I Can’t Be a Beauty Guru, 5.5 million for How You Treat Your Parents vs. Best Friend and 3.6 million for Types of Break-Ups). All of this would suggest that it was just a day with a lot of aggregate views from a larger number of videos, perhaps sparked by her series of collaborations with Hollywood and other YouTube stars during December.

Figure 16 Daily Video Views for Hannah Witton (Social Blade)

Witton mostly gets daily views in the tens of thousands: in 2015-2016 they were mostly between 10.000 and 30.000 with some exceptions, but from the last few months of 2016 that has grown to numbers between 20.000 and 70.000, and by 2018 that has rarely gone under 30.000. This shows the growth of her channel on a daily basis. However, her daily views only crossed the 100.000 mark a few times. Most noticeably, the biggest spike in daily

45 views was on January 14th, just like Singh’s, when she received 912.060 views. Similarly to Singh, this was not the result of a new video as Witton had not uploaded anything on that day and none of her most recent videos before that having a larger than usual number of views.

Figure 17 Daily Video Views for Alex Bertie (Social Blade)

Bertie’s daily views are, as expected, the smallest. They are usually between 8.000 and 15.000, with some exceptions on both sides of those numbers. Not only does Bertie have a generally smaller audience but he also uploads less regularly. In 2018 in particular, he has only uploaded two to four videos a month. His biggest spike in views was of 324.450, followed by two more days of over a hundred thousand views a day. However, this spike also happened on January 14th 2017 and under similar video-related circumstances, as with Singh and Witton, suggesting that something curious happened then. Some possibilities for this may be: an issue with the data provided by Social Blade that has not been fixed; an issue with how YouTube counted views for all channels, resulting in a day where the count made up for previous uncounted views; previously unlisted or private videos were made public, adding to the total view count.

Figure 18 Total Video Views for Lilly Singh (Social Blade)

Singh’s total video views show how much her channel has grown. At the beginning of the data set, the beginning of August 2015, she had a total of 789 million views. By August

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2018, that has more than tripled, with her having reached 2.69 billion views. The negative 46 million views caused by her deleting or setting videos to private or unlisted modes is barely noticeable, which only reinforces her major success in this department.

Figure 19 Total Video Views for Hannah Witton (Social Blade)

Witton has also seen her channel grow a lot more in this time period. She had around 9.5 million views in early August 2015, and three years later she has passed 55 million views. Singh and Witton have both had a fairly linear growth in this department, but for Witton the bump in views from January 14th 2017 made a noticeable impact on her total views, only to be offset by losing 1.8 million views from her deleted, unlisted or private videos later that same month.

Figure 20 Total Video Views for Alex Bertie (Social Blade)

Bertie’s total video views chart looks quite different from the other two cases. At the beginning of this data set, he had about 7.5 million views, and by the end of it he has 11.4 million. The evolution is not on par with most other YouTubers. However, as it can be seen from the graphic, him deleting, unlisting or making some videos private has been a huge factor in that, as he has lost a lot of views through that. In the beginning of May 2018, he had over 18 million views, but he lost more than seven million views by changing the public nature of some of his videos. Without this, he would have had a similar upwards trend as the others.

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Figure 21 Average Views Per Day Per Month and Total Views Per Month for Lilly Singh (Social Blade)

Singh’s average views per day per month have constantly been between one and two million, with a high of 2.89 million in November 2016. Her total views per month have usually been between 40 and 60 million, with some crossing that, including the high of 89.71 million views in November 2016. All of her statistics show that Singh has a significant consistent fan base that watches her videos.

Figure 22 Average Views Per Day Per Month and Total Views Per Month for Hannah Witton (Social Blade)

Between August 2015 and March 2016, Witton averaged under 20.000 views per day per month, but that has changed. Between March and October 2016 she averaged between

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25.000 and 38.000, and later that number grew even more. While some months were closer to 30.000, a lot more were between 50.000 and 80.000, which was a significant improvement in just about a year’s time. Her total views per month changed under the same time frame. In the first time span, she had between 468.000 and 720.000 total views per month. In the second one, she had total monthly views between 800.000 and 1.2 million. After October 2016, she almost exclusively had over a million views every month, going as far as 2.58 million in September 2017.

Figure 23 Average Views Per Day Per Month and Total Views Per Month for Alex Bertie (Social Blade)

Bertie has had the most static views, with the same trends seen in previous graphics, and losing the views from his now non-public videos has had the most noticeable impact. His average views per day per month have been pretty stable, in the 10.000 to 20.000 range, but that has grown smaller in 2018, with almost all months having an average of under 10.000. That same trend is noticed in the total views, which have gone from the 300.000 to 700.000 range to under 400.000 and more often, even under 300.000.

Collaborations

Singh’s increase in popularity can also be observed through her frequent collaborations with more mainstream celebrities on her channel, particularly in December,

49 during “12 Collabs of Christmas”. In the past couple of years, the celebrities that have appeared in these videos include actors Will Smith, Justin Baldoni, Charlize Theron, Dwayne Johnson (who has appeared on Singh’s channel multiple times), Gina Rodriguez, Chelsea Handler, Priyanka Chopra, Adam Devine, Zendaya, musicians John Legend, Nick Jonas, Hilary Duff and model Karlie Kloss. As previously mentioned, she has also interviewed former First Lady Michelle Obama as part of her Girl Love series, as well as Bill Gates. Collaborating with these celebrities with potential huge followings, Singh manages to tap into many more audiences, as these videos will be referred to on the celebrities’ social media or show up in YouTube searches involving their names. Even if someone is not a regular watcher of YouTubers, they might watch their favourite celebrity on Singh’s channel and find her entertaining enough to subscribe and keep watching her videos. On the other hand, she still collaborates with other YouTube stars like Miranda Sings, Connor Franta, Anthony Padilla, Shane Dawson, Ryan Higa, Markiplier and so on. Her collaborators are also popular content creators, with millions of subscribers of their own, so these collaborations are mutually beneficial as they can lead fans of one of them to subscribe to the other.

In Witton’s case, she has different types of collaborations. First, as previously mentioned, she has her Drunk Advice series where she talks to fellow YouTubers who are usually part of her friend group and who are known in the same YouTube circles as her, such as Daniel J. Layton and Melanie Murphy, but also some bigger YouTubers like Charlie McDonald, Anna Akana and Laci Green (who, similarly to Witton, is one of the bigger voices on sex education on YouTube). These, however, are not limited to just this one particular series. Second, she has educational collaborations with other YouTubers, like Alex Bertie or licensed therapist Kati Morton, in order to discuss topics she is not familiar with. The variety of her collaborations, particularly the ones in the second category, opens up her audience to a lot of new topics and new YouTube users they might not have heard of before, as well as re-directing them to people who may know more about the topics related to their collaboration video, if viewers are interested in that. She also collaborates with YouTubers with smaller subscriber bases, like Leena Norms and Steven Bridges, as well as with non- YouTubers who are also not famous in mainstream media, like comedian Sara Pascoe and sex and relationship blogger Dami Olonisakin (aka Oloni).

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Bertie very rarely posts any collaborations but when he does, they are with other transgender YouTubers, such as his Trans Tubers series which showcases lesser known transgender people from different countries, or his collaboration with fellow YouTuber Chase Ross, one of the better known transgender men on this website, like Bertie himself. This helps show how Bertie’s channel is focused on educating viewers on his experiences with his transition, as well as other struggles and life changes of his.

Sponsorships & Off-YouTube Endeavours

Outside of her regular YouTube videos, Singh has had plenty of other endeavours. Like many other content creators, she is a frequent participant to conventions like Vidcon. In 2015, she embarked on a 27 city world tour called A Trip to Unicorn Island, including countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Dubai, Hong Kong and Australia (Fitzgerald, 2015). In 2016, a documentary following Singh on this tour, also called A Trip to Unicorn Island, was released first at the Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles and then on YouTube Red. In 2017, like many other YouTubers, Singh also released her first book, an autobiography titled How to Be a Bawse: A Guide to Conquering Life.

Singh has also pursued acting. Besides a few appearances playing herself, she has guest-starred in the CBS sitcom Life in Pieces, had cameos in movies F the Prom and Bad Moms, and had a voice role in Ice Age: Collision Course. In 2018, she is set to have a meaningful role in the HBO movie Fahrenheit 451 alongside Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon (Wagmeister 2017) and was cast as a main character in NBC comedy pilot Bright Futures (Otterson 2018).In 2018, Singh also started her own production company, Unicorn Island Productions, with former head of original programming at Mashable Studios Polly Aurritt, with an aim to work with diverse and female creators. Through this company, the two of them are planning on creating series across multiple genres, from comedy to horror, including an adaptation of Singh’s book (Jarvey 2018). While she is still mainly a digital star, Singh is also slowly establishing a presence through more traditional channels, independent of her online work. This has the potential to become a bigger part of her career while it can also bring in new people to her online profile. Singh has also expanded her brand by releasing a line of

51 lipstick called Bawse in collaboration with beauty brand Smashbox (Mankani, 2016), and more recently partnering with big brands like Calvin Klein, in a campaign collaborating with Amazon for the 2017 winter holidays (Yotka, 2017) and Pantene, for which she became an ambassador in India, where she did commercials for them with Indian actress Priyanka Chopra (Kaur, 2017; Gajjar, 2017). The collaboration with Pantene helps give her more exposure in India, reaching a new audience.

Singh has won awards for her YouTube channel at the Streamy Awards – the First Person award in 2015 and 2017, and the Feature and Social Good Campaign awards for her documentary A Trip To Unicorn Island and her Girl Love Challenge campaign (Votta, 2015; CBC News, 2016; Haring, 2017), the Teen Choice Awards – the Choice Web Star: Female and Choice Web Star: Comedy awards in 2016 (Goodman, 2016) - and People’s Choice Awards – the Favorite YouTube Star award in 2017 (THR Staff, 2017). In 2017, she was named a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, advocating for children’s rights and using her digital presence to empower children and young people and encourage them to speak out on any of the challenges they face (UNICEF, 2017). Singh’s popularity and reach was not overlooked by mainstream media: in 2015, People Magazine named her as “one to watch” in the entertainment industry, alongside stars such as Star Wars actors Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and Domhall Gleeson, other actors like Tessa Thompson and Adam Devine, and musicians like Tori Kelly and Walk The Moon (People Staff, 2015); in 2016, she was named as one of the Top 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company (Laporte, 2016), and as one of Variety’s 10 comics to watch (Variety Staff, 2016); in 2017, Forbes named her the #1 influencer in Entertainment, as part of their Top Influencers series (O’Connor, 2017).

Witton’s channel is part of YouTube’s new sponsorship feature introduced in 2017 only for YouTube gamers, similar to Twitch’s system, which is currently being tested on other types of channels as well (Perez 2017). Through this feature, her channel displays a ‘Sponsor’ button, and people can support Witton by paying €4.99/month. In return, they currently receive early access to her videos, access to exclusive Community Tab posts and a badge next to their name showing that they are a sponsor. This feature gives her another source of income from YouTube, independent of AdSense and paid partnerships or collaborations with companies, that relies on her producing content that viewers are willing to invest in, and keeping those viewers happy and interested in her videos. The Sponsor button appears on

52 both her channel page and under each video, next to the Subscribe button. While the YouTube sponsorship is new not just to her channel, but to the platform as a whole, Witton has had a similar, small source of income from as early as March 2016 through the website Patreon. Patreon is a subscription style crowdfunding website used by creators to potentially earn a steady monthly income. People can become patron for their favourite creators starting from as little as $1 per month, for which they get certain rewards from the creators they are supporting. In Witton’s case, those rewards are similar to the YouTube sponsorship perks: early access to her videos and access to her Patreon only feed of updates and message board. As of the 24th of May 2018, Witton has 229 Patrons and receiving $334 per month through the website. While that is not a large source of income on its own, it becomes more significant as it adds up to all her other forms of revenue.

Figure 24 Sponsorship button on Witton's channel

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Figure 25 Sponsorship Perks for Witton's channel

Witton’s choice of brands and campaigns to work with has also been unique and reflective of her content. In 2015 she teamed up with condom and adult toys brand Durex for a video (Sex Toys, Long Distance & Ghosting | Hannah Witton), in which she answers sex and relationship questions that she asked her viewers to send her on Twitter with the hashtag #DurexHannah, while showing off various Durex products in between questions. The partnership also included a contest for Witton’s fans to win a selection of Durex products and a discount code for the viewers to use on the Durex website. In 2017 she partnered with hygiene brand Always for their campaign Like A Girl, which is meant to empower and help girls. While she introduced it to her viewers in the video Dealing with the fear of failure | Chatty GRWM | Hannah Witton | #ad, she also became active in it outside of her YouTube channel, helping with podcasts, campaigns and a planned Like A Girl academy (TenEighty, 2017). In the spring of 2018, she and Always partnered up again for another campaign, #EndPeriodPoverty, through which Always donated sanitary pads to young school girls around the United Kingdom for every Always pack sold in stores (The Coil Update & #EndPeriodPoverty! | The Hormone Diaries Ep. 16 | Hannah Witton | ad). In other instances, she has made sponsored videos partnered with the Natural Cycles app (an app which tracks fertility) in Tracking My Fertility! | The Hormone Diaries Ep. 10 | Hannah Witton | ad, the

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Disrespect NoBody campaign, bringing awareness to relationship abuse, in Let's Talk About Relationship Abuse | Hannah Witton | ad, Public Health England, a project from the National Health Service encouraging young people to protect themselves against sexually transmitted infections in The History of Condoms in 60 Seconds | Hannah Witton | ad, online dating app Match in Creating Lucy's Online Dating Profile | Hannah Witton | ad, Vodafone’s Be Strong campaign against bullying in My Experience with Bullying | #BeStrong | Hannah Witton | ad, online health service LloydsPharmacy Online Doctor in The Morning After Pill | The Hormone Diaries Ep. 7 | Hannah Witton | ad and adult toy company Lovehoney in Inside A Sex Toy Warehouse! | Hannah Witton | ad, among others.

Outside of her own YouTube channel, she was also involved in the launch campaigns of two apps, Circle (from the lobbying organisation London Councils), a personal safety app for women (Stewart, 2016), and NHS Go, an app created by the NHS targeting young adults in particular, with information around various health topics (Parker, 2016). She also posted videos on her own channel promoting the two apps. From these partnerships it is clear that she chooses sponsors fully based on the type of content she usually makes, that her viewers are likely to try out. Perhaps more importantly, she also teams up with a lot of campaigns in order to bring awareness to relevant issues to her audience.

In spring 2017, Witton released her first book, titled Doing It! Let’s Talk About Sex, which focuses on sex and relationships. She documented her writing process through vlogs once she was allowed to talk about the book. From 2016 to 2017 she hosted an online radio show on Fubar Radio, called The Hannah Witton Show, which the station described as an “extended version of Hannah’s unique take on everything from sex, dating, relationships, body confidence, books, films and TV” (Fubar Radio; Mitchell, 2016). In 2016 she also launched the Banging Book Club podcast with her friends Lucy Moon and Leena Norms, a monthly podcast in which they read and discuss books about sex and gender (Acast). The podcast is still going on. She co-presented an ITV chat show pilot called Love Fix, which focused on sex and relationships (Dillon, 2016). In 2016, she was chosen by the BBC as a Girls’ Champion during their 100 Women campaign thanks to her videos helping girls and young women (BBC, 2016).

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In November 2017, Bertie released an autobiography titled Trans Mission: My Quest to a Beard, which focuses on his transition as well. While promoting the book, he made numerous public appearances on British morning shows or radio shows, which continued to raise visibility to the transgender community and Bertie’s journey. During that time, Bertie became a victim of transphobia coming from two separate newspapers. The first instance of that was when British tabloid The Daily Mail used photos of Bertie before and after his chest surgery without his permission in a transphobic article claiming that the National Health Service is pressuring children to identify as transgender and that YouTubers are making it “cool” (McNamara).The second instance, happening only a few weeks later, was when the journalist who had conducted an interview with Bertie for The Times newspaper included transphobic rhetoric in her article that included the interview: ignoring the positive effects of Bertie’s transition on his mental health, sense of self and general well-being while criticizing his appearance and pointing out his infertility following his transition, and going as far as implying that gender dysphoria was caused by sexual abuse or undiagnosed autism, and comparing young people identifying as transgender to anorexia and self-harm as a “social contagion” (Turner). Bertie himself spoke out on Twitter about both of these incidents, expressing his anger and sadness. This goes to show that even though the understanding of what it means to be transgender has gotten better overall and people have become more accepting, there is still a lot of transphobia, including in media.

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Chapter 3: Discussion

Neoliberalism

It can be seen that the examples showcased in the previous chapter all follow neoliberal logic in a way, whether it is with the purpose of gaining recognition or not. All three YouTubers started with a certain human capital: Singh as a college-educated Canadian daughter of Indian immigrants who pursued her passion for comedy and acting when it was only starting to become a possible career path; Witton as a college-educated feminist who wanted to fill the gap in knowledge on the topics she tackles; and Bertie as a teenage transgender man documenting his own journey. They focused on what made them unique and turned that into their brand, from Singh’s positivity and empowering presence combined with her comedy, to Witton’s honesty and openness in discussing taboo issues.

Through the years, and as both YouTube itself and the viewers’ expectations have evolved, they all invested in their own human capital by acquiring more professional equipment to present themselves better, learning more complex ways of video editing and gaining knowledge of the best ways to be found on YouTube (for example, Witton starting to include her name in the titles of her videos for better recognition). They gained reputations, built up their audiences and gained opportunities in line with their perceived goals: Singh is now an established entertainer, Witton is a leading online voice on sex education and other issues surrounding women, and Bertie is a visible personality in the transgender community, helping others like him indirectly.

Identity and the Importance of Representation

All three are part of minorities, or discussing taboo subjects due to which they would have had a much harder time gaining any sort of recognition in the media or entertainment business through traditional means, especially in years past. It is actually their presence and success through the digital space, and breaking through into other spaces, that played a part

57 in an overall increase in visibility and understanding of the communities they are part of or spoke about (Indian people and children of South Asian immigrants, proper sex education, in particular for women, and transgender people). As Castells (2007) argued, mass media is vital in society because it shapes what people think, which later shapes that society’s politics, and mass media can be manipulated in order to promote certain politics. The existence of these YouTubers, and their accessibility, increases the visibility of their groups of people and has the ability to slowly change people’s perceptions of them. It can also provide a stark contrast to some unfair and unfavourable portrayals of their groups from other sources. This is a way in which mass self-communication has the opportunity to change societies and views in a way never seen before, outside the grasp of major media corporations with their own agendas.

The emergence of mass self-communication and the shift towards a global public sphere have made a big difference for marginalized people. Thanks to the Internet, people from certain groups can now organize together or find other people like them, regardless of where they live. It is also a big factor in minorities coming to understanding themselves, if they live in places without other resources to do so. They can also start important dialogues with people outside of those groups which can change public opinion. This is most relevant in Bertie’s case, as transgender men who had previously been basically invisible in the media and in most aspects of life, can now find others like them, form communities and discover or exchange important information about their transitions. Because they are still not really visible offline, the Internet is the best way for trans men to discover vital information about themselves and about the medical steps they have to go through, and many look at others like them who have posted their journeys online through platforms such as YouTube. Videos like Bertie’s also help cisgender people discover what transgender people go through, and they are an important step towards the understanding of trans people and fighting the harmful stereotypes that exist in most societies around the world. For Singh, her videos help humanize brown people and immigrants, and start seeing them as just the regular people that they are, fighting against the portrayals of people like her as terrorists and enemies of Western culture. Meanwhile, Witton’s videos can empower other women, some of whom may be living in more oppressive countries towards women, as well as providing important information that her viewers might not have the means to find otherwise, in regards to health and sex.

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Identity seems to be an important part of all three case studies. Out of Castells (2010)’s three forms of identity building, the ones presented by these three are resistance identities: Singh as a person of Indian descent and a child of Indian immigrants; Witton as a feminist; and Bertie as a transgender man. All three of these identities are devalued by the dominant people in their societies and are seen as less than, which these YouTubers are constantly fighting even just by being visible and themselves in such a public setting, with all of their followers watching them. Because feminism has evolved so much in the past decade or so, it can be argued that Witton’s identity has evolved into a project one, but there is still a lot of resistance towards feminism across the world.

The proud visibility of these identities is very important to these groups of people, and to the growth of the rest of society into a more understanding one on their issues. The existence and representation of people like these three YouTubers has been lacking in other media, and the next paragraphs will be looking at this representation of their identities and their importance.

Representation of South Asian people in North American media has been minimal and problematic, but it has been improving in the past two decades, with South Asian actors gaining more and more roles in big movies or on American television. Most of these actors, however, are first generation immigrants into the Western world, just like Singh. These actors started making a name for themselves in Hollywood and becoming more recognisable to audiences and more appealing to studios, examples including Mindy Kaling in TV show The Office, Kal Penn in the movie series Harold & Kumar and the TV show House M.D., Naveen Andrews in the TV show Lost, Aziz Ansari in TV show Parks and Recreation, Kunal Nayyar in the TV show The Big Bang Theory or Dev Patel in the movie Slumdog Millionaire. There are also Indian actors who have broken through to Hollywood or Western media, such as Freida Pinto in the aforementioned Slumdog Millionaire and Priyanka Chopra in the TV show Quantico. Chopra’s leading role in Quantico was the first time that an actor of South Asian descent headlined a drama show on American broadcast television and the first Indian-born actor to receive top billing on an American network show. The ABC network based their marketing campaign on Chopra herself and her marketability as a huge Bollywood star (Cain, 2015).

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Chopra is also an interesting example to demonstrate some of Hollywood’s inherent racism. One would think that an actor who is a superstar in Bollywood, one of the biggest movie industries in the world, holds a Miss World title and headlines a successful American show, with a filmography showing an ability to play roles in productions ranging from romances to action, would not have a hard time finding or being considered for other roles. However, in 2018, Chopra spoke in an interview about the fact that she has lost at least one movie role because the producing studio did not want a brown actress in that role (Yam, 2018). While this is not an issue exclusively for South Asian actors, they are still underrepresented and a lot of South Asian characters through the years have been deeply offensive stereotypes like taxi drivers or terrorists. Things are slowly evolving though, with more South Asian actors becoming well known and getting better and better roles (Choudhurry, 2016). In terms of television, vice president of talent and casting at ABC studios Claudia Lyon, credited the 2006 ‘Diwali’ episode of The Office, written by Mindy Kaling, which focused on an Indian ceremony and was balanced enough to appeal to and maintain the interest of both Indian viewers familiar with the tradition, and non-Indian viewers who knew nothing about it, as the starting point of a big shift in South Asian representation. Writer and comedian Broti Gupta identifies the existence of online platforms for South Asians to put their work on as one of the reasons for the increase in casting them in roles on television and film (Misra, 2018). This applies to putting up a type of work that would otherwise be on television or in cinemas with financial backing, but it also counts digital media, which is the case for Lilly Singh. Not only has she found fame through her YouTube videos and became one of the highest paid stars on the platform, but her uploading these videos and making a name for herself has led to landing jobs in traditional media (Mahdawi, 2017).

In an article for The New York Times (Ansari, 2015), Aziz Ansari talks about these issues of representation, how he barely saw any Indian characters in media when he was growing up, but that is a situation that is improving nowadays, how even with that improvement, there are still Indian characters who are played by non-Indian actors (such as in the 2010 movie The Social Network, where Italian British-Chinese actor Max Minghella played the real life person of Indian-American Divya Narendra) or characters who are originally Indian but get whitewashed during casting (in The Martian, the Indian character of Venkat Kapoor from the book was changed to ‘Vincent’ and played by Chiwetel Ejifor). Ansari recognizes that some of

60 the issues with Indian representation are deeper than just casting, because producers have a much larger pool of white actors in Hollywood than people of colour, an issue Ansari himself has faced during the making of his show Master of None. But he admits that even he, a successful American actor and stand-up comedian with diverse roles, is offered roles stereotypical of his ethnicity and sometimes requiring accents. In 2017, Kal Penn has also gone and posted old scripts he received in his early days as an actor, showing that the parts he was asked to audition for were often times offensive stereotypes of South Asian people (Mumford, 2017).More recently, actors like Kaling and Ansari have been able to leverage their stardom into their own shows (The Mindy Project, Master of None), for which they were not just the lead characters but also writers and producers. This leads to not only a better representation of their own characters, but more diversity in their entire shows.

All in all, the representation of South Asians in Western media has been lacking but is improving year by year, and more actors are getting good roles and becoming stars, gaining a voice in the industry. Digital media has also been a part of that and Singh is part of this movement thanks to her YouTube channel and now, budding acting career, and she has the opportunity to make a name for herself even among people who are not familiar or do not pay attention to YouTube celebrities.

As previously mentioned, the type of open, informational and honest sex education videos that Witton, among others, makes is an important resource for today’s youth, especially as sex education in schools is less than adequate. In a recent article from the British newspaper The Guardian (Saner, 2018) discussing this issue, a few teenage girls discuss how useful these videos are for their own education. Lisa Hallgarten, the policy manager at a British sexual health and education charity called Brook, states that the reason for teenagers finding these videos and getting their sex education through YouTube is both because nowadays, they do everything through the Internet and because they are not getting the information that they actually need from schools. The author discusses some of the problems with the sex education offered in British schools: from certain aspects of it not being mandatory (personal, social, health and economic education, or PSHE), to parents being able to pull their children from the classes that have been made mandatory in secondary school (relationship and sex education, or RSE), or teachers not being supported enough or even comfortable enough to talk about some issues. Some teachers are starting to use YouTube

61 videos for their sex education classes, which shows that they are seen to be of educational value by people in this position. Interestingly enough, the 13-17 age bracket makes up only 6% of her audience, but that can be at least partially attributed to the fact that some of her videos are age-restricted by YouTube. Her biggest audience is women between 18 and 24, followed by those between 25 and 34. Witton is careful to only give out accurate information to her audience, which makes her a good educator, however she has stated that she only sees her videos as conversation starters which can allow the viewer to seek more information about a certain topic from professional sources. She also lets her audience know that she is not a doctor, so all she can do is give out the information she has and her own advice based on her personal experiences. Through videos like these, and other issues she discusses, Witton is unapologetically feminist and is attempting to break barriers regarding what people feel comfortable talking about.

The existence and visibility of transgender people through social media platforms like YouTube is very important, as they are still very much underrepresented in mainstream media. The LGBT-focused advocate group GLAAD monitors the representation of LGBT+ people in American media, and they release a yearly report on LGBT+ inclusion on television called Where We Are On TV. In their report for the 2017-2018 season, it was found that there were only 17 transgender regular or recurring characters on television (broadcast, cable and streaming combined), out of which nine were women, four were men and four were non- binary. As these findings highlight, transgender women are more represented in media than transgender men. Additionally, a lot of transgender characters (both male and female) are portrayed by cisgender actors. This lack of representation, or questionable portrayal, of transgender characters makes the presence of real trans people telling their real stories through mediums like YouTube very important for people who identify the same way or for people who are trying to educate themselves on issues such as this one. Another report from GLAAD, the 2018 Studio Responsibility Index, looked at the movies released by the seven largest movie studios in the United States (20th Century Fox, Lionsgate, Paramount, Sony, Universal, Walt Disney and Warner Brothers) during the 2017 calendar year and mapped different facets of representation of LGBT characters (GLAAD, 2018). Out of the 109 films counted in this report, only 14 of them included LGBT characters, for a total of 28 characters. None of the 28 characters were transgender.

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Figure 26 GLAAD’s findings on transgender characters on television for the 2017-2018 season

Figure 27 GLAAD’s findings on the identity of LGBT characters in major studio films

A study by Rosser, Oakes, Bockting and Miner (quoted in O’Neill, 2014) which looked at sexual minorities and the transgender population in the United States and their use of the

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Internet, stated that “individuals who in the past may have experienced significant social isolation, marginalization from mainstream society, and internalized shame regarding their sexual interests or identity now can tap into a ready source of peer support and common bond”. O’Neill believes that thanks to YouTube, transgender people can help grow the acceptance of their community, reaching out and being accessible and relatable to both minorities like other transgender people or other members of the LGBT community, and the majority which is made up of cisgender people.

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Conclusion

The goal of this paper was to use the analysis of the case studies in order to answer the question: Can people with underrepresented identities stand out and showcase their unique voices in the neoliberal world of YouTube?

Judging from their content, the three YouTubers showcased all wanted different things from their presence on YouTube, which the platform has allowed them to achieve: from her early days, Singh was an entertainer, doing comedy, dancing and singing, and she has reached a level of success (both monetary and in terms of recognition) that must have felt impossible in the early days of her YouTube career; Witton wanted to educate people about issues that were mostly not spoken about, or even seen as shameful, in a fun and light manner and now not only do hundreds of thousands of people follow her channel for that, but even sex education classes, the whole reason why she started talking about this subject in the first place, now use her videos in school; and Bertie wanted a safe space online to talk about his own transition, where he could avoid negativity and not being accepted by people around him in his real life, and he has not just managed to document his transition but also create a safe community for people just like him to see his journey and discuss their own issues with others. This is also reflected in their level of success and the opportunities it provided: Singh has worked with big, worldwide known celebrities, has partnered with huge companies for their campaigns and is breaking into Hollywood; Witton is working with brands and supports campaigns directly related to her content; Bertie does not really have these opportunities but his book is also part of his community-building, allowing transgender people who do not know him or do not follow YouTubers to read his story if they come across his book.

They achieved all of this by taking advantage of the opportunity YouTube offered them, and put their voices on the platform. Throughout the years, they invested in themselves and their human capital by keeping up with the times in terms of their quality, and they steadily built their audiences as everyone was competing with each other for views, subscriptions and the public’s attention on a platform that exemplifies what neoliberalism is all about, in the digital world. They stayed true to who they were and to their identity, not changing themselves or their content in order to maximize their success in any unnatural way.

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Despite being part of groups of under-represented people in different ways, they persisted and established their voices in the new, modern media landscape that has grown in the past decade, proving that this landscape has a place for people like them, where they can be successful in their goals.

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 Hall, Steve. “Durex Teams Up With Popular Vlogger Hannah Witton To Give Sex Advice In #DurexHannah Campaign”. Marketing Land. 2015. 16th April 2018. https://marketingland.com/durex-popular-vlogger-hannah-witton-126476  Hamedy, Saba. “The Chinese's Theatre next big premiere: YouTuber Lilly Singh's doc”. Mashable. 2016. 23rd March 2018. https://mashable.com/2016/02/10/youtube-star-lilly-singhs-a-trip-to-unicorn- island/  Haring, Bruce. “‘Sugar Pine 7,’ Dolan Twins Top 2017 Streamy Awards – Complete Winners List”. Deadline. 2017. 14th March 2018. http://deadline.com/2017/09/2017-streamy-awards-winners-list-1202177666/  Hern, Alex. “YouTube to manually review popular videos before placing ads”. The Guardian. 2018. 15th March 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/17/youtube-google- manually-review-top-videos-before-placing-ads-scandal-logan-paul  Hesmondhalgh, David. “User-generated content, free labour and the cultural industries”. Ephemera. 10:3/4 (2010): pp. 267-284  Hess, Amanda. “How YouTube’s Shifting Algorithms Hurt Independent Media”. The New York Times. 2017. 27th March 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/arts/youtube-broadcasters-algorithm- ads.html  Hopkins, Jim. “Surprise! There's a third YouTube co-founder”. USA Today. 2006. 30th March 2018. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-10-11- youtube-karim_x.htm  Hou, Mingyi. “Social media celebrity and the institutionalization of YouTube”. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. (2018): pp. 1-20  Hunt, Elle. “LGBT community anger over YouTube restrictions which make their videos invisible”. The Guardian. 2017. 27th March 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/20/lgbt-community-anger- over-youtube-restrictions-which-make-their-videos-invisible  Jarvey, Natalie. “Lilly Singh Launches Unicorn Island Productions, Taps Digital Veteran to Lead Development (Exclusive)”. The Hollywood Reporter. 2018. 13th April 2018. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/lilly-singh-launches- unicorn-island-productions-taps-digital-veteran-lead-development-1102382  Jerslev, Anne. “In the Time of the Microcelebrity: Celebrification and the YouTuber Zoella”. International Journal of Communication. 10 (2016): pp. 5233–5251  Jones, Maddie. “The Times has compared being transgender to anorexia, self- harm and disease”. Pink News. 2017. 10th May 2018. https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/11/14/the-times-has-compared-being- transgender-to-anorexia-self-harm-and-disease/

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 Kaur, Kiran. “Lilly Singh's New Pantene Ad Is About So Much More Than Shiny Hair”. Glamour. 2017. 14th March 2018. https://www.glamour.com/story/lilly- singh-pantene-spokeswoman  Khamis, Susie, Lawrence Ang and Raymond Welling. “Self-branding, ‘micro- celebrity’ and the rise of Social Media Influencers”. Celebrity Studies. 8:2 (2017): pp. 191-208  Khosla, Proma. “2015 was the tipping point for South Asians on TV”. Mashable. 2015. 28th April 2018. https://mashable.com/2015/12/17/indians-on- tv/?europe=true&  Kuehn, Kathleen. “Hope Labor: The Role of Employment Prospects in Online Social Production”. The Political Economy of Communication. 1:1 (2013): pp. 9-25  Landau, Emily. “Lilly Singh Goes to Hollywood”. Toronto Life. 2017. 23rd March 2018. https://torontolife.com/city/life/inside-dizzying-world-lilly-singh-torontos- accidental-megastar/  Laporte, Nicole. “Lilly Singh’s Road Map For Building A Brand Beyond YouTube”. Fast Company. 2016. 23rd March 2018. https://www.fastcompany.com/3058985/lilly-singhs-road-map-for-building-a- brand-beyond-youtube  Levin, Sam. “YouTube's small creators pay price of policy changes after Logan Paul scandal”. The Guardian. 2018. 27th March 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/18/youtube-creators- vloggers-ads-logan-paul  Lobato, Ramon. “The cultural logic of digital intermediaries: YouTube multichannel networks”. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. 22:4 (2016): pp. 348-360  Locker, Melissa. “Lilly Singh, UNICEF goodwill ambassador, made a YouTube PSA for the kids”. Fast Company. 2018. 24th May 2018. https://www.fastcompany.com/40576239/lilly-singh-unicef-goodwill- ambassador-made-a-psa-for-kids-in-need  Mahdawi, Arwa. “From Apu to Master of None: how US pop culture tuned into the south Asian experience”. The Guardian. 2017. 14th March 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/may/09/from-apu-to-master- of-none-how-us-pop-culture-tuned-into-the-south-asian-experience  Mankani, Sneha. “Superwoman aka Lilly Singh just launched her own red lipstick”. Vogue India. 2016. 18th April 2018. https://www.vogue.in/content/superwoman- aka-lilly-singh-just-launched-her-own-red-lipstick/  Mann, Denise. “Welcome to the Unregulated Wild, Wild, Digital West”. Media Industries Journal. 1:2 (2014): pp. 30-35  McNamara, Brittney. “A YouTuber's Photos Appeared in an Anti-Transgender Article Without His Permission”. Teen Vogue. 2017. 10th May 2018.

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https://www.teenvogue.com/story/transgender-youtuber-photos-used-without- permission  Misra, Sulagna. “From Superhero Shows to Soaps, South Asian Actors Are Taking Over TV”. Vanity Fair. 2018. 14th March 2018. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/03/pilot-season-south-asian- american-actors-india-pakistani-greatest-american-hero-hannah-simone  Mitchell, Julia. “Hannah Witton Launches New Show on FUBAR Radio”. Ten Eighty Magazine. 2016. 16th April 2018. http://teneightymagazine.com/2016/08/21/hannah-witton-launches-new-show- on-fubar-radio/  Morreale, Joanne. “From homemade to store bought: Annoying Orange and the professionalization of YouTube”. Journal of Consumer Culture. 14:1 (2014): pp. 113-128  Mumford, Gwilym. “'Gandhi lookalike’: Kal Penn posts scripts highlighting Hollywood racial stereotyping”. The Guardian. 2017. 14th March 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/mar/15/gandhi-lookalike-kal-penn- posts-scripts-highlighting-hollywood-racial-stereotyping  O’Connor, Clare. “Forbes Top Influencers: How YouTuber Lilly Singh Is Going Mainstream -- And Making Millions”. Forbes. 2017. 23rd March 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2017/06/20/forbes-top- influencers-lilly-singh-superwoman-youtube/#c24498433e7a  O’Neill, Matthew G. “Transgender Youth and YouTube Videos: Self- Representation and Five Identifiable Trans Youth Narratives”. Queer Youth and Media Cultures. Ed. Pullen, Cristopher. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 2014  Oppenheim, Maya. “Lilly Singh: How a 28-year old Canadian rapped and vlogged her way into the Youtuber millionaire's club”. The Independent. 2017. 14th March 2018. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/lilly-singh-youtube-highest- paid-richest-forbes-list-2016-a7458441.html  Otterson, Joe. “Emily Ratajkowski, Lilly Singh Among Five Cast in NBC Comedy Pilot ‘Bright Futures’”. Variety. 2018. 29th March 2018. http://variety.com/2018/tv/news/emily-ratajkowski-lilly-singh-nbc-bright- futures-1202739866/  Otterson, Joe. “YouTube Star Lilly Singh to Guest on ‘Life in Pieces’ (Exclusive)”. The Wrap. 2016. 16th April 2018. https://www.thewrap.com/youtube-star-lilly- singh-to-guest-star-on-life-in-pieces-exclusive/  Parker, Sinead. “Hannah Witton Announces Her First Book”. Ten Eighty Magazine. 2016. 16th April 2018. http://teneightymagazine.com/2016/07/22/hannah- witton-announces-her-first-book/  Parker, Sinead. “YouTubers Launch New NHS App”. Ten Eighty Magazine. 2016. 16th April 2018. http://teneightymagazine.com/2016/07/17/youtubers-launch-

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new-nhs-app/  Patreon. “Hannah Witton”. Patreon. 18th May 2018. https://www.patreon.com/hannahwitton/overview  PEOPLE Staff. “Their Stars Are Rising: Meet PEOPLE's 2015 Ones to Watch!”. PEOPLE. 2015. 23rd March 2018. https://people.com/celebrity/adam-devine-tori- kelly-john-boyega-people-ones-to-watch-2015/  Perez, Sarah. “YouTube’s Twitch-like ‘Sponsorships’ open to all YouTube Gaming creators, expand to YouTube’s main app”. TechCrunch. 2017.15th March 2018. https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/19/youtubes-twitch-like-sponsorships-open- to-all-youtube-gaming-creators-expand-to-youtubes-main-app/  Peters, Tom. “The Brand Called You”. Fast Company. 1997. 8th March 2018. https://www.fastcompany.com/28905/brand-called-you  Pietrobruno, Sheenagh. “YouTube flow and the transmission of heritage: The interplay of users, content, and algorithms”. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. (2016): pp. 1-15  Postigo, Hector. “The socio-technical architecture of digital labor: Converting play into YouTube money”. New Media & Society. 18:2 (2016): pp.332-349  Ramos, Dino-Ray. “GLAAD Film Report Finds Drop In LGBTQ Representation”. Deadline. 2018. 24th May 2018. http://deadline.com/2018/05/glaad-film-report- 2017-lgbtq-representation-inclusion-movies-studios-1202395025/  Rao, Ankita. “South Asian Actors Are Fighting Hollywood's Racism”. Vice. 2018. 14th March 2018. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/paxx4n/south-asian- actors-are-fighting-hollywoods-racism  Raun, Tobias. “Capitalizing intimacy: New subcultural forms of micro-celebrity strategies and affective labour on YouTube”. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. 24:1 (2018): pp.99-113  Read, Jason. “A Genealogy of Homo-Economicus: Neoliberalism and the Production of Subjectivity”. Foucault Studies. 6 (February 2009): pp.25-36  Rose, Quinn. “Six YouTuber Podcasts You Need to Check Out”. Ten Eighty Magazine. 2018. 16th April 2018. http://teneightymagazine.com/2018/03/27/six- youtuber-podcasts-you-need-to-check-out/  Rosney, Daniel. “YouTuber Alex Bertie: Vlogging my gender transition was my safe space”. BBC. 2017. 10th May 2018. http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/41903716/youtuber-alex-bertie- vlogging-my-gender-transition-was-my-safe-space  Sampson, Peter. ”Contested Frontier: examining YouTube from a critical perspective”. E-Learning and Digital Media. 10:3 (2013): pp. 276-284  Saner, Emine. “Masturbation hacks and consent advice: how YouTubers took over sex education”. The Guardian. 2018. 16th April 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/mar/12/sex-education-consent- advice-youtube-hannah-witton-laci-green?CMP=fb_gu

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 Sarah Weichel Management: About. 8th March 2018. https://www.sarahweichelmanagement.com/about/  Smith, Daniel. “Charlie is so ‘English’-like: nationality and the branded celebrity person in the age of YouTube”. Celebrity Studies. 5:3 (2014): pp. 256-274  Snickars, Pelle and Patrick Vonderau, ed. The YouTube Reader. Stockholm: National Library of Sweden, 2009  Spangler, Todd. “New Breed of Online Stars Rewrite the Rules of Fame”. Variety. 2014. 17th March 2018. http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/shane-dawson-jenna- marbles-internet-fame-1201271428/  Social Blade. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). 15th June 2018. https://socialblade.com/youtube/help  Social Blade. IISuperwomanII. 20th May 2018. https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/iisuperwomanii  Social Blade. Hannah Witton. 20th May 2018. https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/hannahgirasol  Social Blade. TheRealAlexBertie. 20th May 2018. https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/therealjazzbertie  Sorkin, Andrew Ross and Jeremy W. Peters. “Google to Acquire YouTube for $1.65 Billion”. The New York Times. 2006.30th March 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/business/09cnd-deal.html  Stewart, Rebecca. “YouTuber Hannah Witton fronts campaign for London Councils' personal safety app 'Circle'”. The Drum. 2016. 16th April 2018. http://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/12/24/youtuber-hannah-witton-fronts- campaign-london-councils-personal-safety-app-circle  TenEighty. “Hannah Witton Discusses Always Campaign”. Ten Eighty Magazine. 2017. 16th April 2018. http://teneightymagazine.com/2017/08/17/hannah-witton-talks- like-a-girl-campaign/  Terranova, Tizianna. “Attention, Economy and the Brain”. Culture Machine. 13 (2012): pp.1-19  The Canadian Press. “Lilly Singh to publish debut book 'How to Be a Bawse' in spring”. CTV News. 2016. 20th March 2018. https://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment/lilly- singh-to-publish-debut-book-how-to-be-a-bawse-in-spring-1.3001043  The Guardian staff. “YouTube changes restrictions on gay-themed content following outcry”. The Guardian. 2017. 27th March 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/mar/21/youtube-changes-restrictions- gay-lgbtq-themed-content-tegan-sarah  Thomas, Sonia Mariam. “Lilly IISuperwomanII Singh Is Appearing In A Mila Kunis Movie, And We Cannot Even”. Buzzfeed. 2016. 20th April 2018. https://www.buzzfeed.com/soniathomas/lilly-iisuperwomanii-singh-is-doing-a- cameo-in-a-mila-kunis?utm_term=.kw7gmlPB8#.ubPEB8dM5  THR Staff, “People's Choice Awards 2017 Winners List”. The Hollywood Reporter. 2017. 14th March 2018. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/2017-peoples-choice- award-winners-complete-list-965632/item/favorite-network-tv-comedy-965663

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 Tostevin, Daniel. “Alex Bertie: Being Trans on YouTube”. Ten Eighty Magazine. 2015. 10th May 2018. http://teneightymagazine.com/2015/03/01/alex-bertie-being-trans- on-youtube/  Townsend, Megan. “GLAAD's 'Where We Are on TV' report highlights why #RepresentationMatters”. GLAAD. 2017. 10th May 2018. https://www.glaad.org/blog/glaads-where-we-are-tv-report-highlights-why- representationmatters  Tubella, Imma. “Television and Internet in the Construction of identity”. The Network Society: From Knowledge to Policy. Washington DC: Center for Transatlantic Relations. 2006. 257-268  Turner, Janice. “Meet Alex Bertie, the transgender poster boy”. The Times. 2017. 10th May 2018. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/meet-alex-bertie-the-transgender- poster-boy-z88hgh8b8  UNICEF. “Lilly Singh appointed UNICEF’s newest Goodwill Ambassador”. UNICEF. 2017. 23rd March 2018. https://www.unicef.org/media/media_96640.html  Uricchio, William. “The Future of a Medium Once Known as Television”. The YouTube Reader. Eds. Snickars, Pelle and Patrick Vonderau. Stockholm: National Library of Sweden, 2009  van Doorn, Niels. “The Neoliberal Subject of Value: Measuring Human Capital in Information Economies”. Cultural Politics. 10:3 (2014): pp.354-375  Variety Staff. “Variety Announces 10 Comics to Watch for 2016”. Variety. 2016. 23rd March 2018. http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/10-comics-to-watch-2016- 1201789465/  Vonderau, Patrick. “The video bubble: Multichannel networks and the transformation of YouTube”. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. 22:4 (2016): pp. 361-375  Votta, Rae. “And the winners of the 2015 Streamy Awards are…”. The Daily Dot. 2015. 14th March 2018. https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/streamys-awards-2015- winners/  Wagmeister, Elizabeth. “‘Fahrenheit 451’ HBO Movie Casts Digital Star Lilly Singh”. Variety. 2017. 23rd March 2018. http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/fahrenheit-451- movie-hbo-lilly-singh-1202469214/  Walker, Rob. “On YouTube, Amateur Is the New Pro”. The New York Times. 2012. 12th March 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/magazine/on-youtube- amateur-is-the-new-pro.html  Wasko, Janet and Mary Erickson. “The Political Economy of YouTube”. The YouTube Reader. Eds. Snickars, Pelle and Patrick Vonderau. Stockholm: National Library of Sweden, 2009  Yam, Kimberly. “Priyanka Chopra Lost Movie Role Because ‘They Wanted Someone Who’s Not Brown’”. The Huffington Post. 2018. 14th May 2018. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/priyanka-chopra-lost-role-because-they- wanted-someone-whos-not-brown_us_5acf6118e4b0701783ac414c?guccounter=1

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Videos  Bertie, Alex. “988 VS TRITOP Binder Review/Comparison”. YouTube. 31st May 2014. 5th May 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gLknvgPnws  Bertie, Alex. “Huge Transition News! 12”. YouTube. 27th February 2016. 5th May 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu8_H8Wpqpk  Bertie, Alex. “Offending Trans People”. YouTube. 20th August 2014. 5th May 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8DgzchrcA8  Bertie, Alex. “Trans Around The World: Trans Tubers”. YouTube. 23rd February 2018. 5th May 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAEwJHN8TVs  Bertie, Alex. “Transgender: The Little Things.”. YouTube. 14th May 2013. 5th May 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chq-axfcwR0  Bertie, Alex. “We Hate Ourselves”. YouTube. 2nd June 2013. 5th May 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXpQn4zu9fM  Singh, Lilly. “A Geography Class for Racist People”. YouTube. 8th June 2017. 20th March 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WfEkXvGQhY  Singh, Lilly. “Are You a Bad Mom? ft. Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell & Kathryn Hahn | #GirlLove (Ep. 1)”. YouTube. 28th July 2016. 18th March 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bmSvTP7Ntk  Singh, Lilly. “Bollywood Movies are Evil”. YouTube. 29th March 2011. 15th March 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuR3FHHNbIo&  Singh, Lilly. “Getting Schooled By Michelle Obama | #GirlLove (Ep.3)”. YouTube. 29th September 2016. 18th March 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7bwkoXGf08  Singh, Lilly. “Goodbye Hate, Hello #GirlLove!”. YouTube. 17th July 2016. 17th March 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U_KjpmatlI  Singh, Lilly. “How Girls Get Ready…”. YouTube. 25th March 2018. 17th March 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o4uDXft_pU  Singh, Lilly. “How To Stop Parents from Comparing Kids (ft. Miranda Sings)”. YouTube. 28th April 2014. 17th March 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPHMXbZml_s&  Singh, Lilly. “How to Tie a Side Turla Bhangra Pagh (Turban)”. YouTube. 9th December 2010. 15th March 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khM96e- ZpE4&feature=youtu.be  Singh, Lilly. “If Job Interviews Were Honest”. YouTube. 26th February 2018. 20th March 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTUMXeRwm7A  Singh, Lilly. “I’m Ill (Official Music Video)”. YouTube. 15th January 2011. 15th March 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d2uWNI7JaU  Singh, Lilly. “Official Guide to Brown Girls”. YouTube. 17th January 2011. 15th March 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX95prhcD1A&  Vogue. “73 Questions With Lilly Singh | Vogue”. YouTube. 28th February 2018. 23rd March 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1r4Z3nXPVA

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 Witton, Hannah. “Dealing with the fear of failure | Chatty GRWM | Hannah Witton | #ad”. YouTube. 17th August 2017. 29th April 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oja_muQGSn8  Witton, Hannah. “Hannah Dreams... SAVE THE BABY!”. YouTube. 12th June 2011. 17th April 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ZLayr4s6s  Witton, Hannah. “I have ulcerative colitis | Hannah Witton”. YouTube. 27th June 2017. 29th April 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99iTafI14ig  “Witton, Hannah. “I spent 4 weeks in hospital | Hannah Witton”. YouTube. 4th February 2018. 30th April 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq6V7rh_wXQ  Witton, Hannah. “Masturbation”. YouTube. 2nd June 2013. 21st April 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5Zz9HCugEk  Witton, Hannah. “My Childhood Sex Ed”. YouTube. 13th October 2012. 21st April 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqMmn68A2fg  Witton, Hannah. “Sex Education 01 – Contraception”. YouTube. 29th January 2012. 17th April 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsYEuf8kq_E  Witton, Hannah. “Sexual opinions [friends with benefits & asexuality]”. YouTube. 29th May 2012. 20th April 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEOU45rrM9M  Witton, Hannah. “Sexual opinions [sex before marriage & boobs]”. YouTube. 9th April 2012. 20th April 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oOMqLHhmuw  Witton, Hannah. “Sex Toys, Long Distance & Ghosting | Hannah Witton”. YouTube. 20th April 2015. 29th April 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyi0XtoEVGE  Witton, Hannah. “The Coil Update & #EndPeriodPoverty! | The Hormone Diaries Ep. 16 | Hannah Witton | ad”. YouTube. 27th March 2018. 29th April 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga8YOTVHEXY  Witton, Hannah. “The Solution to a Bad Day”. YouTube. 11th June 2011. 17th April 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4WJRIhXiBs  Witton, Hannah. “Why I'm Coming Off the Pill | The Hormone Diaries Ep. 1 | Hannah Witton”. YouTube. 9th August 2016. 29th April 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jx6sSpis9g

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