YouTube: Video Commercialization, Value Creation and Identity
| dc.contributor.author | Dlamini, Gabby Sipho | |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | White, Hylton | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2024-11-15T09:20:30Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2024-11-15T09:20:30Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2021-12 | |
| dc.description | A research report submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Social media has been blamed for promoting unrealistic flashy lifestyles and an increase in influencer brand marketing. The outcome of this is said to put extreme pressure on individuals to maintain a certain lifestyle to the detriment of their self, promoting a performance of life rather than real life experiences, resulting in the breakdown of social bonds. Yet social media platforms such YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and many others are growing at considerable rates, despite all the critiques. The thesis overall questions how YouTube vloggers turn the intangible value of activities in everyday life into monetary income by attracting online audiences to their vlogs. The research is located as part of transformations taking place in late capitalism, that used to characterise the organisation of labour and, therefore, society in nineteenth and twentieth-century iterations of modern capitalist society; and the changing concepts of “private” and “public” that are described as part of the technological development and integration into our everyday lives. This thesis traces the changing structures and relationships between YouTube, YouTubers and viewers as the economy of YouTube has continued to grow. Whilst influencer brand marketing and social media reach are popularly viewed as detrimental to the individual and society, this thesis argues against this general view. Instead, I argue that in the wake of influencer marketing and the financial economies, embedded within YouTube and other social media, new ways of being and belonging are being negotiated. This thesis, using ethnographic data, focuses on these new ways of being and belonging by explaining how ideas of value, suspicion, affect, and digital footprint are factors in creating online community ties and online identities that continue inside and outside of the online space. | |
| dc.description.submitter | GM2024 | |
| dc.faculty | Faculty of Humanities | |
| dc.identifier | https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-5154-0096 | |
| dc.identifier.citation | Dlamini, Gabby Sipho. (2021). YouTube: Video Commercialization, Value Creation and Identity [PhD thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg]. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10539/42581 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.publisher | University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg | |
| dc.rights | © 2024 University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. | |
| dc.rights.holder | University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg | |
| dc.school | School of Social Sciences | |
| dc.subject | Digital Anthropology: YouTube: Identity: Value: Social Media | |
| dc.subject.other | SDG-8: Decent work and economic growth | |
| dc.title | YouTube: Video Commercialization, Value Creation and Identity | |
| dc.type | Thesis |