Anxiety, panic and self-optimization: Inequalities and the YouTube algorithm
Anxiety, panic and self-optimization: Inequalities and the YouTube algorithm
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DOI：
10.1177/1354856517736978
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发表时间：
2018-02-01
影响因子：
2.8
通讯作者：
Bishop, Sophie
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文献类型：
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作者：
Bishop, Sophie
本文将着眼于YouTube的算法，以评估这种形式的机械决策如何创造一个歧视性的视频博客可见度等级，有利于中产阶级的社会行为者，他们制作的高度性别化的内容与广告商的要求和需求保持一致。我选择了创业美容vloggers作为本文的案例研究;美容vlogging被定义为化妆品使用的演示和讨论，通常来自vloggers自己的卧室（Banet Weiser，2017; Nathanson，2014）。这是该网站上根深蒂固的一种类型;美容vlog是一些成功参与者的全职工作，也是更多人的零用钱来源。此外，美容视频博客有效地说明了YouTube算法如何导致性别等身份标记的两极分化。事实上，对于女性参与者，我假设YouTube积极促进霸权，女性化的文化输出，由具有显著体现的社会和文化资本的美容博主创造。也就是说，对于YouTube上的女性来说，算法赋予女性化内容特权和奖励，这些内容与消费、美容、时尚、烘焙、友谊和男朋友紧密相连，这与青少年杂志的历史卧室文化一脉相承。第二个假设是，美妆博主自己对YouTube算法过程的理解是在他们自己的实践中学习和体现的，影响了自我展示的模式、语调、内容的选择、使用的单词和句子结构。我认为，必须将所有美容视频博主的经验和内容与YouTube平台相结合;正是他们在YouTube平台上的持续成功才保证了他们品牌的价值。换句话说，即使是非常成功的vlogger仍然依赖于YouTube的可见性技术，他们也不能免受算法主权的影响。
This article will look to YouTube's algorithm to assess how such forms of mechanical decision-making can create a discriminatory visibility hierarchy of vloggers, favouring middle class social actors who make highly gendered content aligned with advertisers' demands and needs. I have selected entrepreneurial beauty vloggers as a case study for this article; beauty vlogging is defined as the demonstration and discussion of cosmetic use, often from a vIoggers' own bedroom (Banet Weiser, 2017; Nathanson, 2014). This is a deeply entrenched genre on the site; beauty vlogging is a full-time job for some successful participants, and a source of pocket money for many more. Moreover, beauty vlogging is an effective illustration of how the YouTube algorithm causes the polarization of identity markers such as gender. Indeed, for female participants, I hypothesize that YouTube actively promotes hegemonic, feminized cultural outputs, created by beauty vloggers with significant embodied social and cultural capital. That is to say, for women on YouTube, the algorithm privileges and rewards feminized content deeply entwined with consumption, beauty, fashion, baking, friendships and boyfriends in the vein of the historical bedroom culture of the teenage magazine. A secondary hypothesis is that beauty vloggers' own understandings of YouTube's algorithmic processes are learned and embodied within their own practices, influencing modes of self-presentation, tone of voice, choice of content covered, words and sentence structures used. I argue that it is essential to situate all beauty vloggers' experience and content as specific to the platform of YouTube; it is their continued success on the YouTube platform that underwrites the value of their brands. In other words, even highly successful vloggers remain beholden to YouTube's technologies of visibility, they are not safe from the sovereignty of the algorithm.