Wood, R (2021) ‘What I’m not gonna buy’: Algorithmic culture jamming and anti-consumer politics on YouTube. New Media & Society, 23 (9). 2754 - 2772. ISSN 1461-4448

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Abstract

<jats:p> This article is based on an analysis of ‘anti-haul’ videos on YouTube, where a vlogger explains which beauty products they plan not to buy. Anti-haul vloggers have much in common with ‘culture jamming’ movements, which use the communicative practices and materials of promotional culture against itself to spread an anti-consumerist agenda. The article argues that anti-hauls should be understood as the reinvention of ‘culture jamming’ techniques for a contemporary promotional culture that is platform based, algorithmically governed, and mobilised through the affective, authentic performance of the ‘influencer’. I refer to this manipulation of the platform’s visibility mechanisms to spread anti-consumer messages as ‘algorithmic culture jamming’. The anti-consumer politics of anti-hauls are contradictory and ambivalent. At the same time, I argue that anti-hauls also offer important possibilities for political learning, personal and collective transformation, and alternative creative pleasures outside of continual consumer accumulation. </jats:p>

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: The final version of this article and all relevant information related to it, including copyrights, can be found on the publisher website at; https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1461444820939446
Subjects: H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
H Social Sciences > HA Statistics
H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory
H Social Sciences > HF Commerce
H Social Sciences > HF Commerce > HF5410 Marketing. Distribution of products
Divisions: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Humanities
Related URLs:
Depositing User: Symplectic
Date Deposited: 02 Nov 2021 09:29
Last Modified: 02 Nov 2021 09:29
URI: https://eprints.keele.ac.uk/id/eprint/10204

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