‘What I’m not gonna buy’: Algorithmic culture jamming and anti-consumer politics on YouTube

Wood, R

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>

Citation

Wood, R. (2021). ‘What I’m not gonna buy’: Algorithmic culture jamming and anti-consumer politics on YouTube. New Media and Society, 23(9), 2754--2772. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820939446

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 8, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Jul 8, 2020
• Publication Date: Sep 1, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: May 30, 2023
• Journal: New Media & Society
• Print ISSN: 1461-4448
• Electronic ISSN: 1461-7315
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Volume: 23
• Issue: 9
• Pages: 2754--2772
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820939446
• Keywords: Algorithm, algorithmic culture jamming, anti-consumerism, beauty, influencers, YouTube
• Publisher URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1461444820939446