Joseph, D. orcid.org/0000-0003-4628-7417 and Bishop, S. (2024) Advertising as governance: The digital commodity audience and platform advertising dependency. Media, Culture & Society, 46 (6). 1269 -1286. ISSN 0163-4437
Abstract
This article draws from an ethnographic investigation of YouTube to argue the significant and specific role of advertising in the governance of platformised cultural production. We pursue this investigation in a critical dialog with theoretical approaches drawn from platform governance, platformisation and political economy communications, foregrounding the concept of the audience commodity. In our analysis of official and unofficial YouTube content, the role and desires of advertisers were discussed in depth. Community commentary videos publicly argued that YouTube cared about advertisers more than a content creating community; marketing-orientated entrepreneurial growth content advised creators to pursue a ‘buying audience’; and YouTube’s official communications painstakingly reminded creators to ‘put themselves in advertisers’ shoes’. Each of these perspectives contributes an understanding of the ways advertising structurally shapes the governance of cultural production in practice.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2024. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
Keywords: | advertising; platform governance; platform studies; political economy of communication; YouTube |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Media & Communication (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 03 May 2024 09:05 |
Last Modified: | 04 Oct 2024 10:37 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/01634437241237935 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:212226 |