Background YouTube is the most popular social networking website among Canadian adolescents, yet little is known about their contribution to the platform’s contents. This article examines youth-produced vlogs created to address a social issue. It seeks to explore the relationship between media creation, civic agency, and participatory politics in the context of visual social media.Analysis This article combines Grounded Theory and Social Semiotics to perform a multimodal content analysis of 55 vlogs posted on YouTube by French-speaking Canadian adolescents on the issue of bullying.Conclusion and implications The article concludes that vlogging allows for the creation of a social space where civic discussions can foster discursive forms of engagement and online activism. Future research could examine patterns of inclusion/exclusion in the access to this civic practice.Contexte YouTube est le média social le plus populaire auprès des adolescents canadiens, mais peu de travaux ont documenté leur contribution à la diffusion de contenus vidéo. Cet article s’intéresse aux vlogues publiés par des adolescents pour attirer l’attention sur des problèmes sociaux. Son but est d’examiner empiriquement les rapports entre création médiatique, engagement civique et cultures participatives dans la communication visuelle.Analyse Cet article combine la théorie enracinée et la socio-sémiotique dans l’analyse de contenu multimodale d’un échantillon de 55 vlogues d’adolescents franco-québécois qui dénoncent l’intimidation. Conclusion et implications Cet article conclut que la publication de vlogues permet la création d’un espace social de discussion civique qui favorise l’émergence d’un activisme discursif chez les jeunes. Les inégalités d’accès à cette pratique civique pourraient faire l’objet d’investigations futures.
Debate over conceptual definitions is prominent within the body of literature dealing with emerging patterns of civic engagement and political participation among youth information and communication technology–enabled politics. This article contends that advancing new knowledge in this field is also dependent upon fine-grained empirical analysis of digital traces of youth participation. Drawing on a close analysis of two youth-produced vlogs, we show that adolescents’ commitment to social change can be creatively achieved through video making. Informed by a socio-semiotic approach to multimodal analysis and by Peter Dahlgren’s concept of online civic cultures, our qualitative analysis highlights two main patterns we found in young people’s vlogs aimed at raising awareness about social issues. First, we found that to impact their intended audiences, vloggers presented themselves as creative choice makers and as savvy insiders of youth civic cultures on YouTube. Second, we found that vloggers successfully managed the risk of being the target of online hostility using rhetorical devices and tactics that smoothed counterpositions. Overall, our multimodal case study shows that contrary to traditional approaches to successful communication based on textual coherence, a mix of consistency, disruption, and contradiction can be used purposefully in public speech in order to manage difficult, risky topics. As we demonstrate that visual-based communication on social network sites such as vlogs posted on YouTube is not neat and tidy, we illuminate the vloggers’ shifting identities, opinions, and concerns. This evidence-based observation calls for more in-depth small case qualitative analyses for investigating the multiple affordances of civic talk online and its democratic potential. This article contributes to the ongoing conceptual redefinition of youth civic engagement and political participation in the face of fast-evolving sociotechnical change.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.