In today’s global higher education environment, international students represent not only an important source of external income for universities: the degree of cross-border student mobility also reflects the internationalization of higher education sector. Universities have engaged in efforts to sell themselves to prospective students and promotional videos are among the most widely used marketing tools for this purpose. This study reports the results of a study analyzing the content of 140 higher education promotional videos from 14 countries available on (...) class='Hi'>YouTube. The results reveal that while the pattern of use of YouTube for two-waycommunication with viewers, information contents and appeal messages among sampled universities is fairly homogenous, some marked differences emerge when cultural background and global position ranking of the university are taken into account. The implications of these findings are that, although, transnational higher education has been profoundly globalized, culture still plays a significant role in marketing practice for the recruitment of mobile students. In addition, different universities have various student-targeted segments. These findings provide the basis of a series of recommendations for universities looking to optimize their use of YouTube and promotional video design to market to international students. (shrink)

This article explores the nature and consequences of being a successful child YouTuber as a new form of both child labor and play in the social media era. This new child activity can in principle act as an enhancer of child autonomy, creativity, and some specific goods of childhood, such as play, and exploration. However, the impact of becoming a micro-celebrity as a video blogger at a young age is to some extent underexplored. Thereby, I bring into the ethical discussion (...) the specific conditions of this activity, such as overexposure, and adultization. By doing so, I show how it can turn out to be a threat to child’s well-being and well-becoming, especially in relation to the identity construction and intrafamily dynamics. I highlight its double role as both an enhancer of childhood’s specific goods and child vulnerability, especially when it becomes a silent form of subjugation. Thereby, I suggest that the strong version of the precautionary principle could be a normative guide to balance the children’s need to explore and autonomy without jeopardizing other specific goods of childhood and their well-becoming. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es realizar una revisión sistemática de la literatura científica sobre el estado de la cuestión del uso de YouTube como herramienta de aprendizaje musical informal por parte de usuarios adolescentes. En la actualidad, los jóvenes, nativos digitales y usuarios avanzados de redes sociales y plataformas de audio y vídeo online, recurren constantemente a YouTube como recurso lúdico para su aprendizaje. Sin embargo, habiendo utilizado los parámetros de la revisión sistemática PRISMA, nuestro estudio demuestra (...) que existe una reducida literatura específica que aborde el tema en cuestión. (shrink)

Este artículo explora a YouTube como una infraestructura de conocimiento y analiza cómo estudiantes y docentes usan los videos de la plataforma con fines de estudio en dos escuelas secundarias argentinas. Los hallazgos muestran que las prácticas estudiantes se alinean con los algoritmos de la plataforma, que privilegian interacciones veloces, vínculos basados en gustos personales y la búsqueda de información.

This work is focused on the rise of institutionalized information control exercised by governments in times of the Covid-19 crisis and the systematic removal or demonetization of content that contradicts or challenges the defined official narrative on influencial platforms like YouTube. With national authorities fragmenting reality into contradicitng national narratives of confinement/no confinement, masks/no masks, ibuprofen/no ibuprofen, chloroquin/no chloroquin etc. the illusion of objective reality in the perpection of the world and even in the context of scientific discourse become (...) more and more evident. Do viruses and medical drugs differentiate between the nationalities of their hosting organisms? The systematic suppression of information that contradicts the respective national narrative as defined by institutionalized authorities lead to a situation in which influencial platforms like YouTube silence everybody that challenges these narratives. (shrink)

Birth, in many societies, is considered to be a private affair. Although health and medical professionals usually assist, the only other people who share the birth process with mothers are their nearest and dearest. With the rise of information communication technologies, however, birth is no longer an exclusively private event. Some women are now sharing their birthing experiences with millions of viewers who are part of the online video ‘community’ YouTube Broadcast Yourself. Searching the word ‘birth’ on YouTube (...) results in close to one million ‘hits’. This article is based on a small-scale, qualitative research project, which involved viewing and making notes on several hundred online videos of birth on YouTube and the accompanying posts and commentaries about the videos. These data were analysed through a feminist, poststructuralist and geographical lens. Throughout the article the term ‘cyber/space’ is used to highlight the mutually constituted nature of ‘real’ and virtual spaces. The article concludes that although YouTube has the potential to open up new windows on birth, this potential is not yet being realized. YouTube does not overcome or render insignificant material expressions of power, instead it typically privileges US experiences of birth, reiterates discourses of ‘good’ mothering and censors particular (mainly vaginal) representations of birth. (shrink)

The objective of this study is to analyze the relationship between views and social interaction generated by YouTuber videos in Spanish. A quali-quantitative analysis is conducted on a sample of 100 videos, 10 YouTube channels, 997 minutes of video, with 116,934,321 views, 12,297,021 likes/dislikes, and 1,041,191 comments on YT, 306,000 retweets/favorites on TW and 140,852 comments, shares, and reactions on FB. The existence of social media tools on YouTube does not in itself guarantee interaction by users who prefer (...) to watch videos and adopt a passive attitude. In this analysis, we propose a social interaction indicator that takes into account the total number of social media reactions made on social networks and the age of the video. Cultivating realistic conversation and interaction on platforms with audiences numbering in the millions represents a serious challenge for YouTubers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:iPod, YouTube, Wii Play: Theological Engagements with Entertainment by D. Brent Laytham, and: If These Walls Could Talk: Community Muralism and the Beauty of Justice by Maureen H. O’ConnellJoel WardeniPod, YouTube, Wii Play: Theological Engagements with Entertainment By D. Brent Laytham EUGENE, OR: CASCADE, 2012. 209 PP. $24.00If These Walls Could Talk: Community Muralism and the Beauty of Justice By Maureen H. O’Connell COLLEGEVILLE, MN: LITURGICAL (...) PRESS, 2012. 319 PP. $39.95Although, in the Republic, Plato discussed the usefulness (and danger!) of having artists practicing within the civic community, from his time forward, social philosophers, moral theologians, and religious ethicists have tended to avoid [End Page 199] probing too much into the relationship between the aesthetic and the ethical. To be sure, as organized academic philosophy developed, especially after the Enlightenment, the separate intellectual bailiwick of aesthetics left ethical considerations of what is morally (as opposed to artistically) good to the domain of ethics. The result of such segmentation was to keep both interests’ discussions of “the good” significantly apart.The two books reviewed here represent new (and, hopefully, now less uncommon) attempts to find the correspondence between beauty and goodness. Because both authors think and write specifically from the perspective of Christian ethics, these attempts make use of the resources of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, the sometimes contrasting traditions of Protestant and Catholic spiritual reflection, and the authors’ own personal engagement with sources of beauty or entertainment. Both authors argue in some way that the pursuit of the beautiful (or the enjoyable) bears a relation to goodness. They both also argue that our use of technology and our making of art ought to attend to the building of justice.In his book iPod, YouTube, Wii Play: Theological Engagements with Entertainment, D. Brent Laytham investigates varied forms of contemporary entertainment activities and technologies (e.g., the media-sharing website YouTube, video games, fashion magazines, sporting events) and unearths the ways in which these contemporary and technologically facilitated pastimes both support and endanger human social interaction. In particular, he pays close attention to how entertainment(s) help or hinder the drive of a community of believers into lives of discipleship.The thirteen chapters of the book are each organized around a particular technological theme and make good use of sociological reflection on media, as well as some Christian reflection on games, the communal pursuit of fun, and festivity. Laytham, a Methodist, takes a sympathetic stance toward modes of entertainment in how they function, at times, as legitimate means of communication between persons. But he also warns that they can, if used without an understanding of their effects on the inner lives of the persons involved, be damaging. The author often demonstrates remarkable psychological insight, such as when he discusses the pressures put upon teenagers’ sense of physical self-image when based on the values of fashion magazines (140), the spiritual dangers of any kind of escapism (118), and the complicated motivations underlying petty gambling (107). And though reflection questions that are scattered throughout the body of the text are sometimes distracting from the arguments he puts forward (and so maybe would be better placed at the end of each chapter), he clearly wants his critique of media and entertainment to lead to a fuller, better enjoyment of them, a proper enjoyment possible when they are understood in relation to what should be their ultimate purpose: the drawing together of communities of persons. [End Page 200]Moving from a consideration of entertainment to art, properly speaking, Maureen O’Connell’s If These Walls Could Talk: Community Muralism and the Beauty of Justice is a number of things. It is a narrative description of what has happened in one urban environment in the United States, where socioeconomic decline, street violence, and crushing poverty produce needful places for transformative grace; a theological-aesthetic analysis of a genre of fine art, peculiar for the materials used and the venues in which it is displayed; a moral-ethical project inspired by familial ties to a particular city, as well as the fruit of continued interest (and, one might even say, pastoral zeal) on the author’s... (shrink)

YouTube has been implicated in the transformation of users into extremists and conspiracy theorists. The alleged mechanism for this radicalizing process is YouTube’s recommender system, which is optimized to amplify and promote clips that users are likely to watch through to the end. YouTube optimizes for watch-through for economic reasons: people who watch a video through to the end are likely to then watch the next recommended video as well, which means that more advertisements can be served (...) to them. This is a seemingly innocuous design choice, but it has a troubling side-effect. Critics of YouTube have alleged that the recommender system tends to recommend extremist content and conspiracy theories, as such videos are especially likely to capture and keep users’ attention. To date, the problem of radicalization via the YouTube recommender system has been a matter of speculation. The current study represents the first systematic, pre-registered attempt to establish whether and to what extent the recommender system tends to promote such content. We begin by contextualizing our study in the framework of technological seduction. Next, we explain our methodology. After that, we present our results, which are consistent with the radicalization hypothesis. Finally, we discuss our findings, as well as directions for future research and recommendations for users, industry, and policy-makers. (shrink)

Kirja-arvio teoksesta Jordan B. Peterson, 12 elämänohjetta. Käsikirja kaaosta vastaan (12 Rules for Life. An Antidote to Chaos, 2018). Suom. Tero Valkonen. WSOY, Helsinki 2018.

This study draws on interactionist frameworks of sensorial communication to analyse product reviews on YouTube. Existing studies of YouTube review work have focused on how vloggers manage conflicting neoliberal identity discourses such as ‘authenticity’, ‘being entertaining’ and ‘selling’. I argue that this focus has been at the expense of the communicative work involved in constructing products in reviews, and I suggest that identity issues should be conceptually expanded through a much broader focus on communicative action and conventions of (...) practice. In order to achieve a first step in this expansion, my analysis focusses on reviewers’ sensorial engagement with objects and explores the communicative processes through which they symbolically transform products into enlivened, sensorially rich phenomena. I argue that these communicative strategies are important for situating neoliberal discourses within ‘mundane’ actions of description and in broader cultural practices of reviewing. (shrink)

YouTube has been implicated in the transformation of users into extremists and conspiracy theorists. The alleged mechanism for this radicalizing process is YouTube’s recommender system, which is optimized to amplify and promote clips that users are likely to watch through to the end. YouTube optimizes for watch-through for economic reasons: people who watch a video through to the end are likely to then watch the next recommended video as well, which means that more advertisements can be served (...) to them. This is a seemingly innocuous design choice, but it has a troubling side-effect. Critics of YouTube have alleged that the recommender system tends to recommend extremist content and conspiracy theories, as such videos are especially likely to capture and keep users’ attention. To date, the problem of radicalization via the YouTube recommender system has been a matter of speculation. The current study represents the first systematic, pre-registered attempt to establish whether and to what extent the recommender system tends to promote such content. We begin by contextualizing our study in the framework of technological seduction. Next, we explain our methodology. After that, we present our results, which are consistent with the radicalization hypothesis. Finally, we discuss our findings, as well as directions for future research and recommendations for users, industry, and policy-makers. (shrink)

This article explores how the Crash Course video series are being used as a content-focused resource in the social studies classroom. It argues that the Crash Course series, alongside its YouTube competitors, has significantly stepped in to fill a vacuum left by criticisms and the unpopularity of lectures, textbooks, and feature films. With over 15 million subscribers and accumulated views over 1.9 billion, Crash Course has become an important and ubiquitous force in history and social studies classrooms and represents (...) a new genre of educational media found on YouTube. However, the dramatic rise in the popularity of educational videos online has not coincided with a growth in educational research, particularly in social studies and history education. This article explores the findings of a mixed-methods study that examines how and why history and social studies teachers are using Crash Course videos in their teaching and planning. In particular, it analyses descriptive statistics derived from the results of a teacher survey ( n = 181) and semi-structured interviews with seven social studies teachers who have used Crash Course in their classrooms. The authors found that teachers in the study are regularly using the Crash Course video series to deliver content which is clearly meeting a need many social studies teachers have. The videos–short, easily accessible, and fun–fit nicely with demands to keep students engaged, reduce reliance on textbooks, and explore new content that teachers have little time to learn themselves. This study also found that rarely, if ever, are teachers inviting students to evaluate or assess the content, trustworthiness, or perspective of Crash Course videos. This article discusses what is gained and what are the risks of embracing Crash Course in the social studies and history classroom. (shrink)

Since the 2010s, popular YouTube channels have used derogatory humour at the expense of gendered and racialised others. Founded upon the perception of an influx of ‘wokeness’ in comedy, these videos mock the mythologised ‘unfunny, angry SJW’ and teach the audience to laugh at enemies of the alt-right. Although empirical research has analysed the algorithmic radicalisation of viewers, few have addressed the role of cultural discourses in disseminating alt-right ideology through online media. Here, the right-wing ‘pipeline’ is understood as (...) a tool of radicalisation that weaponises laughter as a tool of regulations and oppression. This paper analyzes the production of derogatory laughter by studying a network of North American content creators including Russell Peters, Lilly Singh, Jordan Peterson, Steven Crowder, and Matt Walsh, using critical tools from psychoanalysis, social psychology, and critical humour studies. Contrary to the alt-right rhetoric that ‘edgy’ humour is harmless, this paper posits derogatory humour as a tool of marginalisation and domination that reinforces white supremacist and cisnormative patriarchal value systems. (shrink)

This article is based on an online ethnographic study of Dutch women who use YouTube as a medium to document their contested illness experiences. During 13 months of observations between 2017 and 2019, we followed a sample of 16 YouTubers, and conducted an in-depth analysis of 30 YouTube videos and of 7 interviews. By adopting a ‘praxiographic’ approach to social media, and by utilising insights from phenomenological theory, this study teases out how bodies are ‘done’ in (the making (...) of) these YouTube videos. We describe three types of bodies: (1) inert bodies, (2) experienced bodies, and (3) authentic bodies. Ultimately, this study shows how vlogging about contested illness is a practice in which bodies are continually (re)configured, and through which the ‘invisibility’ of a sufferer’s condition can obtain social visibility. (shrink)

As visual technologies become increasingly networked online, websites like YouTube provide a space to share vlogs online, suggest related content for viewers, and help in/form virtual communities, including those of mental illness. Within this space, vlogs of schizophrenia and comments generated about them by other users can represent transitional, dialogical states of illness that speak back to the analog body and affect a body’s way of being in the world. Moreover, as vlogs create resistance against static definitions of schizophrenia, (...) they may foster a creativity, experimentation, and inventiveness that transforms understandings of schizophrenia within the sciences and humanities. (shrink)

Fracking or the extraction of shale gas through hydraulic fracturing of rock has become a contested topic, especially in the United States, where it has been deployed on a large scale, and in Europe where it is still largely speculative. Research is beginning to investigate the environmental and economic costs and benefits as well as public perceptions of this new energy technology. However, so far the social and psychological impact of fracking on those involved in it, such as gas workers, (...) or those living in the vicinity of fracking sites, has escaped the attention of the social science research community. In this article we begin to fill this gap through a small-scale thematic analysis of representations of fracking in fifty YouTube videos, where the trailer of a controversial film, Gasland (Fox, 2010), has had a marked impact. Results show that the videos discuss not only environmental and economic costs and benefits of fracking but also social and psychological impacts on individuals and communities. These videos reveal a human face of fracking that remains all too often hidden from view. (shrink)

An exploration of YouTube as a platform for remix, reuse, and sampling.

This article considers the significance of YouTube as a pedagogical space from which young people can play participatory roles as theorists in their own constructions as popular cultural subjects. Drawing upon the public profile of ?KevJumba,? a teenager who makes videos of himself on YouTube, the article suggests that representational practices of adolescents on YouTube can serve an important educative function. They can do the work of disrupting conventional constructions of adolescence in popular culture, of demonstrating that (...) adolescents can be savvy critics and skillful negotiators of the social constructions made of them, and of highlighting how external controls inform the presumed autonomy that online practices self-expression offer young people. Paying attention to the popular cultural practices of adolescents on spaces like YouTube can offer a contemporary educative venue from which to contemplate how young people do the work of defining and contesting their place in the popular imagination. (shrink)

Essa pesquisa elege como material específico de análise uma sequência de cursos oferecidos pelo “YouTube Academy” para a criação, gerenciamento e divulgação de uma empresa associada à plataforma de vídeos do YouTube. O objetivo é investigar os modos de imbricação e/ou separação entre o sujeito e a empresa. Para construir os procedimentos analíticos, delimitamos as seguintes perguntas: Como as formas imaginárias do sujeito (o “eu”, a identidade e a individualidade) estão relacionadas com a criação e o funcionamento de (...) uma empresa no YouTube? Como o trabalho e as relações de trabalho são significados nessa discursividade? A pesquisa é filiada à Análise de Discurso Materialista, em diálogo com autores que analisam as relações de trabalho contemporâneas. O olhar discursivo chega a três regularidades: 1) homogeneização das diferentes condições de produção no trabalho dos youtubers; 2) o paralelismo discursivo entre sujeito, canal e empresa (negócio); 3) uma retórica do equilíbrio entre “vida profissional” e “vida pessoal”. O material se sustenta no funcionamento de uma busca pela saturação dos sentidos com soluções e cursos para cada uma das etapas da (re)produção desse trabalho, para a suposta totalidade do processo. The specific analysis material for this essay was chosen from a sequence of courses, offered by the “YouTube Academy”, with the aim of creating, managing and announcing a company associated with the YouTube video platform. Its goal is to examine the ways of imbrication and/or separation between the subject and the company. In order to build the analytical procedures, we delineated the following questions: How are the imaginary for ms of the subject (the “self” as identity and individuality) related to the creation and operation of a company on YouTube? How are work and work relations meant in this discursivity? The research is affiliated with Materialist Discourse Analysis, in dialogue with authors who analyze contemporary work relations. The discursive look reaches three regularities: 1) homogenization of the different production conditions in the work of “youtubers”; 2) the discursive parallelism between subject, channel and company (busi-ness); 3) a rhetoric of the balance between “professional life” and “personal life”. The material is based on the operation of a search for the saturation of the senses with solutions and courses for each of the stages of the (re)production of this work, for the supposed totality of the process. (shrink)

This content analysis explores how often implicit brand integrations occur in YouTube videos that were created for child viewers. The study also investigates how often advertising disclosures appear along with the videos that include brand integration. Results indicate that brand integration occur the most often as a branded product becomes a prop or in the background (i.e. product placement), and this type of brand integration tends to have the least advertising disclosure. Brand integration with influencers actively using/interacting with the (...) branded products in the video (i.e. product integration) followed the official advertising disclosure policy the most. Moreover, product integration was more likely to show the disclosure of advertising at the beginning and the end of the videos than product placement. The blind spot in advertising disclosure policy for implicit brand integration techniques on child-friendly YouTube channels should be reconsidered. (shrink)

After the Covid-19 vaccination started, social media users created an enormous amount of content on the vaccines. Especially in the early stages of vaccination, people searched and watched YouTube videos sharing personal experiences after getting the vaccines (i.e., vaccine review videos), usually titled “I got the COVID-19 vaccine.” Few studies have examined the characteristics and impacts of vaccine review videos on viewers’ responses (e.g., likes, dislikes, comments). This study investigates the content of, and reactions to, the most-viewed Covid-19 vaccine (...) review videos on YouTube, based on the social communication framework. A quantitative content analysis of 148 vaccine review videos revealed their unique characteristics, including source expertise, message valence, narration, and topics. Most of the videos had a positive tone, with some urging vaccination and showing pro-vaccine attitudes. Furthermore, source expertise and hybrid message types (messages conveyed in narrative and informative ways) were not significantly related to positive responses. Rather, non-expert videos received more positive responses. The findings concern the public opinions surrounding new vaccines, including related concerns and attitudes. Given the positive tone of the content, vaccine review content made by diverse groups can be encouraged by public health institutions regardless of the creators’ expertise. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the data collected about 5,388 videos from the 15 leading channels from Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States focusing on toys and in which the protagonists are children under 14 years of age. It aims to determine whether there are common patterns of use, production, and activity in videos by kid YouTubers. Specific software was developed to enable information to be gathered from the YouTube platform through the YouTube Data API by analyzing the (...) date on which the video was published, length, number of visits, likes, dislikes, and visits/vote. The main conclusions drawn are that a channel’s success is not dependent on a pattern or specific characteristics, although an impulse pattern has been detected; participation by children who consume content in the United States differs significantly from participation by those in Europe; and certain similarities based on video length and production frequency can be observed between channels. (shrink)

Autogestão, autoempreendedorismo, infotrabalho, trabalho intermitente, criptomoeda, uberização, proletariado de serviços e servidão digital delineiam uma série de designações indicativas das mudanças das condições de (re)produção do Capital nas suas formas contemporâneas. Grandes corporações como Google, Facebook e Amazon participam desse processo tanto no eixo da infraestrutura econômica, quanto na produção discursiva que sustenta ideologicamente as relações de trabalho determinadas pelo Aparelho Digital. Essa pesquisa elege como material específico de análise uma sequência de cursos oferecidos pelo “YouTube Academy” para a (...) criação, gerenciamento e divulgação de uma empresa associada à plataforma de vídeos do YouTube. O objetivo é investigar os modos de imbricação e/ou separação entre o sujeito e a empresa. Para construir os procedimentos analíticos, delimitamos as seguintes perguntas: Como as formas imaginárias do sujeito (o “eu”, a identidade e a individualidade) estão relacionadas com a criação e o funcionamento de uma empresa no YouTube? Como o trabalho e as relações de trabalho são significados nessa discursividade? O olhar discursivo é ainda guiado por compreensões de pesquisas anteriores: o modo como o “eu” é discursivizado em produto, o funcionamento da “empresa de si” como modelo de identificação e a empresarialidade. As referências passam por Michel Pêcheux, Eni Orlandi, Suzy Lagazzi, Luciana Nogueira, Guilherme Adorno, Joel Bombardelli, Pierre Dardot, Christian Laval e Ricardo Antunes. O conceito de político, compreendido discursivamente como conflito e disputa pelos sentidos - e seus efeitos de deslocamento, assim como o apagamento do político do lugar que lhe seria próprio - e o conceito de exterioridade discursiva são mais enfaticamente mobilizados na pesquisa, além das discussões em torno do discurso neoliberal e da psicologização do sujeito pelos efeitos discursivos de liberdade e autonomia. Um trabalho de análise da constituição da discursividade que tem o “sentido (já) lá” como resultado do efeito de exterioridade. Esperamos mostrar, assim, como, nas condições de produção sócio-históricas de um “Imperialismo Digital”, uma mudança da “economia política do poder-dizer” afeta os modos de circulação não só dos discursos, mas do próprio Capital. (shrink)

This study presents a critical discourse analysis of YouTube comments below five videos of the Johnny Depp v Amber Heard trial, which was live streamed by the platform in April and May 2022. The analysis examines the discursive resources used by commenters to construct domestic abuse. Commenters draw on three interpretive repertoires: ‘Perfect Victim’, ‘Mutual Abuse’ and ‘Dangerous Women’. The analysis explores the way these repertoires are used to rebut Heard’s allegations of abuse by mobilising the perfect victim repertoire (...) to refute any claim she has to this experience, and the mutual abuse repertoire to implicate Heard in the abuse and minimise blame for Depp. Through establishing gender-symmetry in domestic abuse and drawing on traditional gender norms for each party, commenters construct the dangerous women repertoire to depict Heard as crazy, pathological and violent. The key implication of this study is that public constructions of domestic abuse can directly impact the attitudes and treatment of both victims and perpetrators. In this instance, they serve to maintain the oppression and control of women within anti-feminist narratives of female dominance, currently led by men’s rights activists and conservative outlets. (shrink)

The main implication of the scientific consensus on human causality of climate change is the need to implement urgent and transformative policies. However, inaction remains. Much of the academic research has concentrated on discourses that question the evidence of climate science under the umbrella term "climate change denial", but the focus has recently started to shift to the arguments of those who, while accepting the evidence, criticize the processes by which it is obtained and, especially, oppose ambitious measures, in many (...) cases using misinformation. In this article, we will present a taxonomy of such arguments, categorized under the concept of "climate action obstructionism", and we will analyze how this discourse is "amplified" through the Internet; specifically, as an example, we will examine a YouTube video posted on Dalas Review’s channel. (shrink)

Deceptive communication and misinformation are crucial issues that are currently having a significant impact on social life. Parallel to the important work of identifying misinformation on digital platforms is understanding why such material proliferates. One approach to answering this question is to attempt to understand the values that are being targeted by misinformation as a means of interpreting the underlying social bonds that are at stake. This study examines the kinds of social bonds that are communed around and contested in (...) a corpus of YouTube video comments about the viral internet hoax ‘The Momo Challenge’. A social semiotic approach to ‘ambient affiliation’ is used to investigate how these bonds are negotiated in this digital discourse. This approach involves establishing the types of personae who were negotiating meaning in the comments on the basis of the values that they recurrently shared, deferred or disputed. The analysis suggests that, in addition to concern over whether Momo was real and dangerous, there was a deeper moral panic about parenting in the digital age and the legitimacy of institutions such as schools and media as brokers of knowledge. (shrink)

Taboo, as a space where the prohibited resides, delimits the form of the thinkable in a society. Freud, in Totem and Taboo, attempted to trace an explanation beyond the ‘categorical imperative’ of morality and custom. A century later the YouTuber PrankInvasion (Chris Monroe) seems to continue Freud’s account to his advantage. Through ‘Kissing my actual sister prank’, one of his most controversial videos, he challenged his own followers to fulfil an especially controversial challenge: kiss his own stepsister. It is through (...) these contacts with the limits of the moral, of the acceptable, that capitalism expands the colonized territory, absorbing the profane under its new exposure value. The unthinkable, the purported profanation of dogma (in this case, taboo of incest), disappears under the standardization of all rites as standardized consumable objects. But as Agamben warns about the nature of desecration it can not be related, in its new use, with the consumption realm. And that is not the case with PrankInvasion. Through the apparent absence of ordinary moral limits, Chris Monroe expresses his heartfelt attachment to the most extraordinary limit of capitalism: economic growth. (shrink)

In 2008, Dutch anti-Islam Member of Parliament Geert Wilders produced a short video called Fitna to visualize his argument that Islam is a dangerous religion. Thousands of men and women across the globe uploaded their own videos to YouTube to criticize or support the film. In this article, we look at these alternative videos from a feminist perspective, contrasting the gender portrayal and narratives in Fitna with those in the alternative videos. We contend that Fitna expressed an extremist Orientalist (...) discourse, in which women are presented as the current and future victims of the oppression of Muslim men and Islam. In contrast, the YouTube videos give voice to women themselves who come from across the globe, are relatively young and often active Muslims. Second, they express different view points in generically new ways, criticizing and ridiculing Wilders or producing serious and committed explanations of their own understanding of Islam. Third, although relatively few women appeared in the videos, those that did speak for themselves, not only take on Wilders, but also claim their right to speak within Islam. We propose to understand these videos as acts of citizenships through which women constitute themselves as global citizens, in some cases by engaging in ‘deliberation’ as it is understood in feminist political theory, in other cases by taking a ‘voice’ that can be responded to. (shrink)

Up to 70% of all watch time on YouTube is due to the suggested content of its recommender system. This system has been found, by virtue of its design, to be promoting conspiratorial content. In this paper, I first critique the value neutrality thesis regarding technology, showing it to be philosophically untenable. This means that technological artefacts can influence what people come to value (or perhaps even embody values themselves) and change the moral evaluation of an action. Second, I (...) introduces the concept of an affordance, borrowed from the literature on ecological psychology. This concept allows me to make salient how technologies come to solicit certain kinds of actions from users, making such actions more or less likely, and in this way influencing the kinds of things one comes to value. Third, I critically assesses the results of a study by Alfano et al. I make use of the literature on affordances, introduced earlier, to shed light on how these technological systems come to mediate our perception of the world and influence action. (shrink)

La emigración es un derecho humano, eso nadie lo discute. Ahora bien, que la emigración sea un derecho humano no significa que la decisión de emigrar escape a la crítica moral. El presente trabajo evalúa los argumentos esgrimidos en contra de la llamada deslocalización fiscal, que consiste en trasladar la actividad profesional a otro país con el objetivo de pagar menos impuestos. En concreto, se analizan los argumentos de la justicia distributiva, la reciprocidad y la solidaridad. Para ello, se compara (...) el caso de los _youtubers_ españoles con el del trabajador a jornada parcial, el graduado universitario que no ejerce de aquello para lo que ha estudiado y el rico hedonista, y se concluye que la única diferencia moralmente significativa es que los primeros se trasladan a otro país para pagar menos impuestos, mientras que los demás no. Sin embargo, esto presupone precisamente aquello que pretende demostrar, a saber, que la deslocalización fiscal es moralmente reprobable. (shrink)

This article aims to explain the behaviour of public intellectuals, celebrities, and media audiences in the construction of anti-emotional narratives in the online culture wars. In the investigation of how these narratives are constructed on YouTube, the article focuses on the rhetorical juxtaposition of rationality and emotionality surrounding the viral argument between public intellectual Sam Harris and Hollywood star Ben Affleck on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, uploaded to YouTube. The video is an apt example of the (...) positioning dynamics on YouTube, where an increased integration of media content with its context of reception unsettles the positioning process by which the authority of both intellectuals and celebrities is negotiated and culture war narratives constructed. In conclusion, the article reflects on the relationship between the increasingly affective nature of online communication and the simultaneous emergence of a strict dichotomy between rationality and emotionality in anti-woke culture war narratives. (shrink)

This article analyzes the construction of female subjectivity in the specific context of audiovisual cyberspaces in Spain dedicated to the struggle against violence against women. Looking at the YouTube channels of two virtual feminist communities that deal with violence against women, the authors analyze how the victim-subject is configured in terms of agency and activism. The authors adopt a multimodal model of studying the sign complexes of the videos as semiotic artifacts that produce meaning. Sign complexes are always engaged (...) because representation is never neutral because what is represented in sign is meant to realize the values and positions of those who make the sign. In this article, the authors understand feminist activism in the fight against violence targeting women as constructing in its discourse not only the activist process, but also the subject of this activism: the victim-subject of gender-based violence. The analysis engages in the discussion about the various ways in which this subject is interpellated by the audiovisual texts in terms of agency. As a result, this study proposes the necessity to devise new ways of articulating this subject as a political and agential one. (shrink)

Der Beitrag demonstriert, wie YouTube-Kanäle produktiv in die digitale und analoge Lehre integriert werden können. Verschiedene Videoformate werden vorgestellt und die jeweiligen didaktischen und technischen Herausforderungen skizziert. Statistiken werden präsentiert, die Aufschluss über die Chancen, Probleme und Potenziale von YouTube-Kanälen in der Hochschullehre geben. Abschließend werden Erfahrungen geschildert, die ganz allgemein das Kanal-Design und die Werbung neuer Abonnenten betreffen. Dabei werden folgende Fragen und Themen diskutiert: Wie können Studierende durch das Rezipieren von Videos aktiviert werden? Wie sollten Lehrvideos (...) produziert werden? Welche Rolle spielen technische und dramaturgische Faktoren in der philosophischen Lehre? (shrink)

Researchers in the area of children and advertising have been working for decades to determine exactly how children process commercial messages. While a great deal of work has focused on cognitive advertising literacy, research regarding the development of children’s moral advertising literacy is lacking. Given the popularity of social media platforms among youth today, this study examined age differences in children’s moral evaluations of product placement in a YouTube video displaying various forms of disclosures. Results revealed that more prominent (...) disclosures are associated with greater judgments of the appropriateness of the advertising tactic, which in turn is associated with more positive evaluations of the promoted brand. While the former relationship was particularly strong among younger children, older children were more likely to consider how others and society broadly are impacted by covert advertising, resulting in more negative evaluations of the promoted brand. (shrink)

Debates around the compatibility or mutual exclusivity between Islam and evolution have received increasing academic attention in recent years. While research into Islam and evolution has often focused on the views of Muslim publics, a body of literature has emerged that has focused on the views of Muslim clerics and public figures. However, little research has been conducted about how prominent Muslim voices have used online platforms, such as YouTube, to promote their own views on Islam and evolution. This (...) article explores the online video presentations of one such figure, namely, the American Muslim theologian Dr Yasir Qadhi. The article will demonstrate that Qadhi holds a relatively nuanced position on the compatibility between Islam and evolution, based on his understanding of the scientific consensus and Islamic scripture. Furthermore, it will also explore how Qadhi appeals directly to Muslims to reject many of the most common creationist arguments against evolution. (shrink)

This exploratory study engages with eight case studies of music performances broadcast online to investigate the role of music in facilitating social cohesion, intercultural understanding and community resilience during a time of social distancing and concomitant heightened racial tensions. Using an online ethnographic approach and thematic analysis of video comments, the nature of audience engagement with music performances broadcast via YouTube during COVID-19 lockdown of 2020 is explored through the lens of ritual engagement with media events and models of (...) social capital. The eight case studies featured virtual choirs, orchestras and music collaborations of various genres, including classical, pop and fusion styles drawing from European, Asia Minor, South African, West African, North African, Arabic, South Asian, and East Asian cultural origins. Five overarching themes resulted from thematic analysis of video comments, including Interaction, Unity, Resilience, Identity, and Emotion. The paper contributes important theorisation that ritual engagement and social learning fosters intercultural understanding through engaging with music both cognitively and emotionally, which can in turn shape both individual and collective identity. Online platforms provide scope for both bonding and bridging opportunities. Community resilience is supported through the sharing of knowledge, sustaining music practice during social distancing, as well as emotional support shared among audience participants, with potential wellbeing outcomes. (shrink)

Influencers belong to the daily media diet of many adolescents. As role models, they have the potential to play a crucial role in the identity construction of their viewers. In the age of social media, such role models may now be found more local – from the same city – and perhaps with more diverse backgrounds. This may be particularly valuable to adolescents growing up in super-diverse cities, as they are surrounded by a multitude of groups and identities during a (...) life phase in which they have to make sense of who they are and where they belong. Despite the heterogeneity of these identities, there is one thing all have in common: the city they live in. With the city as a common framework, local influencers may be important role models for these adolescents, particularly in negotiating their urban identity. This paper aims toward mapping the ways in which social media can play a role in the negotiation of urban identity among youngsters by investigating how YouTube influencers from a super-diverse city are related to each other online, and how their content relates to the (super-diverse) city of Rotterdam. Findings show that in their videos and on their channel pages, influencers mainly affiliate themselves with the city through having the city as the background and context of the videos, through their involvement with cultural trends (e.g. soccer, hip-hop) that link to the city, and through their affiliation with other local influencers. We argue that influencers may therefore provide their viewers with content that may potentially help their local viewers strengthen their urban identity. (shrink)

The Western school classroom can no longer remain a secluded and impermeable space in a world that is increasingly hyperconnected through dynamic flows of capital, technologies, populations, media images and ideas. Books brought to the school by diverse students, narratives from far-away countries and YouTube tunes from different cultures can become powerful teaching and learning tools in this frame. Such tools enable multiple metaphors and connections between various life spheres, diverse cultural and socio-economic milieus, and different times and places, (...) as manifested in the thought-provoking ethnographic observation on ‘The book and the author’s reading’ by Elise v. Bernstorff and Carla J. Maier. (shrink)

The 2009 post-election violence on the streets of Tehran was brought to world attention by the image production and distribution activities of Iranian citizens. This paper considers the communicative potential of these images as they are encountered by distant observers. Beginning with George Herbert Mead’s concept of a generalised other that establishes the ground for intersubjective person formation and the moral basis of self–other relations, I build a critical framework for considering the limits and potentiality of self–other encounters in mediated (...) contexts. Arguing that communication presupposes a shared cultural attitude to images, I explore the distinctive cultural frame and image-encounters that the Internet establishes for its users, before turning attention to the activity occurring on the other side of the screen. Setrag Manoukian has observed that in the 2009 Iranian situation the once distinct categories of action and mediation collapsed together; “everyone was acting and reporting” simultaneously. I shall examine the claims for a new reflexivity associated with this situation. Turning again to the perspective of the distant observer, I explore some of the constraints on the functioning of the Iranian images as communicative acts. In conclusion I briefly consider what work is required on the part of the viewer to build a context for empathetic regard. (shrink)