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This paper contributes to research on children’s participation on social media by analysing children’s ‘toy unboxing’ videos. Toy unboxing videos are a popular genre on the video-sharing platform YouTube, in which children and adults record themselves unpacking various commercial toys.
Drawing on data produced through a content analysis of 100 recent toy unboxing videos, this paper analyses five key categories – production, actors, narration, products, and branding. The findings indicate that children’s modes of production as amateur content producers both shape and are shaped by the shared and standardised conventions of this genre.
We argue that the reciprocal relationship between professional and amateur content production can be best understood through the concept of ‘mimesis’, which characterises the qualities of play and commercialisation within the toy unboxing genre.