Discipline and Entertain Us: Youth Raised by YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok

• In Event: Platformization as a Driver of "New" Narratives of Learning Across Formal and Informal Learning Spaces

Abstract

Objectives
While pedagogic values of platforms as Google Classroom are often subject to debate (Leclaire, Annemiek, 2021; Singer, 2017), we rarely acknowledge that social media platforms also afford pedagogic values by disciplining and encouraging specific user behavior (Sefton-Green, 2021). The aim of this paper is to describe how platforms that are popular among youth afford such pedagogic values.

Theoretical Framework
Using a new materialist, sociocultural,Foucauldian perspective, we understand discourse as a(material) boundary making process that establishes meaningful practices within a specific sociocultural context (Barad, 2003). To understand pedagogic values as embedded in the discursive materiality of Twitch, TikTok and YouTube, two concepts are key: affordance and pedagogy. We understand ‘affordance’ as how an environment steers behavior (Bucher & Helmond, 2018; Dijck et al., 2018). Informed by Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between positive and negative liberty (Berlin, 2002), and Bernstein’s approach to pedagogic practice (Bernstein, 2000), we look at pedagogic values as a boundary making process by both disciplining (potestas) and encouraging (potentia) sociocultural practices (Negri, 2013).

Method
To map these pedagogic values, we did a critical discourse analysis. To specifically understand the pedagogic values, we distinguished encouraging and disciplining functions of affordances of Twitch, TikTok and YouTube.

Data
We made screenshots and -videos of the main interfaces and all the formal guidelines (the
community guidelines, terms of service and mission statements) of Twitch, TikTok and YouTube.

Results
Our results show that Twitch affords opportunities for participation-based learning by valuing community building. TikTok affords opportunities for visual creative learning by valuing remixing of content. On YouTube opportunities for self-directed learning and a libertarian pedagogy seem to compete with a behaviorist approach due to a conflict between their brand identity and commercial interests. These results demonstrate that platforms encourage and discipline user behavior by the pedagogic values embedded in the platform’s affordances. Platforms at first sight might appear as places for ‘free’, undisciplined learning, but on closer inspection disciplining functions do steer how and what content is most likely to appear on the platform. As such, youth might experience platforms as an escape from the more disciplining functions of formal education to explore their own interests, not realizing that other disciplining functions interfere with what and how they are learning.

Significance
This paper demonstrates that social media platforms seem to ‘raise’ youth according to their own pedagogical aims and values. By looking at these informal uses of pedagogical practices, we can start to get an understanding of what ‘new’ narratives of learning are actively promoted by social media platforms and, in result, might impact youth’s expectations for learning now, and in the near future.

Authors

• Zowi Vermeire, Utrecht University

• Mariette Haan De, Utrecht University

• Sanne Akkerman, Utrecht University