Papers by Zoë Glatt
The Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology, 2022
YouTube’s algorithmic recommendation system – known
colloquially as “The Algorithm” – is a powerf... more YouTube’s algorithmic recommendation system – known
colloquially as “The Algorithm” – is a powerful character in the lives of
professional and aspiring social media content creators, exerting various
pressures on them in their struggles for visibility and income. This
chapter brings an anthropological approach to the study of algorithms in
the context of platformised creative work, seeking to understand
YouTube’s algorithmic recommendation system as situated in content
creators’ everyday lives through a triangulated examination of their
discourses, practices and experiences. “The Algorithm” is variously
understood as an omnipotent God, a black box to be opened, a mystery
to be solved, a voracious machine, and an oppressor of marginalised
groups. Above all, it is viewed as unknowable, impenetrable, mysterious,
and inscrutable. Though creators’ experiences vary significantly based
on a myriad of factors, amongst my participants “The Algorithm” was
universally understood as an antagonistic force, one which heightened
conditions of precarity and made their working lives more unpredictable
and stressful. With an ever-increasing number of people seeking careers
as content creators, it is vital to interrogate the emerging and problematic
sociotechnological formations that are core to this new form of labour.
The Routledge Companion to Intersectionalities, 2023
, the American academic, Jessica Krug, a white woman, wrote in a "confessional" Medium article th... more , the American academic, Jessica Krug, a white woman, wrote in a "confessional" Medium article that she had been passing as Black for her entire career (Krug 2020). Krug's story was one in a series of public outings of white people passing as Black, including Racheal Dolezal, who was briefly the president of the NAACP chapter in Spokane, Washington (Aikenhead 2017). Writing about the Krug case, Jason England i powerfully states (and is worth quoting at length): The Black identity has become standardized: commodified, reproducible on an industrial scale, tailored and marketed to fatter the projection and needs of its white audience. Much as hip-hop has remained subversive in posture while its political core has shrivelled, like rotting fruit, into a soundtrack for the crudest mainstream capitalist values, the mainstream iteration of Black identity has, likewise, become something to fill display windows-the artificially ripped and acidwashed trappings thrown on a faceless mannequin. The superficial markers of Black culture have been so successfully co-opted by mainstream culture that our very notion of Black identity has become fattened where it was once double-edged. There's a sterility where once there was subversiveness; a goal to fatter the white audience where once there was the aim to provoke it. (England 2020) The idea that the "mainstream iteration of Black identity... becomes something to fill display windows" particularly resonates in a context when stores and companies literally filled their display windows with statements in support of Black Lives Matter (BLM) after George Floyd's murder in May 2020. The move to brand intersectionality, we argue, is a move that does not examine nor challenge structural relations of power when it comes to race and gender, but rather is a strategy that narrowly focuses on a commodified and commodifiable identity as a way to build a brand and to accumulate both economic and cultural capital. The branding of intersectionality can in no way be reconciled with legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw's definition of the concept, which is about taking into account "multiple grounds of identity when considering how the social world is constructed." Instead, the branding of intersectionality is precisely not how Crenshaw understands the term; it attempts to address the problem of exclusion "simply by including Black women in an already established analytical structure." (Coaston 2019). The "already established analytical structure" in this context is that of neoliberal corporate capitalism; as such, the
International Journal of Communication, 2022
There has been a recent proliferation of scholarly interest in the impacts of platformization on ... more There has been a recent proliferation of scholarly interest in the impacts of platformization on cultural industries and labor. This article draws on a longitudinal ethnographic study of the London- and Los Angeles-based influencer community industries (2017–2022) to consider the ways in which the platformized creative worker marks an intensification of the neoliberal worker subject as theorized in more traditional cultural industries. I argue that this industry marks an escalation of conditions of precarity; this research found that the working lives of most content creators are fraught with stress and burnout, and smaller creators in particular are subject to algorithmic discrimination in an industry where visibility is key to success. Contrary to highly celebratory discourses that position online content creation as more open and meritocratic than traditional cultural industries, this is an advertising-driven industry that propels the most profitable creators into the spotlight, resulting in the closing down of mobility. I conclude by considering the opportunities and challenges for reducing this widespread precarity via collective action and regulation.
European Journal of Cultural Studies, 2023
The careers of social media content creators, or influencers, live or die by their ability to cul... more The careers of social media content creators, or influencers, live or die by their ability to cultivate and maintain an invested audience-community. To this end, they are encouraged to practise what has been framed as ‘emotional labour’ (Hochschild, 2002 [1983]) and ‘relational labour’ (Baym, 2018), commodifying their personalities, lives and tastes in order to build ‘authentic’ self-brands and intimacy with audiences. Drawing on an ethnographic study of the London influencer industry (2017–2023), this article examines emotional/relational labour through an intersectional feminist lens, foregrounding the ways in which structural inequalities shape relationships between creators and their audiences. The tolls of managing audience relationships are higher for marginalised creators – especially those making stigmatised and less brandable content genres – who find themselves on an uneven playing field in the challenges they face as well as the coping strategies at their disposal. These creators are in an intimacy triple bind, already at higher risk of trolling and harassment, yet under increased pressure to perform relational labour, adversely opening them up to further harms in the form of weaponised intimacy. This article explores four key tactics that creators employ in response to such conditions, as they navigate relational labour and boundaries with audiences: (1) leaning into making rather than being content; (2) (dis)engaging with anti-fans through silence; (3) retreating into private community spaces, away from the exposure of public platforms; and, in parallel, (4) turning off public comments. The adverse experiences of marginalised creators who speak about their identities and experiences online raise serious concerns about the viability of content creation as a career for these groups, as well as the lack of accountability and responsibility that platforms show towards the creators who generate profit for them.
AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
Social media platforms are widely lauded as bastions for entrepreneurial self-actualisation and c... more Social media platforms are widely lauded as bastions for entrepreneurial self-actualisation and creative autonomy, offering an answer to historically exclusive and hierarchical creative industries as routes to employability and success. Social media influencers are envied by audiences as having achieved ‘the good life’, one in which they are able to ‘do what they love’ for a living (Duffy 2017). Despite this ostensive accessibility and relatability, today’s high-profile influencer culture continues to be shaped by ‘preexisting gendered and racial scripts and their attendant grammars of exclusion’ as Sarah Banet-Weiser (2012) argued in the early days of socially mediated entrepreneurship (p. 89; see also Bishop, 2017). In Western contexts only a narrow subset of white, cis-gender, and heterosexual YouTubers, Instagrammers, TikTokers, and Twitch streamers tend to achieve visibility as social media star-creators, and celebratory discourses of diversity and fairness mask problematic str...
Through a combination of political economy and radical mediation theory, this dissertation argues... more Through a combination of political economy and radical mediation theory, this dissertation argues that current ‘YouTube Stars’ can be understood as a particularly virulent strain of ‘homo æconomicus’, who are produced and commodified through the techno-capitalist structures of the platform. YouTube culture has transformed since its inception in 2005 to increasingly become a conduit for commercial interests, and successful vloggers are nodes in this capitalist flow: absorbing, transforming and spreading the neoliberal political rationality of the platform. I analyse how mainstream vloggers are emerging through and are entangled with the neoliberal rationality of the complex commercial interests, structures and technological affordances of the platform. I conclude by considering the ethical ramifications of, and possible solutions to, the commodification of the self on YouTube vlogs.
Book Reviews by Zoë Glatt
New Media & Society, 2019
Thesis Chapters by Zoë Glatt
BA Social Anthropology Dissertation, SOAS University
This dissertation is an exploration of the ... more BA Social Anthropology Dissertation, SOAS University
This dissertation is an exploration of the YouTube community ‘Nerdfighteria’, as an excellent example of the social potential of YouTube more generally. I have split my research into three parts. In chapter one I analyse how concept of community works online, and specifically in Nerdfighteria. In chapter two I address the crucial role that collaboration plays in in the construction of community on YouTube. In chapter three I investigate the nature of interpersonal relationships in Nerdfighteria, with specific reference to the roles of ‘nerdiness’ and ‘fangirling’.
Books by Zoë Glatt
Creator Culture: An Introduction to Global Social Media Entertainment, 2021
Feminist content is a well-established genre on YouTube, in which creators post political and soc... more Feminist content is a well-established genre on YouTube, in which creators post political and social commentary on topics such as intersectionality, politics, gender and sexual identity alongside comedic, lifestyle, and personality-driven fare. This chapter examines the work of feminist YouTube content creators within the context of popular feminist economies of visibility and an interrelated theoretical analytic of productive ambivalence. YouTube has been celebrated by many as a platform that has enabled far more diverse screen representations of race, gender and sexuality than television and film media, as is undoubtedly the case. However, feminist YouTube creators have to navigate what are often contradictory pressures in order to gain visibility and earn a living, such as appealing to commercial brands whilst maintaining their political integrity and cultivating authenticity with their audiences. The work of feminist content creators on YouTube is complex and so a reductive explanatory frame is resisted here. With the analytic of productive ambivalence, this chapter aims to complicate the dominance of popular feminism online by asking: to what extent are professional YouTube content creators able to present more radical versions of feminism, or else pushed to fit into neoliberal brand culture in order to gain visibility and income?
Uploads
Papers by Zoë Glatt
colloquially as “The Algorithm” – is a powerful character in the lives of
professional and aspiring social media content creators, exerting various
pressures on them in their struggles for visibility and income. This
chapter brings an anthropological approach to the study of algorithms in
the context of platformised creative work, seeking to understand
YouTube’s algorithmic recommendation system as situated in content
creators’ everyday lives through a triangulated examination of their
discourses, practices and experiences. “The Algorithm” is variously
understood as an omnipotent God, a black box to be opened, a mystery
to be solved, a voracious machine, and an oppressor of marginalised
groups. Above all, it is viewed as unknowable, impenetrable, mysterious,
and inscrutable. Though creators’ experiences vary significantly based
on a myriad of factors, amongst my participants “The Algorithm” was
universally understood as an antagonistic force, one which heightened
conditions of precarity and made their working lives more unpredictable
and stressful. With an ever-increasing number of people seeking careers
as content creators, it is vital to interrogate the emerging and problematic
sociotechnological formations that are core to this new form of labour.
Book Reviews by Zoë Glatt
Thesis Chapters by Zoë Glatt
This dissertation is an exploration of the YouTube community ‘Nerdfighteria’, as an excellent example of the social potential of YouTube more generally. I have split my research into three parts. In chapter one I analyse how concept of community works online, and specifically in Nerdfighteria. In chapter two I address the crucial role that collaboration plays in in the construction of community on YouTube. In chapter three I investigate the nature of interpersonal relationships in Nerdfighteria, with specific reference to the roles of ‘nerdiness’ and ‘fangirling’.
Books by Zoë Glatt
colloquially as “The Algorithm” – is a powerful character in the lives of
professional and aspiring social media content creators, exerting various
pressures on them in their struggles for visibility and income. This
chapter brings an anthropological approach to the study of algorithms in
the context of platformised creative work, seeking to understand
YouTube’s algorithmic recommendation system as situated in content
creators’ everyday lives through a triangulated examination of their
discourses, practices and experiences. “The Algorithm” is variously
understood as an omnipotent God, a black box to be opened, a mystery
to be solved, a voracious machine, and an oppressor of marginalised
groups. Above all, it is viewed as unknowable, impenetrable, mysterious,
and inscrutable. Though creators’ experiences vary significantly based
on a myriad of factors, amongst my participants “The Algorithm” was
universally understood as an antagonistic force, one which heightened
conditions of precarity and made their working lives more unpredictable
and stressful. With an ever-increasing number of people seeking careers
as content creators, it is vital to interrogate the emerging and problematic
sociotechnological formations that are core to this new form of labour.
This dissertation is an exploration of the YouTube community ‘Nerdfighteria’, as an excellent example of the social potential of YouTube more generally. I have split my research into three parts. In chapter one I analyse how concept of community works online, and specifically in Nerdfighteria. In chapter two I address the crucial role that collaboration plays in in the construction of community on YouTube. In chapter three I investigate the nature of interpersonal relationships in Nerdfighteria, with specific reference to the roles of ‘nerdiness’ and ‘fangirling’.