Two sides of the fourth wall: YouTube as modern work and its impact on young people's futures

这项研究涉及数字工作的新形式。它聚焦于YouTube的数字空间，它既是一个工作场所，也是塑造年轻人对未来工作生活想象力的一个影响力来源。它试图记录年轻人作为生产者和消费者参与YouTube内容创收的经历，并确定YouTube支持的数字文化对年轻人未来(工作)取向的影响。尽管YouTube拥有强大的在线影响力，但它仍然是一个特别未被研究的数字平台(Rieder，2015)。考虑到数字文化在年轻人生活中的重要性，这是文学上的一个重大差距，也是这个项目试图解决的一个问题。首先，这项研究以创收的YouTube内容创作为起点，认为这是一种当代形式的工作，已经迅速成为几代年轻人的一项‘常态化’活动。它试图探索YouTube内容制作者的社会经济活动和关系在哪些方面依赖和/或挑战对工作的主流社会学理解，例如，与Castells(2004)的“自我编程劳动”概念有关，该概念可能反映YouTubers的工作的适应性，以及Hardt和Negri(2000)对“非物质劳动”的概念，特别是其“情感”维度。该项目将记录YouTube内容的创建，绘制成功的创收轨迹，以及以前成功衰落的经历，并采访YouTube用户，以了解他们的工作世界。这将包括关注YouTube用户如何调动数字社会关系以确保成功。YouTube被视为全天候网络社会的一个实例，始终在线，始终连接或可连接，始终可用于工作或消费(Hassan&Purser，2007，第3页)。这项研究将研究YouTubers作品的时空关系，从而对新通信技术引发的时空压缩问题做出贡献。该项目的这一部分将为YouTube创业者的工作实践、他们制作的内容以及他们与“消费者”之间社会资本的发展带来新的洞察。事实上，该项目的第二部分关注于YouTube的受众，他们通过评论和观看视频来参与内容(Burgess&Green，2009，第94页)，以了解年轻人对这项活动/工作的看法，以及当他们想象自己的未来时，这种情感劳动对他们的影响。在这样做的过程中，该项目从数字屏幕的两边(生产者和消费者)收集数据，以了解这种“标志着生产和消费融合的非物质劳动”(Cote&Pybus，2007，第94页)。总体而言，这项研究将调查数字工作现象(以及其他发展，特别是零工经济)如何塑造工作世界，特别是通过数字社会资本的增长。此外，它还将分析这一现象如何改变年轻人对工作世界的看法，影响他们对这种劳动的理解和他们对未来的取向。该项目将通过一系列定性研究工具进行：在线观察现场互动、对YouTube内容的内容分析、访谈、(来自消费者的)视频日记和焦点小组。它将通过对YouTube作为一种工作形式及其对年轻人及其未来取向的影响的实证分析，为工作社会学和我们对数字文化(特别是网络和社会资本)的理解做出原创性的贡献。

This research is concerned with new forms of digital work. It focuses on the digital space of YouTube both as a site of work and a source of influence in shaping young people's imaginations of their future working lives. It seeks to document young people's experiences as they engage with income-generating YouTube content as producers and consumers, and ascertain the impact of the digital culture supported by YouTube on young people's future (work) orientations. Despite the strength of its online presence, YouTube is a particularly understudied digital platform (Rieder, 2015). This is a significant gap in the literature given the recognised importance of digital culture in young people's lives and one that this project seeks to address. First, the research takes as a starting point that income-generating YouTube content creation is a contemporary form of work that has rapidly emerged as a 'normalised' activity for generations of young people. It seeks to explore in what ways the socio-economic activities and relations of YouTube content producers rest on and/or challenge dominant sociological understandings of work, for instance in relation to Castells' (2004) notion of 'selfprogrammable labour' which may capture the adaptability of YouTubers' work and Hardt and Negri's (2000) conceptualisation of 'immaterial labour', especially its 'affective' dimension. The project will document YouTube content creation and map successful trajectories towards income generation as well as the experience of decline of former success and interview YouTubers to understand their world of work. This will include attention to how YouTubers mobilise digital social relations to secure success.YouTube is taken as an instance of 24/7 networked society, 'always on', always connected or connectable, always available to work or consume (Hassan & Purser, 2007, p.3). This research will investigate the spatio-temporal relations of YouTubers' work and thereby make a contribution to contemporary questions of space-time compression arising from new communication technologies. This strand of the project will generate new insight into both the work practices of YouTube entrepreneurs, the content they produce, and their development of social capital with 'consumers'.Indeed, a second strand of the project focuses on the YouTubers' audience who engage with content through comment and via video viewing (Burgess & Green, 2009, p.94) to understand young people's perceptions of this activity/work and what this affective labour does to them as they imagine their own futures. In so doing, the project gathers data from both sides of the digital screen (the producer and the consumer) to understand this immaterial labour that 'flags the conflation of production and consumption' (Cote & Pybus, 2007, p. 94).Overall, this research will investigate how the phenomenon of digital work is (along with other developments, notably in the gig economy) shaping the world of work, particularly through the growth of digital social capital. In addition, it will analyse how this phenomenon is changing perceptions of the world of work for young people, influencing their understanding of this kind of labour and their orientations towards the future. The project will be carried out through a range of qualitative research tools: online observation of live interactions, content analysis of YouTube content, interviews, video diaries (from consumers) and focus groups. It will make an original contribution to the sociology of work and our understanding of digital culture (networks and social capital in particular) through empirical analysis of YouTube as a form of work and its impact on young people and their future orientations.