YouTube’s Operational Logic: “The View” as Pervasive Category

Abstract

Launched in 2005 as a platform for user-generated content (UGC), YouTube is one of the most popular websites in the world. In this article, I focus on the site’s use of “the view,” which I argue serves as a pervasive category enacted through the platform, in its information regimes and beyond. The view supports a myth of viewer intentionality and satisfaction and serves as the operational logic of the platform as a whole. It is a category in Durkheim’s sense, ordering practices and naturalizing hierarchies and inequalities. These hierarchies concern, and impact on, participation, financial compensation, visibility, and popularity. In making my claims, I demonstrate how the celebratory discourse around YouTube as an empowering tool that levels the media playing field was positively misguided. I make a plea for a critical reading of the view, which can enhance our understanding of the platform and its culture.