Speaking Up About Bullying on YouTube: Teenagers’ Vlogs as Civic Engagement

Abstract

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.

Subject matter of videos for teens on YouTube

“…In any event, as well as experimenting with forms of communication and audiovisual styles (Misoch, 2014), young people imitate the creative guidelines of professionals and YouTubers, regardless of the production and positional conditions . In this respect, as pointed out by Caron (2017) when analysing youth-produced video blogs, vlogs appear to be a potentially appropriate channel for civic engagement and online activism.…”

The internet as a global playground: young citizens and informal spaces of agency, a Portuguese case study

“…Online platforms and objects have taken on an important role in the sphere of civic action, affording new forms of collective political activity (Ahuja, Patel, & Suh, 2018). Investigating young people's public voice online-their production, reproduction, and interaction with online objects (Caron, 2018)-is thus crucial to understanding the dynamics of youth civic agency and participation overall. As Dahlgren (2012) notes, participation "is central to our understanding of both media audiences and the practices of civic agency today" (p. 28).…”

“…Finally, studies on the Internet and youth highlight both evidence that young people's offline civic actions are not being included in decision-making processes (Caron, 2018;Coleman, 2006) and the tendency of those who are already civically engaged offline to participate in civic life through online channels (Norris, 2011;Prout, 2000). In addition, a number of studies have emphasized the importance of online social networks, giving evidence that they play a major role in civic political engagement and participation (Feezell, Conroy, & Guerrero, 2009) and in social movements and collective action (Bennett, 2008;Bennett & Segerberg, 2012).…”

How are civic cultures achieved through youth social-change-oriented vlogging? A multimodal case study

“…Multimodality has recently emerged as a helpful theoretical framework for investigating the compositional complexity of user-generated digital media texts (Curwood and Gibbons, 2010; Halverson, 2010). Rooted in social semiotics, multimodality examines media making as a socially embedded practice occurring through participatory acts of communication geared toward others, sometimes with an explicit civic or political purpose (Caron, 2017). This is achieved through complex combinations of modes, such as speech, gesture, image, and sound (Adami, 2009).…”

“…In the current socio-technological conjuncture of information and communication technology (ICT)–enabled youth participatory politics and emerging patterns of connective action (Bennett and Segerberg, 2011; Cohen and Kahne, 2012; Loader et al, 2014), multimodal analysis is particularly well-suited to a close analysis of youth-produced vlogs, a visual-based medium often used by young people on YouTube who are producing videos to voice their opinions on social issues and to promote social change (Caron, 2017; Raby et al, 2018). An analysis of vlogs offers the opportunity to look closely at how young media creators design their public speech through semiotic work, that is, using the rich modal resources of video making to reach and win over their intended audiences (Halverson, 2010).…”