Date of Award
Fall 2024
Language
English
Embargo Period
11-28-2024
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
College/School/Department
Department of Sociology
Program
Sociology
First Advisor
Ronald Jacobs
Committee Members
Kate Averett, Zawadi Rucks-Ahidiana
Keywords
social media, youtube, intellectual labor, cultural sociology, media criticism
Subject Categories
Digital Humanities | Sociology of Culture
Abstract
The rise of video essays as a popular genre on YouTube is a notable development in the media criticism and intellectual work in online spaces. Theorization on criticism as intellectual work and the performance of expertise and credibility is well developed within sociology (Alexander 2004; Jacobs & Townsley 2017) but esearch on YouTube specifically is quite limited within the social sciences. Most existing research on the video essay genre comes from media studies and communications scholarship (McWhirter 2022; Smarandache 2021; Sylvia & Moody 2022). This study seeks to understand how creators working in the video essay genre, and more specifically, those making works of media criticism, achieve a sense of authority and legitimacy as outsiders to traditional intellectual fields. This project is a content analysis with video essays themselves being the objects of analysis. Analysis found four main factors that mediate performances and the construction of credibility on YouTube: Technical proficiency, intellectual hierarchy, audience relations, and identity. These processes overlap with each other and are shaped by material factors like the particular YouTube’s structure of payment and monetization as well as more cultural factors like the conventions of the criticism genre. The creation of expertise and credibility on YouTube is a multifaceted process. As creators who exist outside traditional institutions of knowledge and criticism, video essayists must manage their position as non-traditional intellectuals alongside other obstacles inherent to working on YouTube.
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Nagi, Kendall, "Everyone’s a Critic: Processes of Legitimation in the Video Essay Genre on YouTube" (2024). Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present). 88.
https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/etd/88
