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

这项研究关注的是数字工作的新形式。它关注的是YouTube的数字空间，它既是一个工作场所，也是一个影响年轻人对未来工作生活想象的来源。它旨在记录年轻人作为生产者和消费者参与创收YouTube内容的经历，并确定YouTube支持的数字文化对年轻人未来（工作）方向的影响。尽管其在线存在的实力，YouTube是一个特别未被充分研究的数字平台（里德，2015）。鉴于数字文化在年轻人生活中公认的重要性，这是文献中的一个重大差距，也是本项目试图解决的问题。首先，该研究的出发点是，创收YouTube内容创作是一种当代形式的工作，已迅速成为几代年轻人的“常态化”活动。它试图探索YouTube内容生产者的社会经济活动和关系以何种方式依赖和/或挑战主流的社会学对工作的理解，例如卡斯特（2004）的“自我编程劳动”概念，这可能会捕捉到YouTube用户工作的适应性，以及哈特和内格里（2000）对“非物质劳动”的概念化，特别是其“情感”维度。该项目将记录YouTube的内容创作，绘制成功的创收轨迹，以及前成功人士的衰落经历，并采访YouTube用户，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24/7网络社会的一个实例，“永远在线”，始终连接或可连接，始终可用来工作或消费（Hassan & Purser, 2007, p.3）。本研究将探讨youtuber作品的时空关系，从而对新通信技术带来的时空压缩的当代问题做出贡献。该项目的这一部分将对YouTube企业家的工作实践、他们制作的内容以及他们与“消费者”共同开发的社会资本产生新的见解。事实上，该项目的第二部分重点关注通过评论和视频观看参与内容的youtuber观众（Burgess & Green, 2009, p.94），以了解年轻人对这项活动/工作的看法，以及这种情感劳动在他们想象自己的未来时对他们的影响。在这样做的过程中，该项目从数字屏幕的双方（生产者和消费者）收集数据，以了解这种“标志着生产和消费合并”的非物质劳动（Cote & Pybus, 2007, p. 94）。总体而言，本研究将探讨数字工作现象（以及其他发展，特别是在零工经济中）如何塑造工作世界，特别是通过数字社会资本的增长。此外，还将分析这一现象如何改变年轻人对工作世界的看法，影响他们对这类劳动的理解以及他们对未来的取向。该项目将通过一系列定性研究工具进行：现场互动的在线观察，YouTube内容的内容分析，访谈，视频日记（来自消费者）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方向的影响的实证分析，对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.