Wilfrid Laurier University Scholars Commons @ Laurier Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive) 2021 Advertainers and their Audience: Power Relations and Promotionalism in HobbyKidsTV Sherry Morley [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/etd Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation Morley, Sherry, "Advertainers and their Audience: Power Relations and Promotionalism in HobbyKidsTV" (2021). Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive). 2368. https://scholars.wlu.ca/etd/2368 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive) by an authorized administrator of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Family Advertainers and their Audience: Power Relations and Promotionalism in HobbyKidsTV by Sherry Morley © Master of Arts, Wilfrid Laurier University, 2021 Thesis Submitted to the Department of Communication Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Master of Arts Wilfrid Laurier University 2021 Abstract YouTube presents itself as an egalitarian platform that promotes creativity and free expression among its creators, and that breaks with legacy media models. Among the mass of YouTube creators are top-earning “family influencers” who produce videos in which parents and their children are portrayed as leisurely playing and merely having fun. Behind the scenes, however, family influencer channels are capitalist, structured, and highly profitable. This thesis offers a case study of one family influencer channel, HobbyKidsTV. Exploring concepts of labour, leisure, agency, and consumer subjectivity, I de-naturalize HobbyKidsTV through a multimodal critical discourse analysis. Surfacing the power relations within HobbyKidsTV, my analysis reveals that the channel’s content is saturated by promotionalism. The activity of the children on camera is often contrived and restricted by the needs of advertisers and the channel’s brand. I conclude that HobbyKidsTV is an example of continuity through change: this new digital platform bears strong resemblances to traditional, commercial mass media. The family influencer relies on the choreographed immaterial labour of their children to maintain and grow their profits while embedding consumer subjectivities within their young audience. Not only are young viewers encouraged to continually watch the channel and consume products featured in HobbyKidsTV videos, they emulate the young actors and their families in the quest for fame and fortune, suggesting the individualistic capitalist and consumer ideologies are deeply entrenched in children’s culture. The findings suggest that while HobbyKidsTV’s motivations have much in common with corporately controlled mass media, it operates on a digital platform whose perceived novelty, openness, and neutrality ensures the labour of their children is not regulated, nor do advertising laws apply to their young audiences. In fact, the lack of employment and advertising regulation is beneficial for both family influencers and YouTube, whose claim of neutrality and egalitarianism is clearly called into question through the results of this research. i Acknowledgements I would first and foremost like to thank my thesis supervisor, Professor Greig de Peuter, for his encouragement, guidance, and patience throughout this process. I would also like to thank my mother and close friends for their support. Lastly, I must thank my son Dustin for introducing me to HobbyKidsTV. i Table of Contents Abstract i Acknowledgements ii Table of Contents iii List of figures iv Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Situating HobbyKidsTV within existing scholarship 5 (Family) Influencers 5 Authenticity 8 Agency 12 Commercialization of Childhood 16 Subjectivity 17 Play 22 Normalization 25 Promotional Culture 27 Self-branding 28 Integrated advertising 31 Intertextuality 32 Chapter 2 Denaturalizing a new domain: A deeper look at HobbyKidsTV 38 Introducing HobbyKidsTV and YouTube 38 Methodology 42 Chapter 3 Findings and analysis 53 Scripted play: Continuity through change 54 Self-branding imperative: Children as entrepreneurs 79 Children as consumers: Modes of address 90 Sentiment and morality: The de-commodification effect 110 Chapter 4 Conclusions and considerations for change 117 Child advertaineurs: Towards fair compensation and protections 118 Child audiences: Raising awareness of friend-like franchises 122 Appendix: Sample videos 124 References 126 i List of figures 1. Project 55 vi 2. Coding definitions 50 3. Coding sheet 52 4. Giant Board Game Challenge 55 5. GUMMY VS. REAL COMPILATION 58 6. Hobby boys in Giant Toothpaste Surprise 59 7. HobbyBear in Jack Jack 62 8. Giant Power Rangers 63 9. Giant Scooby Doo Egg 65 10. HobbyDad in Giant Toothpaste Surprise 68 11. Lego Super Mario Kits 69 12. GIANT SCOOBY DOO Egg 73 13. HobbyFrog in We Babysit Jack Jack 76 14. Tarantula in GUMMY VS REAL COMPETITION 77 15. Hunting Insects Outdoors! 78 16. BUY EVERYTHING on Map 80 17. You Draw It, I’ll BUY It 81 18. World’s Biggest Stay-At-Home Egg I 86 19. HobbyKids Say Yes to SlobbyKids I 92 20. HobbyKids Say Yes to SlobbyKids II 94 21. Giant POWER RANGERS I 97 22. Giant POWER RANGERS II 98 23. Giant POWER RANGERS III 99 24. New Nintendo Switch Lite 101 25. JURASSIC WORLD DINO BATTLE I 102 26. JURASSIC WORLD DINO BATTLE II 103 27. Among US IRL I 105 28. Among US IRL II 106 29. Map PUNISHMENT or REWARD I 107 30. Map PUNISHMENT or REWARD II 108 i Figure 1: Project 55 i Introduction In a scene from one of their videos, the three brothers on the longstanding and popular YouTube channel HobbyKidsTV sit at a drawing table in what looks like a craft room. When the boys discover that a magic crayon can turn their drawings into real life, their parents are suddenly entranced. They walk into the room, monotonously repeating: “Anything you draw, I will buy for you. Anything you draw, I will buy for you.”1 Their father, HobbyDad, urges them to get started and draw quickly so they can fit in all of their shopping. While it may appear to be an innocuous, imaginative skit with children freely engaged in creativity and their parents playing along, this scene encapsulates HobbyKidsTV’s overarching orientation toward consumption. Videos designed to entertain children—is there a kid who wouldn’t want their parents to be under their spell?—are a mainstay of HobbyKidsTV, a YouTube channel about “play, learning, fun” that is among the top 100 entertainment channels on YouTube.2 This family of five is estimated to be earning millions per year in revenue based on subscriber counts, views, sales of their merchandise, and advertisements that appear during their videos. YouTube gets a piece of the profit, too; in 2020, the platform reported making $34 billion in advertising revenue thanks to its content creators.3 1 HobbyKidsTV. [HobbyKidsTV]. (2019, July 3). You Draw It, I'll BUY It Challenge with HobbyKids Evil Twins! [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROqCc7wTarE 2 StatSheep. (2020, July 10). Hobbykidstv. StatSheep. www.statsheep.com/hobbykidstv 3 Julia Alexander. (2020, February 4). Creators finally know how much money YouTube makes, and they want more of it. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21121370/youtube-advertising-revenue- creators-demonetization-earnings-google The wealth generated by HobbyKidsTV and the corporate structure it operates within calls into question the assumption that influencers like HobbyKidsTV are families merely having fun and being themselves on camera while just happening to make big bucks doing it. This thesis aims to de-naturalize this phenomenon by surfacing the capitalist and consumerist elements at play. While YouTube describes itself as a platform for free and creative expression, there are, as digital media scholar Tarleton Gillespie argues, tensions inherent in the service “between user-generated content and commercially-produced content, between cultivating community and serving up advertising, between intervening in the delivery of content and remaining neutral.”4 This thesis explores these tensions and the implications for HobbyKidsTV’s young producers and audience. Contrary to the belief that anyone can be successful in this field by leisurely having fun, top family influencers are demonstrative of how much work goes into being successful, how the market has spread into various facets of social life, and how policy interventions in the interests of the child actors and their viewers may need to be considered. This thesis is structured in four chapters; the first chapter situates HobbyKidsTV within existing scholarship. Current literature has shown that the activity of children in family influencers should be considered labour and is often performed under the guise of their parents. However, the existing literature does not take a deep dive into the power relations and extent of the promotionalism within these families, nor have any of the top earning family influencers been studied in this way. I examine the performances of one such influencer to determine if they are family or franchise first - do the capitalist goals 4 Tarleton Gillespie. (2010). The politics of ‘platforms.’ New Media & Society, 12(3), p. 348. i of HobbyKidsTV and YouTube take precedence over the child actors’ free play and self- expression? To fully inform my analysis and provide a framework through which to study HobbyKidsTV, in Chapter 1 I situate the family influencer within the broader historical context of the traditional mass media. I find many similarities between HobbyKidsTV and the activities and strategies of reality television participants. HobbyKidsTV also has much in common with marketers and merchandisers in children’s television in the mid to late 1900s and the early children’s wear industry in terms of how they foster consumption and desire within young children. By exploring the similarities between HobbyKidsTV and the mass media, as well as the larger review of family influencer literature and promotional culture, I hone in on key concepts that can be applied during the analysis to help make visible the promotionalism and power relations within HobbyKidsTV.