Academics Aren't on YouTube, and We Should Be

From day one as a graduate student, I shouted my love of YouTube from the rooftops. Given that YouTube as been a significant part of my life since 2011, I was ecstatic to apply an unhealthy obsession an interesting hobby to my scholarly endeavors. I recall, during our Rhet/Comp meet and greet, my professor had barely finished asking "so what do you want to study?" and I said, "YouTube. There's like, no scholarship on it, so there's definitely a gap in the literature!"

I was, as it often turns out, exceptionally wrong, as there is tons of scholarship on YouTube (see Lehua Ledbetter's work on rhetorics of identity in the beauty community and Samara Anarbaeva's article about identity on YouTube as a whole, for instance), so I was by no means forging a completely new path in academia (oh, what a foolish first-year I was!). I got an education on cyberfeminism, the slippery nature of identifying authenticity online, and digital manifestations of intersectional feminism. There was a consistent emphasis on the practical nature of academia--several scholars noted that in order to "do" cyberfeminism, we should venture outside of our scholarly bubbles, and engage with those in the digital world, translating our ideas into something accessible and digestable.

At first, this idea scared me. Many of my professors and colleagues assumed that, because I liked to study YouTube, I also created YouTube videos. While I did go through a "Jenna Marbles wannabe" phase my freshman year of college, for the most part, my insecurity about my face, voice, and intelligence kept me from creating content on the very platform I spent so much time analyzing.

Perhaps part of this fear stemmed from the observation that, despite encouraging digital engagement, very few scholars vlogged on YouTube. There are "highly academic" videos that viewers would have to actively seek out, but for the most part, daily vloggers and beauty gurus are separate from the scholarly community.

There are exceptions of course, as Lehua Ledbetter refers to her own insecurity about being "found out" as a beauty guru, and I have stumbled upon a student who recently got his PhD at Oxford and vlogged the experience:

Simon Clark in particular has gained quite a following, and has discussed moving into using YouTube to be a full-time science educator. This is the kind of digital engagement scholars call for, but both YouTubers here seem to exhibit a sense of shame in making these career/life choices. They'll say things like "I know this is weird, but..." or "as my channel grew, I felt an increasing sense of terror and anxiety that I would be "found out”—as an academic, as a feminist, someone who should know better than to participate in activities that seem fundamentally at odds with the professional identity that I had so carefully cultivated over the years. I was participating in discourses of consumerism, female gender performance, and appearance that did not align with my beliefs about who I should be as a woman of color, and liberal academic" (Ledbetter). There's almost this sense that YouTubers who also exist in the academy should pick one or the other, or that scholars can still be deemed serious "despite" their work on YouTube.

One of my primary goals as a grad student was to truly bridge that gap between scholarly and popular audiences. I felt tremendous guilt for not creating a YouTube video for my final project, so, a few weeks before graduation, I made this, and showed it to the entire Rhet/Comp cohort during final presentations:

I, like Lehua, felt a tad insecure for showcasing a quirky sense of humor I usually leave outside of school. I cringed at my makeup puns and watched with horror as the most scholarly of scholars wrinkled their eyebrows and looked exceptionally confused. But, I ultimately recognized that I had to get outside of my academic comfort zone to reach teen girls and send along the message that watching a beauty video isn't going to turn them into an anorexic Kardashian right then and there. And, as an added bonus, it encouraged me to reject stereotypes about what it means to study English, and to integrate wit and voice into my academic writing, thus further pushing the boundaries of what scholarship can and should look like.

It seems quite obvious that YouTube scholars should perhaps create content on YouTube, but I have rambled on about its benefits anyway. There are academic topics, however, that don't as obviously lend themselves to YouTube, and this is where scholars could break the mold even further.

Like a true academic, I'm going to elaborate on this point with a "call to action": I have been working on the Center for the Study of Academic Labor website, and have compiled resources for adjunct support and activism. In searching for sources, I investigated YouTube, hoping that there was an ex-adjunct (or even a brave current adjunct) who could tell her story in a vlog format. Outside of Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle of Higher Education, I couldn't find anything. In fact, the adjuncts who did identify themselves seemed to create soft, cushy content, saying things like "teachers talk about you!" but forgetting to mention the poverty wages, lack of benefits, and zero job security that come with the job.

(Vlogger name: Hannah McNeely)

Making content about adjunct exploitation can be tricky, especially given that speaking out against treatment of adjuncts can result in getting fired, threatened, or harassed. Most adjuncts aren't in a position to tell their stories, which I totally understand and respect. But maybe those who benefit from a tenure track position, or who quit academia, could stand in front of a camera and vlog about these very real issues that affect students and families alike.

I understand that many of us don't have the time or resources to devote a serious amount of energy to YouTube (although, many of the video production resources that are available to students are also available to faculty!). But it may be worth trying out a video or two and further bridging the gap on a platform that could very well erase some of the mystery and misunderstandings surrounding academia.