Participation, internalisation and differentiation : understanding YouTube user agency through YouTubing practice

Abstract

In the participatory era of new media, a multidisciplinary approach to new media user agency is expected since the increasing diffusion of new media use in various social fields has generated multifarious user roles and activities. This new approach is also expected to overcome the insufficiencies of methodological individualism and wholism which have long dominated the research discipline of new media user agency and activity. This thesis applies the insights of practice theories to the study of YouTube user agency through an 18 months' participant observation study within the Australian context (23 semi-structured interviews and a self-reflexive participant observation through uploading YouTube videos in person). Unlike individualistic and wholistic approaches to human agency, practice theories insist that the social and collective organization of practices is the everyday pivot between structure and agency. Based on this rationale, I develop a new practice approach in my thesis which understands YouTube users as social actors who carry out YouTubing practice in social life. I suggest that YouTube user agency is decided neither by individualistic parameters nor by structural forces but by the organization of YouTubing practice. I examine three issues in my thesis which are concerned with YouTube user agency from a practice perspective. Firstly, I investigate people's motivations for uploading and sharing videos on YouTube through examining the process through which my respondents participate in YouTubing practice. The result reveal how the ways in which YouTubing practice relate to other social practices in my respondents' world influence their YouTubing participation. Secondly, I find that YouTubing practice is organized by two key constitutive elements: a sense of audience and individuals' beliefs concerned with a sense of audience. I then demonstrate how these two key constitutive elements are developed by the joint forces of my respondents' intelligibilities and the elements involved in YouTubing practice. These findings help us understand how YouTube user agency is rooted in the organization of YouTubing practice. This thesis lastly identifies four types of YouTubing performances which represent my respondents' differentiated participation levels and engagement. Show more