YouTube and cultural production practices: Aspiration and brokerage in postcolonial Philippines

Synopsis: Social media platforms have been pivotal in redefining the conduct of contemporary society and video-based platforms such as YouTube serve as key drivers in the democratisation of creative, vernacular, intimate, and affective expressions. Drawing from her co-authored book, Philippine Digital Cultures: Brokerage Dynamics on YouTube, this presentation focuses on the diverse content and practices of Filipino YouTubers, analysing the dynamics of brokering the aspirational logics of beauty and selfhood, interracial relationships, world-class labor, and progressive governance in a postcolonial, digital society. Locating social media content production and influence-making practices within socio-cultural and economic realities in the Global South, and particularly the Philippines, the presentation also raises the value of examining the geographies of platforms as sites of cultural production to outline how postcolonial legacies, structural inequalities, and moral economies get enmeshed in people’s engagement with social media.

Speaker: Dr. Cheryll Ruth R. Soriano is Professor in the Department of Communication, De La Salle University Manila and Artist (Scholar)-in-Residency at the LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore. Her research examines the intersections of labor, cultural production, and platformization. Cheryll is Principal Investigator for Fairwork Philippines and leads the Philippine leg for the multi-country study, Digital Transaction Platforms in Asia. Her books are Philippine Digital Cultures: Brokerage Dynamics on YouTube (Amsterdam University Press, 2022) and Asian Perspectives on Digital Culture: Emerging Phenomena, Enduring Concepts (Routledge, 2018). Dr Soriano sits in the Editorial Boards of local and international journals in Communication and Media Research.