How YouTubers are successful: Interaction and Community

Interaction and community are key features in being a successful YouTuber because success on the platform is dependant on the relationships that YouTubers have with their fans. One of the most popular and controversial figures on YouTube currently is makeup artist James Charles. He is a homosexual white male, who has a fanbase he calls his ‘Sisters’. Despite James Charles’ channel specialising in beauty, he also creates other content related to his home life which allows him to further connect with his audience. Charles’ most recent video ‘Teaching My Parents Tik Tok Dances!’ shows how he interacts, by encouraging users to engage with his content on a range of social media platforms. He also creates a community with his ‘Sisters’ fanbase to connect with and encourage audiences to endorse his brand. I will also explore how YouTube as a platform enables links to other social media and websites.

Charles creates a sense of community because he allows fans to get to know not only himself but his family. The mise en scène is particularly important in this YouTube video because filming takes place in front of his fireplace, where the Dickinson family name placard and a plate with handprints show an intimate view of his family home. Here, the importance of having fun with family is emphasised, allowing Charles to promote the message that by subscribing to his channel, as a viewer you can also join the sisterhood. This shows how a parasocial relationship is being created because viewers feel like they connect to Charles, despite not knowing him in real life. Charles also encourages a sense of community by his use of direct address, as he opens every video with the line ‘Hi Sisters’, and even has merchandise called ‘Sisters Apparel’. Labato explains ‘the evolution of YouTube through the introduction of paid advertising is shifting academic analysis on YouTube from the context/viewpoint of participatory culture towards an analysis of a ‘hybrid cultural–commercial space’ (Lobato, 2016: 357). As well as there being paid advertisements played before and after the video, Charles wears a Sisters Apparel tracksuit and puts a link where you can buy it, showing how he embeds advertisements of his merchandise. He creates a sense of community to sell his products.

James Charles also promotes interaction by encouraging viewers to engage with TikTok as a platform. Due to YouTube having a “primary outlet of user-generated content, allowing anyone to upload, share and browse” (Burgess & Green 2018: 15) this allows reactive and trend-based content to be uploaded. TikTok is a platform that is currently prominent in pop culture. At the end of the video, the audience is actively encouraged to interact with Charles. He promotes his social media platforms by providing his username for his TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, reiterated by the editing used by having aminations appear on the screen. This is because platforms 'accelerate and accentuate the means by which users can package, perform and sell a lucrative personal brand across several online sites.’ (Ang Khamis & Welling 2016: 195) Charles takes this a step further by providing his phone number so that fans can ‘receive exclusive text messages from me’, which creates personalised interaction as well as showing a level of care for his fanbase. The ‘sister shoutout’ is another example of ‘participatory culture’ (Jenkins 2006) because for fans to be mentioned in his video, they have to retweet and turn on his YouTube post notifications. This shows how YouTube enables community because fans will watch content as soon as it’s uploaded, meaning it will be a trending video.

To conclude, Charles promotes interaction and community of his platform by showing the importance of family and sisterhood in his videos. This engages fans and encourages them

to consume his merchandise which creates further revenue. YouTube as a platform

enables this by having links to other social media platforms, creating a further rapport with fans.

Bibliography:

Ang, Lawrence, Khamis, Susie & Welling, Raymond. 2017. ‘Self-branding, ‘micro-celebrity’ and the rise of Social Media Influencers’ in Celebrity Studies, 8:2, 191-208.

Arthurs, Jane, Drakopoulou, Sophia & Gandini, A. 2018. ‘Researching YouTube’ in Convergence, 24(1), 3–15.

Burgess, Jean. Joshua, Green. 2018. YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture (Cambridge: Polity Press)

Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press)

Lobato, R. 2016 ‘The cultural logic of digital intermediaries: YouTube multichannel networks’ in Convergence 22(4): 348–360.

Youtube:

Charles, James. 2020. Teaching My Parents Tik Tok Dances! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSc2FH9Crxo [accessed 23 March 2020].

By Harriet Baldwin