Less Than Famous: Gender and Genre on YouTube

• In Event: Gendered Media Production

Abstract

YouTube is the dominant video-provider in the US and the third most visited website in the world. In 2014, the site reported that 300 hours of new video were uploaded every minute, with three-quarters of the material coming from outside the US. Its popularity, in combination with the site’s utopian invitation to “broadcast yourself,” makes YouTube an important locus of feminist analysis. Like all media, YouTube is part of and not separate from everyday life and cannot be understood outside the context of persistent social inequalities, including gender inequality: for example, only 12 percent of the top 72 independent (non-network) channels feature women and the number of white creators is double that of all creators of color combined. This presentation draws upon fieldwork at VidCon 2016 (the annual YouTube convention) and interviews with women and woman-identified YouTubers to examine the platform’s sex and gender politics in terms of who achieves popularity, the genres in which women tend to participate, and the nature of negative online comments directed at women. As a primarily visual medium, YouTube has more in common with the mainstream film and television industries in the US than the “democratic” ethos of the platform might suggest.

Author

• Laura Grindstaff, U of California, Davis