Nigahiga faced a temporary suspension from youtube in what year

Social Media Entertainment

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P O S T M I L L E N N I A L P O P General Editors: Karen Tongson and Henry Jenkins

Puro Arte: Filipinos on the Stages of Empire Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries Derek Johnson Your Ad Here: The Cool Sell of Guerrilla Marketing Michael Serazio Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities Mark Anthony Neal From Bombay to Bollywood: The Making of a Global Media Industry Aswin Punathambekar A Race So Different: Performance and Law in Asian America Joshua Takano Chambers- Letson Surveillance Cinema By Catherine Zimmer Modernity’s Ear: Listening to Race and Gender in World Music Roshanak Kheshti The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics Ramzi Fawaz Restricted Access: Media, Disability, and the Politics of Participation Elizabeth Ellcessor

The Sonic Color- line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening Jennifer Lynn Stoever Diversión: Play and Popular Culture in Cuban America Albert Sergio Laguna Antisocial Media: Anxious Labor in the Digital Economy Greg Goldberg Open TV: Innovation beyond Hollywood and the Rise of Web Television Aymar Jean Christian Missing More Than Meets the Eye: Special Effects and the Fantastic Transmedia Franchise Bob Rehak Playing to the Crowd: Musicians, Audiences, and the Intimate Work of Connection Nancy K. Baym Old Futures: Speculative Fiction and Queer Possibility Alexis Lothian Dislike, Hate, and Anti- Fandom in the Digital Age Edited by Melissa A. Click Social Media Entertainment: The New Intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley Stuart Cunningham and David Craig

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Social Media Entertainment The New Intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley

Stuart Cunningham and David Craig

N E W Y O R K U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S New York

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N E W Y O R K U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S New York www.nyupress.org

© 2019 by New York University All rights reserved

References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

CIP tk

New York University Press books are printed on acid- free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppli- ers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Also available as an ebook

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In memory of Matt Palazollo, writer, star, and producer,

Bloomers, and for all those creators doing good

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vii

Contents

List of Figures and Tables ix

Introduction 1

1. Platform Strategy 19

2. Creator Labor 65

3. Social Media Entertainment Intermediaries 115

4. Authenticity, Community, and Brand Culture 148

5. Cultural Politics of Social Media Entertainment 184

6. Globalizing Social Media Entertainment 223

Conclusion 263

Acknowledgments 289

Notes 297

References 299

Index 333

About the Authors 335

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ix

List of Figures and Tables

Figures

I.1. Gigi Gorgeous 2

I.2. VidCon 7

1.1. SME and Legacy Media Advertising Revenue Comparison 20

1.2. Income of New and Established Players 21

1.3. YouTube as a Component of Alphabet, Estimate 2016– 2023 43

1.4. Projected TV and Digital Video Advertising Spend, 2014– 2020 43

2.1. YouTube Channels with over One Million Subscribers 66

2.2. YouTube Space (Los Angeles) 85

2.3. Rhett & Link 96

2.4. A New Literary Age? 110

4.1. PewDiePie 161

4.2. Michelle Phan 173

4.3. Hank and John Green 175

4.4. VidCon 177

4.5. Nerdfighter Merchandise 178

5.1. Tyler Oakley and Friends 185

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x | List of Figures and Tables

5.2. Wong Fu Productions 197

5.3. Bria and Chrisy 210

5.4. Ingrid Nilsen 215

5.5. Joey Graceffa, “Don’t Wait” 216

6.1. Old Cotton Mills of Mumbai— Now Producing Indian SME 233

6.2. Reach of Top 5 Engagement Categories, India 2016 235

6.3. Percent of Time Spent on Smartphones, India 2016 235

6.4. Indian Engagement Levels, Hours per Week, 2016 236

6.5. East India Comedy 237

6.6. Logos of Chinese Platforms and MCNs 242

6.7. Miss Papi 245

6.8. The Great War 252

C.1. Revenue of China’s Online Video Sector and Live- Streaming Sector, 2009– 2019e 281

C.2. Revenue Growth in China’s Online Video Sector and Live- Streaming Sector, 2009– 2019e 282

Tables

1.1. US Digital Advertising Revenues 44

3.1. MCN Acquisitions 145

6.1. China’s Top 10 Mobile Apps, Monthly Active Users 244

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1

Introduction

The picture in figure I.1 was taken in spring 2017 of a billboard located on the iconic Sunset Strip, where movie stars have featured on the hoardings since the golden age of Hollywood. The sign promotes a YouTube Red documentary, This Is Everything, directed by Academy Award– winning filmmaker Barbara Koppel (Harlan County U.S.A.) and starring Gigi Gorgeous. For most Hollywood tourists, or even Holly- wood professionals, Gigi’s name and face may be unfamiliar. But for 7.2 million global fans and followers across YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook (Ifeanyi 2017), Gigi is the new “it” girl— and arguably the world’s most famous trans lesbian beauty vlogger. For nearly a decade, long before Caitlyn Jenner or hit series like Transparent, Gigi shared her transition from a teenage boy name Gregory to Gigi with her global fan community, who witnessed her progression from a makeup hob- byist to an advertising influencer partnered with global beauty brands. Gigi’s trajectory, including her transformation into an LGBTQ activist appearing on the cover of the LGBTQ magazine The Advocate with the headline “Trans, Lesbian, and the Face of an Online Movement” (Guer- rero 2017).

Gigi was not alone. For the past few years, YouTube has posted cam- paigns promoting their most prominent “creators.” Like their Hollywood counterparts, creators are “next- gen” stars. Unlike their counterparts, these stars are also entrepreneurs, community organizers, and cultural icons populating a brand- new, if brand- focused, parallel media universe we are calling “social media entertainment.”

But the social media universe, of course, is not populated only with inspiring uplift. In the aftermath of the 2016 US elections, numerous accounts surfaced of nefarious content creators profiting by posting fake content on social media. This tsunami of fake news may have influ- enced the outcome of the election as it engaged in “anti- Clinton fervor,”

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2 | Introduction

promoting Donald Trump’s candidacy and spreading right- wing news. Buzzfeed described how “Teens in the Balkans” earned up to three thou- sand US dollars a day “duping Trump supporters.” MSNBC and NPR in- terviewed creators who operate as members of a “new industry” (Craig and Cunningham 2017).

On the other side of the political spectrum, some of the most promi- nent US creators spent the election season promoting civic engagement, advocating for liberal causes, and championing Clinton. The Vlogbroth- ers, also known as Hank and John Green, launched a “get out the vote” campaign featuring their fan community— known as Nerdfighters— through a dedicated YouTube channel, “How to Vote in Every State” (2016). Prominent beauty vlogger Ingrid Nilsen interviewed President Obama and attended both political conventions on behalf of YouTube. Her advocacy resembles MTV’s collaboration “Rock the Vote,” with the

Figure I.1. A promotional poster for the YouTube Red release of Gigi Gorgeous: This Is Everything adorns Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood. Photo by David Craig.

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Introduction | 3

crucial difference that Nilsen represents a small business entrepreneur, not a multinational media conglomerate.

In turn, these creators risked not only offending fans but also the po- tential loss of advertising revenue and brand sponsors. LGBTQ creator Tyler Oakley championed Clinton to his nine million YouTube subscrib- ers and six million Twitter followers. Oakley posted an interview with Clinton on the eve of the election entitled “Meeting Future Madam Presi- dent” (2016). In addition to over sixty- six thousand affirmative responses (“thumbs up”), Oakley received more than ten thousand “thumbs down” from fans who may have unsubscribed from his channel and lost him revenue. In the case of Casey Neistadt, who promoted political topics and insisted that other creators come out against Trump, the BBC considered whether he had committed “YouTube suicide” (Varley 2016).

Since the election, these creators have continued to champion resis- tance to Trump, progressive concerns, and a healthier Fourth Estate. Nilsen and Oakley promoted and posted videos from the Women’s Marches. Neistat attended airport protests against President Trump’s immigration ban, and his video garnered over three million views in one day (Gutelle 2017a). Since then, Neistat has partnered with CNN and announced the launch of a YouTube- based news series along with apps aggregating vetted news content while filtering out fake news cre- ators (Jarvey 2017a). Among numerous social media entertainment en- terprises, the Greens continue to run Project for Awesome, an annual campaign that encourages creators to raise funds online for their favorite charities and help “decrease world suck” (ProjectforAwesome.com). Their 2016 campaign raised over $1.5 million for Save the Children and the UN High Commission for Refugees. These campaigns align with the topics of numerous Vlogbrother videos about the global refugee crisis and the conflict in Syria, which have been viewed by millions globally. These, and projects like Jerome Jarre’s #LoveArmy, which is presently fighting famine in Somalia (Jacewicz 2017), are but a few examples of next- gen creators dedicating their cultural power to global progressive causes.

After the election, Clinton reflected on the pernicious influence of fake news on politics. She described this phenomenon as an “epidemic” with “real- world consequences” (Gambino 2016). In contrast, these pro- gressive creator activists arguably represent a palliative. At the very least, they affirm how this new medium of social media can be harnessed to

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4 | Introduction

promote diverse political views. At most, although they did not prevail this past election, these next- gen culture warriors could prove vital to winning the next— while also helping to generate progressive change around the world.

Defining Social Media Entertainment

This is a book about these, and many, many more social media creators. It is a book about current and relatively recent incursions into screen media as we have come to know them over a century and more. It argues that the emerging shape of screen industries in the twenty- first century shows established players, norms, principles, and practices ceding sig- nificant power and influence to powerful digital streaming and social networking platforms. Just as notably, these platforms have started to represent a greater value proposition to the advertising industry that has served as the bulwark for main media since the start of broadcast- ing early in the last century. Creators have harnessed these platforms to generate significantly different content, separate from the century- long model of intellectual property control and exploitation in the legacy content industries. This new screen ecology is driven by intrinsically interactive technologies and strategies of fan, viewer, audience, and community engagement. Combined, these factors inform a qualita- tively different globalization dynamic that has scaled with great velocity, posing new challenges for established screen companies, creatives, and regulatory regimes— not to mention media scholars.

The emerging shape of screen industries in the twenty- first century en- capsulates deep changes in consumer habit and expectation, technology, and content production related “to a larger trend across the media indus- tries to integrate digital technology and socially networked communication with traditional screen media practices” (Holt and Sanson 2013, 1). This emerging new screen ecology has not only given rise to major challenges to established media but is being shaped by a set of newly prominent online screen entertainment platforms, most prominently Apple, Amazon, and Netflix but also and preeminently Alphabet/Google/YouTube, along with others such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat.

Arguably one of the most challenging and innovative elements of this evolving screen ecology is the rise of “social media entertainment,”

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Introduction | 5

or SME, as we will refer to it for the sake of brevity. We see SME as an emerging proto- industry fueled by professionalizing, previously amateur content creators using new entertainment and communicative formats, including vlogging, gameplay, and do- it- yourself (DIY), to de- velop potentially sustainable businesses based on significant followings that can extend across multiple platforms. The infrastructure of SME is comprised of diverse and competing platforms featuring online video players with social networking affordances, including YouTube, Face- book, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and Vimeo. These platforms have introduced commercial features that service their own interests but also affordances that entrepreneurial content creators have accessed to culti- vate diverse business models and revenue streams.

This “industry” is only a bit more than ten years old, having started soon after the acquisition by Google of YouTube in 2006 and concurrent with the launch of Twitter and their counterparts in China, Youku and Weibo. By 2017, it saw more than three million YouTube creators glob- ally receiving some level of remuneration from their uploaded content and more than four thousand YouTube professionalizing- amateur chan- nels with at least a million subscribers. The top five thousand YouTube channels have received over 250 billion video views in aggregate. But these numbers do not translate into revenue in the same way as Nielsen ratings and television advertiser cost- per- thousand (CPM) rates. And some cre- ators are securing sustainable careers with far fewer views and subscribers but much more engaged fan communities and richer brand deals.

It is important to stress the distinction between social media entertain- ment content and platforms and Hollywood- like content distributed, and in some cases increasingly produced, by the major “Internet- distributed television” portals (Lotz 2017) such as Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Video, and Apple’s iTunes. While these portals largely specialize in mainstream long- form premium content supported by sophisticated algorithmic feedback (Hallinan and Striphas 2016), social media platforms offer scale, technological affordance, and— especially in the case of YouTube— remuneration and upskilling to previously amateur creators. We argue that SME constitutes a more radical cultural and content challenge to es- tablished media than the digital streamers (or portals).

It would be little overstatement to claim that these dynamics are a huge experiment in seeking to convert vernacular or informal creativity

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6 | Introduction

into talent and content increasingly attractive to advertisers, brands, talent agencies, studios, and venture- capital investors on a near- global scale— with implications for content/entertainment formats, production cultures, industry structures, and measurement of audience engage- ment: “[T]he world has never before seen the likes of YouTube in terms of availability of non- infringing content” (Hetcher 2013, 45).

The book anatomizes this emerging proto- industry, taking an “eco- logical” approach by investigating the interdependencies among its elements: mapping the platforms and affordances, content innovation and creative labor, monetization and management, new forms of media globalization, and critical cultural concerns raised by this nascent media industry. Our anatomization has been based on deep, ongoing engage- ment in the field at many levels of the industry, principally through over 150 interviews with creators, platform and intermediary executives and managers, talent agents, technology integrators, and policy makers. While primarily focused on the United States, as that is ground zero of SME, our fieldwork includes interviews conducted in Sydney and Shanghai, Berlin and Beijing, London and Mumbai. We have attended and participated in industry events such as VidCon, the creator- focused trade and fan conferences run by the Greens, and assisted in the devel- opment of pop- up YouTube Spaces.

At the same time, our research is informed by similarly deep en- gagement with a wide range of issues and debates central to media studies, cultural studies, communication studies, and media manage- ment. These include the dynamics of participatory culture, minorities and the marginalized in media cultures, digital disruption of media industries, the rise of social media, conditions of creative labor, and new forms of media globalization. This book is the story of a proto- industry that has emerged at the intersection of the cultural, techno- logical, and industrial dynamics tracked in these issues and debates. On the basis of this theoretical engagement, we are able to contribute well- evidenced, revisionist accounts in the political economy of new media (the clash of cultures of globally dominant media and IT corpo- rations); construct an account of short- form commercializing online video culture as a highly normative space driven by appeals to au- thenticity and community; extend the debate on creative labor to in- clude the precariousness of certain forms of media management; and

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Introduction | 7

assess claims for a new wave of media globalization achieved without IP control.

There are some important caveats to this study. In 2017, it was esti- mated that one billion hours of YouTube are seen every day as compared to 1.25 billion hours of television per day (Solomon 2017). There were 1.5 billion monthly users, not counting people watching through links, shares, and downloads via other means. There was one hour of YouTube watched per day on mobile alone. This includes user- and profession- ally generated content. It is estimated, for example, that music makes up as much as 40% of YouTube content, with much of this promotional proprietary content from the big labels. And this is just YouTube. Since our initial research was conducted in 2015, Facebook has grown 25% to over two billion users while its platform partner, Instagram, has doubled in size to over eight hundred million users. But social media network- ing practices are not at all easily comparable to television viewing. The percentage of native SME creators operating on and across all these

Figure I.2. VidCon, the premier SME industry, trade, and fan conference. Photo by David Craig.

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8 | Introduction

platforms is impossible to assess, as we explain in chapter 1. Out of all these statistics, it is clear that SME as yet comprises a small part of the online content universe. Despite much scholarly concern over the “insti- tutionalization” or “formalization” of video sharing, it remains probable that the significant majority of this activity occurs outside the kinds of commercial dynamics that support SME.

In this book, we are driven by a commitment to diverse voices nur- turing their owned- and- operated businesses in pursuit of sustainable careers while engaging in media entrepreneurialism that may have profound ramifications for the future of content and cultural produc- tion. We are also committed to tracking cultural progressivity where it carves out space within commercializing systems. And, in the wake of the information catastrophe that unfolded around the 2016 US presidential election, it is arguable that the commercial environment within which SME operates inhibits the spread of alternative and fake news— is in fact a safer environment— because most brands and ad- vertisers will not tolerate association with such affronts to civility and democracy.

The Specificity of Social Media Entertainment

This book examines claims for the specificity and distinctiveness of social media entertainment as it has emerged spatially across several industrial dimensions as well as temporally in the context of extraordi- narily rapid change.

The Challenge of Online Distribution

The challenge of online distribution calls up the riposte to the oft- quoted saw: if content is king, then distribution is King Kong. The business history of the Hollywood Majors is a history, relatively speaking, of remarkable stability. However, in the decade from the early 2000s, the Majors tried, but largely failed, to establish themselves in online distribu- tion. Instead, this emerging distribution space was occupied by Internet “pure- play” businesses— Netflix, Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook— many of which are appreciably larger, and have much deeper pockets than the Majors (Cunningham and Silver 2013).

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Introduction | 9

Challenges to media incumbents are, of course, not new. The rise of television in the 1950s threatened the incumbency of film studios, turning cinema audiences into home- bound viewers. Within a decade, however, television co- evolved and converged with Hollywood. The film studios became as codependent on TV for syndication revenue, particu- larly a newly launched subscription channel called Home Box Office (HBO), as TV had upon the content- generation and talent- management skills of Hollywood. The new screen ecology of home video helped sus- tain an independent cinema industry throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Similarly, the challenge of cable distribution represented a similar pat- tern of co- evolution over time, especially in programming. For example, with full distribution across the cable universe, most ad- based networks shifted their programming strategies to embrace Hollywood storytelling to secure larger audiences and higher advertising returns. The former Arts and Entertainment network evolved into A&E, and went from Brit- ish coproductions to reality programming, while AMC has shifted from libraries of American Movie Classics to complex American TV series like Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

But this current challenge is not only in distribution. Netflix and Amazon have engaged in very significant investment in origi- nal programming, looking to function not merely as a distribution outlet for Hollywood movies and television but increasingly as des- tinations for their own branded premium content. Global interest in Netflix’s House of Cards, Orange Is the New Black, Narcos, and Amazon’s Transparent and Mozart in the Jungle have pundits breath- lessly suggesting that “the traditional TV industry should be in panic mode” (McNab 2016). Amazon and Netflix have even emerged as platforms of destination for what was the former independent film market ( Siegel 2016).

A crucial distinction lies in the underlying value proposition of these platforms. Amazon’s programs function as promotion, to sell member- ships for its formidable e- commerce business. Similarly, Apple’s iTunes, which is limited to transactional and syndicated distribution while— at least up to 2017— avoiding the messiness of content production, fuels its core business of iProducts. In some respects, this is as it ever was. NBC was to RCA television sets as Disney has been to plush toys and theme parks, as Philco and Texaco were to broadcast, ad- supported television,

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10 | Introduction

and as movie theaters are to popcorn and soda. In the professionally generated content (PGC) part of the new screen ecology, media content and distribution operate as means to an end for other higher- margin industries interested in selling products to consumers more than in sto- rytelling for audiences.

Nevertheless, a notable comparison should be made between earlier outsiders engaging with Hollywood, such as the Japanese conglomerates driven by earlier business nostrums of synergy, and the Silicon Valley tech firms:

Throughout its history, Hollywood has tended to resist outsiders— except when they come bearing money. . . . [T]hey have invariably been parted from their cash by studio executives and talent agents unable to believe their good fortune. . . . Instead of handing over their money to the studios, as some naive international players have done before them, the streaming services have set themselves up as competitors. . . . [T]hey are doing all the things that traditional movie studios do. ( Garrahan 2017)

For social media entertainment, the video wars between Silicon Valley and Hollywood saw the rise of hybrid content– social net- working platforms, most notably YouTube. These platforms offer open access (to users who can afford to access broadband and mobile systems with enough speed) for unlimited content of mul- tiple modalities (video, photos, text) and innovative formats (vlogs, gifs, memes). In contrast to their digital TV- like competitors, these offer more than increasingly convergent video content players. They also nurture social media networking systems, comment sections and likes, emoticons and shares, friends and followers. And these platforms are appearing in diverse and competitive waves, from web- based platforms like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook to mobile apps, like Instagram and Snapchat and (the now deceased) Vine. In The Culture of Connectivity, Jose van Dijck (2013) has importantly discussed how these platforms have engineered sociality. Here, we also account for how these platforms have facilitated a new mode of enterprise by millions of professionalizing and commercializing users through sociality online.

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Introduction | 11

The SME Creator

We focus our attention on SME creators who started out as hobby- ists with little intention of developing any form of income, let alone a sustainable career. The difference offered by the new screen ecology’s provision of potential career opportunity, even celebrity status, through amateur hobbyism and personal expression cannot be gainsaid. These creators disrupted the normative route through which media talent is filtered. YouTubers must be seen as a class of content creators who are able to exercise a higher level of control over their career prospects than in previous models of professionalizing talent. The head of the digital division of a leading Hollywood talent agency sums it up: “A traditional film or television artist— a writer, a director, a performer— has spent a certain amount of their life preparing to be ready for when opportu- nity knocks. . . . The mentality of a digital creator is the exact opposite. They’re not preparing for an opportunity; they’re creating it themselves” (Weinstein 2015). The distinctive career pathways and very low barriers to entry have meant that SME is more racially plural, multicultural, and gender diverse by far than mainstream screen media. And YouTubers gave rise to Viners, Snappers, and Grammers— enterprising creators adapting to and harnessing the commercial and technological affor- dances of the later platforms.

The rise of amateur content creators on new media platforms is not in itself new. Early amateur and nonprofit radio operators emerged out of the basements of American households. The development of home movie cameras launched a generation of filmmakers in their back yards. Garage bands and punk rockers began their careers in small venues, playing to friends and family. But the analogy ends there. The amateur broadcasters were “brushed aside” by a federally imposed commercial system (Streeter 1996, 251). To guarantee audiences, the filmmakers were forced to enter the film festival circuit or the studio system to secure dis- tribution. The musicians were inevitably forced to sign with record la- bels, which controlled not only their distribution but also their destinies.

There is simply no comparison with SME creators— across multiple variables, not least of which is access to unlimited distribution across multiple platforms. In addition, the means of digital production af- ford not only low- budget production but virtually no division of labor