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YouTube’s Operational Logic: “The View” as Pervasive Category
Ist Teil von
Television & new media, 2020-03, Vol.21 (3), p.223-239
Ort / Verlag
Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications
Erscheinungsjahr
2020
Quelle
Alma/SFX Local Collection
Beschreibungen/Notizen
Launched in 2005 as a platform for user-generated content (UGC), YouTube is one of the most popular websites in the world. In this article, I focus on the site’s use of “the view,” which I argue serves as a pervasive category enacted through the platform, in its information regimes and beyond. The view supports a myth of viewer intentionality and satisfaction and serves as the operational logic of the platform as a whole. It is a category in Durkheim’s sense, ordering practices and naturalizing hierarchies and inequalities. These hierarchies concern, and impact on, participation, financial compensation, visibility, and popularity. In making my claims, I demonstrate how the celebratory discourse around YouTube as an empowering tool that levels the media playing field was positively misguided. I make a plea for a critical reading of the view, which can enhance our understanding of the platform and its culture.