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Information, Communication & Society
ISSN: 1369-118X (Print) 1468-4462 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rics20
Micro-platformization for digital activism on social
media
Jonathon Hutchinson
To cite this article: Jonathon Hutchinson (2019): Micro-platformization for digital activism on social
media, Information, Communication & Society, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2019.1629612
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1629612
Published online: 13 Jun 2019.
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Micro-platformization for digital activism on social media
Jonathon Hutchinson
Department of Media and Communication, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
ABSTRACT
Social media emerged with a broad understanding that egalitarian
practices would become the standard approach to publishing and
distributing content. In recent times we have seen this flat
hierarchical approach fade as commercial stakeholders, platform
providers and content publishers continue to design and practice
exclusionary processes to ensure their work is visible. This current
practice limits the capacity for all voices to be heard, prompting
the question how can digital activism remain visible in a media-
saturated social media environment? This paper draws on a
content analysis of the most popular YouTube users in Australia to
illustrate the absence of digital activism within its visual culture. It
maps the process of fragmented platformization, called here
micro-platformization, to highlight the content production and
publishing strategies digital activists should adopt. While
successful commercial YouTube practitioners adhere closely to the
principles of social media logics (Van Dijck, J., & Poell, T. (2014).
Understanding Social Media Logic. Media and Communication,1
(1), 2–14), this paper argues that stakeholders engaging in the
practice of digital activism need to adopt similar strategies to their
commercial counterparts. By including strategies that reflect the
successful practices of social media logics, digital activism can not
only become visible across social media spaces, but also engage
public discourse on civic matters and public affairs.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 6 July 2018
Accepted 31 May 2019
KEYWORDS
Digital activism; YouTube;
micro-platformization;
influencers; MCNs
Introduction
Digital activism in its current form presents several challenges to remain a sustainable
endeavour for socially active groups that engage in media content production and distri-
bution across social media. Visibility is a key concern for all producers who share content
across social media platforms, where visibility tactics are often embedded into the pro-
duction process itself. Alongside digital activism, the leading commercial digital agencies
around the globe engage in a number of communication strategies to ensure their content
is not only visible but is also consumed with high levels of engagement. These commercial
visibility strategies may include aligning with publishing conventions of social media plat-
forms, incorporating live events, working alongside existing social influencers, or large-
scale campaigns that combine mass media with social media.
© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
CONTACT Jonathon Hutchinson jonathon.hutchinson@sydney.edu.au Department of Media and
Communication, University of Sydney, Room N233, John Woolley Building (A20), Manning Road, Sydney, NSW 2006,
Australia @dhutchman
INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION & SOCIETY
https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1629612
Social media platforms such as Instagram and YouTube have harboured this current
wave of social media use, which sees content publication dominated by social influencers
with extraordinarily large audiences (Hutchinson, 2017). In most instances, social influen-
cers promote commercial products for personal economic (financial) and social (fame)
capital gains, continually developing their personal brands. The result has seen these plat-
forms flooded with content that promotes travel, lifestyle content, entertainment, gaming
and toy genres especially. These content production practices are often undertaken
through content genres such as travel vlogs, ‘unboxing’segments where the presenters lit-
erally unbox a product and review it, or ‘shopping haul’videos where the presenter will
review a bag of goods they have recently purchased. These hyper-commercial practices
ensure maximum exposure for commercially oriented content producers, simultaneously
preventing a number of potential ‘third-wave’cultural intermediaries (Perry et al., 2015).
Third-wave cultural intermediaries represent social influencers that are concerned with
‘socially engaged practices and non-economic value’(p. 724). Third-wave cultural inter-
mediaries are, however, unable to enter the digital ecosystem to engage in important
areas such as public issues, current affairs, civic media and key societal conversations.
Simultaneously, platform providers play a significant role in the popularization of com-
mercially oriented content over that of public affairs. Through the use and continual evol-
ution of algorithmically calculated recommender systems, content that is popular has
increased visibility in comparison to public issues. ‘Most algorithms are commercial sys-
tems that combine a diverse set of methods to weight results on the basis of sophisticated
and usually hidden data analyses’(Sørensen & Hutchinson, 2018, p. 94). While these
algorithmically processed recommender systems are useful to assist users in finding and
accessing content in an over-saturated media world, they create agency that decides
which content is important and for whom. For example, Lee (2018, p. 3) notes there
are ‘potential gaps between the mathematic, computational definitions of fairness used
by algorithms and more social definitions of fairness’, suggesting algorithmic processing
works on efficiency and not equality. This socio-technological relationship between plat-
forms and equality has been of increasing interest in academic enquiry (see for example
Gillespie, 2014). It has, however, not aligned with the content exposure practices of
influencers to describe the contemporary media ecosystem.
The combination of social influencers and algorithms in the form of recommender sys-
tems is the basis for digital intermediation (Hutchinson, 2019). Built on the capital transfer
practices of cultural intermediation, ‘digital intermediation incorporates the agency of
platforms, social media influencers and increasingly algorithms’(p. 2). Combining the
agency of both commercially oriented social influencers with platform providers, digital
intermediation can explain the process of how content appears for particular platform
users. Simultaneously, digital intermediation is the process by which content producers
engage to ensure their content is visible. As Ferdinands (2016) describes, exposure is
key for social influencers, where digital intermediation represents the process by which
their content becomes popular, and also aligns with the mechanics of platforms to increase
that exposure. Digital intermediation, then, is a process by which digital activists should
also be engaging to ensure their work is visible across social media platforms.
This paper presents research data that highlights the publishing strategies of social
influencers across YouTube, while observing the absence of digital activism. Through
what I frame as micro-platformization, this research illustrates its implications for
2J. HUTCHINSON
platformization, digital intermediation and digital activism. In doing so, the results pro-
vide insights for third-wave cultural intermediaries to increase their platform visibility
(Meikle, 2016) while creating and publishing socially relevant content. If activists are to
thrive across social media, they require alternatives to the commercially oriented micro-
platforms associated with multichannel networks and digital agencies. Micro-platformiza-
tion illustrates how civic media can remain relevant and sustainable in a neoliberal, net-
worked media environment. This research also highlights the new forms of networked
publics that are emerging through large-scale social media practices across YouTube.
The results of this research can apply to DIY, civic and other digital media activist groups
to increase their visibility and maintain their sustainability across popular visual social
media platforms such as YouTube and Instagram.
Digital activism
To understand the difference between popular content and digital activism across social
media platforms such as Instagram and YouTube, it is useful to highlight the relationship
between the two. While the term digital activism has gained interest in academia, along
with popular press, it may become victim of hyperbolic promotion of the term. In
many cases, digital activism has been associated with media technologies and applied to
various movements. The terms ‘revolution 2.0’or ‘Twitter protest’are often used as the
broad understanding of digital activism. Yet as Gerbaudo (2017, p. 478) highlights,
these terms are often techno-determinist in that they merely view ‘the content of various
forms of activism supported by digital communication’to direct any form of protest
mobilization. While digital activism has risen in visibility within the popular press, it
has often been associated with movements such as #blacklivesmatter or the more recent
#metoo movement, it embodies a more nuanced definition than technology alone.
Digital activism is in many ways a combination of several approaches towards protest,
visibility, mobilization, and activity. One way of understanding digital activism is its role
within political shifts. Often, digital activism is associated with civil disobedience as denial
of service attacks, open source advocacy, hacktivism, or hashtag activism. The develop-
ment of networks is another form in which digital activism is present, where González-
Bailón, Borge-Holthoefer, Rivero, and Moreno (2011) note ‘the use of social networking
sites (SNSs) to help protesters self-organize and attain a critical mass of participants’
(p. 3). The network capacity of digital activism suggests it is a process of information dis-
semination alongside its mobilization affordances. The relationship between political
shifts and digital activism has demonstrated its potential around the globe and has
spanned over a decade of use. It has been approached, and continues to be, by a number
of disciplines and interested parties.
One very useful method to understand digital activism is across its applications over
the past decade. Karatzogiani (2015) articulates the application of digital activism
through what she refers to as the four waves of digital activism, spanning 1994–2014.
The first wave is associated with the anti-globalization movement, mobilized by the
Zapatista movement within Mexico. The second wave is associated with the anti-Iraq
war movements and spans 2001–2007. Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRICs) are sig-
nificant players of digital activism within the next phase between 2007 and 2010. Finally,
the Snowden and Wikileaks movements mark the mainstreaming of digital activism
INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION & SOCIETY 3
between 2010 and 2013. In each wave, while social media plays a significant role, it is
deeply representative of the political, economic and social contexts in which digital acti-
vism emerged.
Radical activism is one of the increasingly popular aspects of digital activism, which has
gained momentum through the Alt-Left movement. Wolfson (2014) provides a compel-
ling account of the rise of the cyber left during the latter stages of fourth wave digital acti-
vism that Karatzogianni describes. With a political and economic crisis as a backdrop,
civilian uprising emerges through Wolfson’s interpretation of Marcuse’sThe Great Refu-
sal: ‘as organizers, activists, and everyday people across the world respond to the economic
crisis and growing specter of poverty and inequality’(p. 2). Yet at a conceptual level, Wolf-
son’s framework for activism applies to all incarnations of contemporary digital activism.
He notes ‘technological tools are not neutral, as they are produced and reproduced with
social intention by those with power. At the same time, technological practice is a site
of contested struggle, and therefore, technological tools can be utilized to create social
change’(p. 4). Digital activism regardless of its level of radical-ness requires specialist tech-
nology to enable its purpose.
In each of these digital activism instances, there is a moment of critical mass, which
hinges on the visibility or indeed the popularity of the content associated with each move-
ment. This is an interesting praxis of public issues with popular media content. Gerbaudo
(2017, p. 478) notes that while social media is in a cyber-populism state, which sees an
increase in content that is mostly concerned with ‘non-political activities, such as gossip,
celebrity culture, or interpersonal communication’, it also provides us with a unique
opportunity to leverage civic issues. He argues cyber-populism ‘can nevertheless be poli-
ticized and turned towards the purpose of popular mobilization against the neoliberal
elites responsible for economic and social disarray’. With this as a backdrop for digital
activism, aligning it with the process of digital intermediation that sees popular content
becoming visible through social influencers and platform recommender systems, could
see public issues appear for more users. The combining of cyber-populism with public
issues can improve the visibility of digital activism for larger audiences, especially across
key platforms such as YouTube.
The platformization of YouTube
The transition of social networking services from stand-alone products towards the con-
cept of platforms is a significant moment in the recent history of social media. Gillespie
(2010) suggests this transition is not merely a change in terminology after Google’s acqui-
sition of YouTube in 2006, but an entire shift to demonstrate the tensions between users,
commercialization and regulation. He notes, ‘YouTube must present its service not only to
its users, but to advertisers, to major media producers it hopes to have as partners, and to
policymakers’(p. 348). He goes further to conceptualize the idea of platforms as a com-
bination of four aspects: computational, the infrastructure that enables the operation
and design of applications of use; architectural, something on which a person stands;
figurative, as an opportunity to improve something; and political, as a stage on which a
political party will endorse their beliefs. If the concept of platform embodies these four
characteristics that Gillespie highlights, platforms do significantly more than merely
host content: they are the interface between users, regulation and commerce. Furthermore,
4J. HUTCHINSON
platforms have agency in that they perform their role as a user, regulation and commercial
interface through the method in which users distribute and access content.
As a number of social network sites embody the concept of ‘platform’the process of
platformization becomes important. Helmond (2015,p.1)defines platformization as
‘the rise of the platform as the dominant infrastructural and economic model of the social
web and its consequences’. In many ways, this shift towards platformization anchors on
Gillespie’s architectural understanding of platforms, in that this is how data from across
the web becomes platform ready. For data to become platform ready, it is processed
through a built-in application programme interface (API). The platform as an architec-
tural device enables other third parties, often platforms, to integrate and work with the
affordances of the host platform. This may take the form of enabling a user to comment
on an article in an online newspaper via their Facebook account, embedding video in blog
posts, or using platform data to initiate connected and so-called smart devices. In many
cases, the architectural design of APIs and the platforms that are therefore integrated
boosts economic growth, driving platformization. More importantly, platformization rep-
resents how data, which is content and its user engagement, can be used in a number of
other unforeseen ways to connect content producers to content consumers.
Platformizaton when coupled with social media logics (Van Dijck & Poell, 2014)
becomes the enabling process for several social, political and economic activities to be
undertaken across the internet. Platformization becomes a way to think through the pro-
grammability of the produced content distributed across the web. In describing program-
mability as the way social media content can be curated in a networked era, van Dijck and
Poell define it as ‘the ability of a social media platform to trigger and steer users’creative or
communicative contributions, while users …may in turn influence the flow of communi-
cation and information activated by such a platform’(p. 5). Programmability describes the
process by which content becomes popular across social media platforms: it is the manipu-
lation of content that is distributed across social media platforms that promotes our inter-
personal communicative activities. Additionally, programmability inherently embeds
power relations between users, platforms and content, where the creators can manipulate
that content. In other words, programmability is the way in which we connect ourselves
with others across social media platforms through the adapted uses of the published
media. The programmability of platformization is one way to determine the relationship
between the norms, strategies, mechanisms and economies that determine the dynamics
between social media users, mass media, platforms, and social institutions. To align plat-
formization with Gerbuardo’s understanding of the link between social media and digital
activism, the cyber-populism of our personal datafication is what enables greater exposure,
or visibility, through the digital intermediation process.
The popularization of our data-fied selves is the fuel of most contemporary platforms.
When this sort of content becomes subject to the vanity metrics of platforms, for example,
likes, shares, or comments, it is the reason why some content experiences increased popu-
larity: the social media logic of the content’s programmability aligns it with the surround-
ing technological and cultural practices to increase its visibility. The popularity of the
content can demonstrate not only increased visibility, but also how this content is con-
nected to power –a crucial factor for socially active groups and individuals engaging in
civic, public, and current affairs. Brighenti (2007, p. 324) astutely highlights that visibility
‘lies at the intersection of the two domains of aesthetics (relations of perception) and
INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION & SOCIETY 5
politics (relations of power)’. The visibility, then, is driven from a personal perspective to
align with the programmability of social media logics. Hutchinson, Martin, and Sinpeng
(2017) note that a social media user’s behaviour is directly related to their publicness, or
visibility, as a combination of their aesthetic and political approach. They note behaviour
reflects ‘how they conceive and value the “publicness”or aesthetic visibility of their activi-
ties and the impact on this attention on their self-perception and network status’(p. 64). In
other words, popular content is aesthetically driven to improve its chance of becoming vis-
ible, which in turn creates powerful media texts.
This is certainly the case with a number of content producers on YouTube. Some of the
leading ‘YouTubers’, referred to henceforth as vloggers, create content that has high levels
of network reach, a large audience base and high levels of engagement via their platform’s
vanity metrics. What this does suggest, however, is platform bias as these vlogger’s have an
unfair advantage in reaching larger audiences. From a longitudinal study, Bärtl (2018)
suggests an incredible amount of visibility, and thus power, is available to a few YouTube
channel producers. He notes, ‘that a vast majority of on average 85% of all views goes to a
small minority of 3% of all channels’(p. 16). The previous egalitarian understanding of
social network sites is moot, and instead a small and highly visible group of vloggers
have become those who direct the discourse. This observation aligns with Bishop
(2018) who says the technical mechanics of the YouTube platform, specifically its algor-
ithm, creates ‘a discriminatory visibility hierarchy of vloggers, favouring middle class
social actors who make highly gendered content aligned with advertisers’demands and
needs’(p. 69). The content that is most visible on YouTube, then, is popular and demand
driven, often aligning with the commercial aspirations of advertisers.
If socially important content, such as public affairs or civic issues, is to be at all visible
on YouTube, it needs to align with the aesthetic principles of cyber-popular content, with a
view to transfer these principles toward the political domain. This may be possible if vlog-
gers undertake the production of public affairs content who embody the principles of pop-
ular, connected and aesthetically driven content. However, given the endless queue of
individuals who strive to become the next biggest YouTube or Instagram discovery, and
who concentrate on developing their personal branding over public affairs, this process
remains complex. The broader cultural marketplace determines the visibility of public
affairs content on YouTube especially, which relies on strategic production tactics.
The marketplace of culture
Napoli (1999) highlights the role of the marketplace of ideas metaphor within media and
communication regulation. In so doing, he positions the approach towards the concept
from two distinct dimensions: democratic theory and economic theory. ‘Economic the-
ory-based interpretations of the market place of ideas emphasize efficiency, consumer sat-
isfaction, and competition, whereas democratic theory-based interpretations emphasize
citizen knowledge, informed decision-making, and effective self-governance’(p. 151).
The concept of a marketplace is the exchange of goods and services where there are
enough consumers to make the provisions profitable. Within the marketplace of ideas,
we see the emergence of a new understanding of the role of media within the informed
citizenry: ‘efficient exchange and maximizing consumer satisfaction’(p. 155). It is here
that we can locate the platform practices of YouTube: an efficient exchange of ideas
6J. HUTCHINSON
with high consumer satisfaction. However, while consumers appear to be satisfied, as per
their vanity metric assessments, there is certainly a focus on the economic over the demo-
cratic. This provides a unique opportunity for culture to emerge as a key dimension within
the marketplace: a marketplace of culture.
In many ways, the marketplace of YouTube aligns with the existing markets of tra-
ditional mass media: there is a message, some kind of sender, and a receiver. However,
this marketplace is unique and while it has been in operation for just over ten years, it
operates in ways that are unfamiliar to traditional media processes. The typical commer-
cial communication process includes the creation of content by advertisers, the sale of that
content to audiences, and sale of those audiences back to the advertisers. The marketplace
of culture process, however, introduces new players within the YouTube environment that
piggyback on the original commercial communication process. Within the marketplace of
culture, goods and services are assigned to influencers, influencers engage audiences across
platforms and platforms sell those audiences back the advertisers. Figure 1 demonstrates
how the communication process has remained the same, yet highlights the new stake-
holders engaged across platforms such as YouTube. Here, we can see how culture can
be manufactured and provided to an engaged audience base. Alongside the commercial
marketplace process, introducing cultural considerations also provides a useful framework
on which to include citizen knowledge, informed decision-making, and effective self-
governance.
This content production process is only half of the digital intermediation process,
where understanding and aligning with the platform mechanics describes the other
half. As YouTube is an increasingly popular destination to publish content, the algorithm
adjusts accordingly to reflect the idea of platformization. Bishop (2018) argues that this
process is not at all equal and is in fact highly biased. In her research on beauty vloggers,
she notes the ‘algorithms increasingly learn and self-sharpen, often causing unintended
side effects and amplifying discrimination, refracting and sharpening classed and gendered
bias’(p. 71). This focus on bias is an important observation within the marketplace of
ideas, as cultural production plays a significant role in fine-tuning not only consumer
tastes, but also the constant state of flux of the platform’s algorithm.
The visibility of a content creator, especially digital activists, is problematized by the
slow, and biased, algorithmic adjustment that is rolled out across platforms such as You-
Tube. While technicians continue to remedy such issues within the YouTube algorithm, it
broadly represents the ever-increasing barrier to entry for many content producers,
especially when creating public issue content. Yet, it is worth aligning this issue against
the commercial industry, which has created its own solution to this bias that involves
both the use of influencers and targeted exploitation of platform algorithms. This is the
basis for micro-platformization as a potential solution for increased visibility for digital
Figure 1. The Marketplace of Culture across YouTube.
INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION & SOCIETY 7
activism operating in a commercial social media platform environment, which is described
in detail after the Methodology section.
Methodology
To address these key issues, I designed a new ethnographically inspired research method-
ology to identify, map and measure key YouTube practices. This methodology is based on
a mixed method of both qualitative and quantitative techniques and can be framed as data
ethnography. Building on the provocation of Ford (2014) who suggests ethnographers
should be working more closely with scholars from the social sciences, data ethnography
mixes ethnographically inspired qualitative methods with emerging quantitative methods.
Dourish and Gómez Cruz (2018) importantly note that data ‘stories’are told through con-
text, time and other people, where the research presented in this paper engages users, plat-
forms and practices to holistically understand the research field. Furthermore, the
methodology is based on rapid ethnography (Millen, 2000), which emphasizes ‘shorter
periods of fieldwork and quick turnaround of findings to inform (re)design, programming
and implementation efforts’(Ackerman, Gleason, & Gonzales, 2015, p. 1).
The first phase of the methodology required engagement with intermediary agencies
through field visits with 11 digital agencies based in Sydney, Los Angeles, Munich and Ber-
lin. This research took place between July 2016 and July 2018. These three field sites were
chosen because each city has a strong YouTube agency and creator presence, along with
the close connection to the nearby an annual YouTuber conferences. VidCon in Los
Angeles and Melbourne are the largest, which is hosted by YouTube, but there are
other regional versions of these events that are designed to bring content creators and
fans together. In Germany, VideoDays are one of the larger MCNs who also host their
local version of VidCon, which they call VideoDays and tour through Germany, Switzer-
land and Austria. These cities then provide an ideal ‘melting-pot’of rich data to under-
stand how popular YouTubers operate.
I gained access to these sites through a snowballing technique that was the result of vis-
iting 18 agencies in a ‘cold-call’method, with three follow up sessions with four agencies.
During the field work, I observed how the creative employees operate and conducted semi-
structured interviews with 18 industry experts (agency talent managers) and 11 prac-
titioners (influencers). After interviewing the professionals in the industry, I would syn-
thesize the key strategies they described into my own YouTube video production
practices. I adopted a methodological approach similar to Vromen (2017)ofan‘unobtru-
sive ethnographic observation …in a naturalistic setting’to understand how the content
production practices of those I observed could be applied to my own production practices
on YouTube. To engage the participant observation aspect of my ethnography, I was creat-
ing and publishing YouTube videos to understand the process. To be clear, I am not an
activist nor am I a third-wave cultural intermediary: I am a digital media researcher. I
was an outsider to these production industries but having a tacit knowledge through
my YouTube video production enabled me to reflexively manage any researcher insi-
der/outsider discrepancies. The unobtrusive ethnographic observation further enabled
me to understand both the content production process, and how digital agencies use digi-
tal intermediation to increase influencer exposure which has informed the following
analysis.
8J. HUTCHINSON
During the second methodological phase, I identified some of the most popular You-
Tube channels through the Social Blade influencer ranking platform, which tracks over
23 million YouTube channels via its pubic API. Social Blade provides information such
as Channel Rank, Channel Views, Video Views, Estimated Earnings, and Subscribers. I
compiled a list of the top 50 Australian YouTubers, which was the focus of a content
analysis of the channels, the creators and the content. Australian YouTubers were selected
to provide a basis for further comparative research and provide a useful sample of global
YouTube creators who had fewer barriers to access than those based in other countries.
The content analysis enabled the research to observe the most popular genres, the sort
of content the users are producing, and a close reading of the content that is produced.
The final method draws from design thinking principals, which enabled a persona con-
struction approach to understand how the YouTube algorithm treats particular ‘users’.
Persona design is a process common to Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and involves
creating a fictitious character to understand how they function in a computer-mediated
environment. Persona design is ‘used by designers, developers, project participants, and
others to get ideas for the design of products, IT systems, and services’(Neilsen, 2011,
p. 2). For example, persona design treats the character of a 62-year-old Brazilian
woman significantly different to that of a 14-year-old Australian boy based on their inter-
ests, which directly translates to their YouTube search terms. The process involved creat-
ing a series of new Google accounts based on the user characteristics and interests (search
terms), then engaging in an algorithm training process to understand the sorts of content
the YouTube algorithm returns to that category of users. By designing these characters, the
method provides useful insights into how the recommender system arranges and
organizes the videos, and how these videos are visible to a variety of audience groups.
Micro-platformization for digital activism
The previous section began to highlight how commercial stakeholders have approached
the platform content publishing process, by gaming the platform through the content pro-
duction process. I also highlighted the recent research by Bishop (2018)who’s research
revealed the inherent bias of algorithms. This is problematic when algorithms are proces-
sing cultural production, as they fail to understand the context in which they operate. This
observation is important within the digital activist space: it highlights an area that is almost
impossible for socially relevant movements to gain traction. Here the programmability of
platforms (van Dijck & Poell, 2014) for increased visibility (Brighenti) is crucial: content
that is within the digital activism space and addresses critical public issues needs to stra-
tegically ‘game’platform mechanisms to increase its visibility to the citizens it concerns.
However, the commercial industry has a proven track record of successful operation in
this space, which has much to teach us about how individuals and groups can function
within a hyper-commercialized environment.
Multichannel Networks (MCNs) have emerged as an intermediary that proposed to
solve this problem for content producers, by organizing as a large group of powerful con-
tent publishers, unlike a disparate collection of mildly influential content publishers.
Patrick Mulford, the Chief Executive Officer of theAudience, and Hollywood based
MCN, notes
INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION & SOCIETY 9
Social media has now become the primary way that people express themselves, and the domi-
nant evolutionary driver for popular culture. theAudience is a “culture company”. We weave
brands into the fabric of popular culture, by making them meaningful contributors to the
social ecosystem. (Personal communication, 5 June, 2017)
MCNs operate in the space between cultural production and consumption by sourcing
the fringe creators across social media to align them with cultural markets. Beyond the
process of content production itself, they often host a number of other events to bring
users, brands and influencers together to increase exposure of all interested stakeholders.
One common method of increasing exposure is through live events such as meet and
greets, which provides fans an opportunity to meet their favourite influencers, and con-
vention styled events.
Lukas Maderner is the PR and Communications officer of VideoDays. He describes the
event as:
We see ourselves as a link between content producers and consumers. As influencers them-
selves started as small creators or even consumers, the need for an event that brings together
both consumers and producers is really important. In the first years of YouTube most crea-
tors organized small fan events themselves. Due to increased number of fans and for security
reasons, a big event such as VideoDays became necessary and is an important leg of YouTube
fan culture in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. (Personal communication, 11 June, 2018)
Cunningham and Craig (2016)define the collective process as social media entertain-
ment (SME), as a way to describe the collision of platforms, brands, MCNs and social
influencers. Their research highlights the process of influencers building their personal
brand across their social media platforms for increased audience size and, in turn, remu-
neration. They note SME across platforms is a process where,
A rapidly professionalizing and monetizing wave of diverse, multicultural, previously ama-
teur content creators from around the world have harnessed these platforms to incubate
their own media brands, engage in content innovation, and cultivate often massive, transna-
tional, and cross-cultural fan communities. (p. 5413)
Platforms are appropriately located within the SME space due to their ability to engage
in programmability of popular content, enabling the content to be shared and located
across a number of other social media communication spaces. Within this content pro-
duction and consumption environment, it has been the role of MCNs to manage influen-
cers by aligning brands and services with them, and vice versa, for maximum exposure
across a number of platforms.
However, as the role of the influencer became incredibly popular, the number of individ-
uals positioning themselves as influencers grew exponentially, making it difficult for MCNs
and digital agencies to discern influencers with high levels of engagement, and not just fans
or followers. MCNs and digital agencies required a further, more fine-grained selection pro-
cess to ensure they had access to the most influential and popular cultural intermediaries for
specific brands and services. Jennifer Uder of Think Inc. United, a Munich based PR and
digital influencer agency, said that engaging the service of the influencer partner platform
called Reachbird enables them to locate the most appropriate influencers.
Reachbird is an influencer platform where influencers can sign up, and say I only need an
influencer that is only interested in surfing, so I can put in key words like surfing and
then say I want them to have reach between this and this, I want them to be male and I
10 J. HUTCHINSON
want them to be living in Switzerland. So, I can be very specific and then it will throw out all
the influencers for you. (Personal communication, 24 May, 2018)
As Uder notes, they have a large database on hand that lists the digital influencers related
to their agency, but at times that list fails to provide them with the ideal, specialist influencer.
Services such as Reachbird and Collabary by Zalando are emerging platform intermediaries
in the SME marketplace, who further mediate the cultural production process.
This additional mediation moment demonstrates the fragmentation of the digital inter-
mediation process, which I argue as micro-platformization. Within micro-platformiza-
tion, a new digital intermediary has emerged who acts as an agency for the MCNs, in
many ways ensuring the advertisers receive the most appropriate influencer for their pro-
ducts or services. In a similar way that platformization makes data platform ready, micro-
platformization makes influencers brand ready. While the marketplace of culture is still
the process of providing audiences to advertisers across social media, the introduction
of two significant stakeholder groups have demonstrated the specialist focus of communi-
cating across social media. To send messages across social media effectively, one needs a
unique vantage for their content production, but also requires the distribution capacity of
the digital intermediaries that bring cultural production audiences and producers together.
Figure 2 represents the process of micro-platformization across the two levels of digital
intermediation.
What the micro-platformization process demonstrates is the continual fragmentation of
social media platforms. Culture is the driving force of any communication logic across social
media, which is instantly transferred into a commodity. Within that commodity production
and consumption model are a number of digital intermediaries that are continually focused
on understanding the mechanical programmability of the YouTube platform and adapting
accordingly. This is the visibility process for culturally rich content for large audiences,
which demonstrates opportunities and challenges for content creators, including those in
non-commercial enterprises. In following the micro-platformization process and by treat-
ing public affairs with a concerted aesthetic effort, this content can also become visible to its
desired audience. To understand this better, we can refer to the Australian YouTube mar-
ketplace as illustrative for the broader social media environment.
Micro-platformization within YouTube
With the combination of social influencers and platformization, and recently the emer-
gence of micro-platformization, it is becoming clear how difficult it is to be visible across
Figure 2. An example of the marketplace of culture process.
INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION & SOCIETY 11
social media platforms. This paper so far has drawn on the commercial successes to
demonstrate the sorts of strategies and approaches one requires to achieve visibility within
a media-saturated environment. To demonstrate the lack of digital activism in this space,
the paper now focuses on the Australian YouTube arena.
Currently, there are no Australian digital activist groups engaging in a micro-platfor-
mization strategy across YouTube. Consequently, their content and their channels fail to
appear in the top-ranked content producers within YouTube consumption. To demon-
strate the sort of content that is successful, Figure 3 utilizes a tree map graph to illustrate
the hierarchy of the most popular Australian YouTube channels that have been con-
sumed for all time. Entertainment (24%), Beauty and Lifestyle (16%) and Gaming
(16%) are the top three categories, with toys coming in as the next closest channel
category.
The most popular channel defined by its total amount of views is CKN Toys, with 5.4
billion views. It is self-described as ‘This is a family and children friendly channel review-
ing kids toys and opening Giant SURPRISE EGG’. Typically, the channel presenters
unwrap toys, review toys, and often use Kinder Surprise eggs to entertain its young audi-
ence. The second most popular channel is SR Toys Collection with 3 billion views, who
also describe themselves as a toy-reviewing channel. The third most popular channel
defined by its all-time view count is FluffyJet Toys, with 2.5 billion views, who animate
toys on screen and narrate the story. Collectively, these three channels have produced
over 10 billion views.
The comedy genre provides one of the most popular Australian channels produced,
with the channel HowToBasic attracting over 1.6 billion views. The producer describes
it simply as ‘I make How To videos’, however on closer viewing, the typical model the pro-
ducer follows is to create something and then destroy it in an arguably comical method.
The next most popular channel is Lachlan, which is a typical gaming channel in the same
genre as Twitch videos, where he describes the channel as, ‘Here I play a bunch of video
games’. His channel has attracted over 1.1 billion views.
Figure 3. The top Australian YouTube Categories.
12 J. HUTCHINSON
In each of these channels that are emerging as the most popular viewing experiences by
Australian producers, it is entertainment, comedy and gaming that viewers are most inter-
ested in watching. It is important to highlight that digital activism should not imitate the
production of these genres which has been previously argued as toxic (Lomas, 2018).
Instead, the tactics that these genres implement highlight how the medium, YouTube,
can be, and realistically must be, managed to enable visibility amid the media-saturated
environment. In each of these genres, the videos have a particular production aesthetic,
follow a familiar, albeit self-produced, format, and align with the social media logics high-
lighted above. Every video that has been produced in these genres adheres to programma-
bility in that they can be moved around on different platforms, popularity in how they
directly speak to their audiences’expectations of high entertainment values, connectivity
through the connection of branded content that is integrated into the videos, and datafi-
cation through the demonstration of converting the vloggers’lives into content that can be
stored and accessed on a social media platform.
There are a few activist channels within Australia that have been somewhat popular on
YouTube, but these videos miss a significant audience size. Table 1 lists a small sample of
these activist videos by most viewed, which demonstrates the vast difference between the
views of the more popular content in Australia compared with the activist content. It is
worth noting the top two videos also had major traditional media campaigns across
radio, press and television to support them.
The most popular video in this table, ‘It’s Time | Marriage Equality’, is the video for the
campaign of the recent marriage equality debate within Australia by the social advocate
group, GetUp! Australia. The first-person video shows their everyday life with their
male partner at the beach, with their family, and enjoying fun times together. At the
end of the video, after the two have married, the audience becomes aware that we have
been following the life of two men as they grow in love with each other. The video was
used as a way to demystify the stigma around same sex marriage for the most contentious
public debates of recent times. The second video in this list, ‘Stop Coca-Cola Trashing
Australia’, also comes at a time when the issue of waste is high on the public agenda.
The video appears to be a usual Coke advertisement of happy times next to the Australian
beach when it suddenly shocks its audience with dead birds falling from the sky. The birds
are victims of ingesting plastic from the ocean, where Green Peace Australia is asking Coke
to take some responsibility for the amount of its plastic bottles that end up in our water-
ways. The remaining videos in Table 1 are related to current public issues in Australia, and
Table 1. The most viewed activist type YouTube videos in Australia.
Video Name Channel
Number of
views
It’s Time | Marriage Equality | GetUp! Australia GetUp! Australia 16.4 million
Stop Coca-Cola Trashing Australia Greenpeace Australia 1.9 million
Demand a Safe Home for the people of Syria Amnesty International Australia 585,048
Racism. It stops with me. TV spot featuring Adam Goodes Australian Human Rights
Commission
282,537
Oxfam Unwrapped with Sammy J and Randy Oxfam Australia 272,915
Don’t Let the Day Get Away Hello Sunday Morning 38,085
What are the Most Important Issues to young people in Australia
today
Mission Australia 5761
Endowhat? Unravelling the mystery behind endometriosis Institute for Molecular Bioscience 5300
INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION & SOCIETY 13
are published by significant NGOs such as Oxfam, Mission Australia and the Human
Rights Commission. These YouTube channels attracted significantly low viewing levels.
The closest category to emerge that is somewhat similar to public issues or civic matters,
is the science category, suggesting that the commercial and entertainment categories dwarf
all other varieties of content on YouTube in Australia. While this is not surprising, it does
indicate that if public affairs and content production that emerges from the socially rel-
evant arena is to be successful it has to adopt a similar aesthetic to those popular commer-
cially oriented videos. That does not necessarily mean that they have to adopt a similar
production style, but rather align with the social media logics that Van Dijck and Poell
(2014) have previously highlighted as important for content production on social media
platforms. The above research demonstrates that the conceptual approach of social
media logics can be applied to the loci of YouTube videos that are popular, suggesting
it can potentially assist in raising the visibility of the socially aware videos.
While this Australian YouTube research is illustrative of YouTube production and con-
sumption more broadly, the results align with similar studies conducted across other social
media platforms. Bruns, Moon, Münch, and Sadkowsky (2017) mapped the Australian
Twittersphere with strikingly similar results in regard to the leading categories of conver-
sations. In their research, they identify News, Popular Music, Sports, Fashion and Teen
Culture as some of the most significant cluster themes in this network. Activism and Char-
ities are clustered together and do appear in the network, but they are below 20% of the
total Twitter conversation.
Micro-platformization would be beneficial to digital activist areas: visible content is
directly connected to power as Brighenti (2007) argues, which is the result of platformiza-
tion that connects content producers with consumers, combined with social media logics
that enable additional opportunities through the programmability of data. Those increased
opportunities would see higher visibility for digital activism, ultimately resulting in higher
levels of influence and impact on its audiences.
Discussion
While it is important to understand the roles digital activism plays within society, it is
equally important to understand the commercially oriented environment in which it oper-
ates. The early approach that suggested anyone could publish content on social media plat-
forms, has been overshadowed by the difficulties to attract visibility. The publishing logics
of some producers have been documented as problematic (Lomas, 2018), but they high-
light how the mechanics of platforms can be manipulated to increase visibility. It is not
necessary for digital activists to imitate the practices of their commercial counterparts,
but they certainly need to be aware of the environment in which they also produce and
publish content.
As a result, we have seen the emergence of two new significant stakeholders to this pub-
lication practice: social influencers and algorithmic media. Both actors have been
embraced and have become the basis for commercial orientation for digital agencies
and MCNs. Furthermore, the activity that occurs on social media determines the news
and media cycles that are reported on by traditional media, where it is often the work
of influencers who making that material visible across the entire media spectrum. How-
ever, with the recent interest for ordinary folk to become influencers, MCNs now require
14 J. HUTCHINSON
the input of specialist influencers platforms: a process I argue here as micro-
platformization.
Even though commercial operators have been successful in the SME environment, it is
based within an intricate and strategic content publication and distribution process. The
Australian YouTube content predominantly often falls into the entertainment category.
While it is not a requirement for digital activist to make all of their content entertaining,
there are methods that digital activists could observe and in part replicate from their com-
mercial counterparts, especially micro-platformization. If we return to the concept of the
third-wave intermediaries, they are primarily concerned with creating morally valuable
content beyond the self-branding process –this is different to the marketization of
NGOs in that there are genuinely concerned activists effectively operating in the same
space as commercial media. The problem however, is the potential to find an influencer
who engages in this sort of activity. The commercial industry has solved this issue by intro-
ducing micro-platformization, however the digital activist arena is yet to reach the digital
intermediary stage.
Finally, this research calls on the platform providers themselves to take an active role in
socially responsible content. While they are commercial platforms, YouTube especially is
also emerging as one of the most popular sources that many people access daily. The dis-
parity between digital activism and its closest commercial variety is incredibly biased, and
it is the responsibility of the platform to work towards decreasing that gap and promoting
socially relevant content and public affairs alongside its highly visible commercial content.
Acknowledgements
I would also like to thank Brittany Ferdinands who conducted the unwieldy data collection of a
number of Australian YouTube channels.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Funding
This research was made possible by funding from the Sydney Social Science and Humanities
Advanced Research Centre (SSSHARC) under the Launch Fellowship Scheme.
Notes on contributor
Dr Jonathon Hutchinson (PhD 2013, ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Inno-
vation, QUT) is a lecturer in Online Communication and Media at the University of Sydney. His
research explores Public Service Media, cultural intermediation, everyday social media use, the role
of social media influencers within co-creative environments, and social media within cyber-secur-
ity. He is the NSW Representative on the Executive Committee for the Australian and New Zealand
Communication Association (ANZCA). Hutchinson is an award-winning author and his latest
book is Cultural Intermediaries: Audience Participation and Media Organisations (2017) published
through Palgrave Macmillan [email: jonathon.hutchinson@sydney.edu.au].
INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION & SOCIETY 15
ORCID
Jonathon Hutchinson http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7349-1662
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