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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1

The Commercialization of YouTube: Can Apology Videos as a Product Ever be Authentic?

Najovits, Ariella 01 June 2022 (has links)
In recent years, YouTube has evolved from a user-generated platform to a platform that thrives on professionalized and marketable content, otherwise known as the era of the social media influencer (Kim, 2012;). This thesis applies neutralization and Millsian theories to help unpack the widespread fraud and deceptive advertising on the platform within a neoliberal capitalist context. The focal points of this thesis are apology videos in the wake of deceptive/fraudulent advertising scandals, cancel culture, and the symbiotic relationship that influencers and corporations share in paid sponsorships on YouTube. The findings indicate that influencers function similarly to corporate entities during scandals and engage in neutralizations to protect their reputation, brand, and business relationships (Schoultz & Flyghed, 2019; Whyte, 2016). This thesis also points to the legal challenges in holding influencers accountable at the level of domestic advertising agencies and on YouTube itself. Lastly, this thesis questions the invisibility of corporations in these scandals regarding how this may be indicative of larger manifestations of corporate power in society.

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