What are teens doing with YouTube? Practices, uses and metaphors of the most popular audiovisual platform

Abstract

This article is part of the outcomes of the Transmedia Literacy research project on teens and transmedia collaborative practices carried out in eight countries between 2015 and 2018. A multi-method approach was used in the study (questionnaires, workshops, media diaries, interviews, observation of online communities) to explore what teens are doing with media. This article presents a map of the uses and practices teens make of YouTube. The metaphors of YouTube that emerged when teens put these uses and practices into discourse are also identified. Five YouTube uses were detected: radiophonic, televisual, social, productive and educative. These uses vary according to the practices performed by teens and how they are related to the logics of the YouTube platform. Moreover, the identified metaphors show the ways teens’ uses are related to their everyday routines and the way they integrate the YouTube platform into various dimensions of their social life, such as their media practices, and the way they acquire knowledge and skills.