KevJumba and the Adolescence of YouTube

Bibliographic Data

ID8923946
AuthorsRoger Saul (0000-0003-3695-5901, York University, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume46
Issue5
Pages457-477
Publication date2010-09-27
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEducational Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-1946 • E-ISSN: 1532-6993
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00131946.2010.510404
OpenAlexW2026665988
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited23

This article considers the significance of YouTube as a pedagogical space from which young people can play participatory roles as theorists in their own constructions as popular cultural subjects. Drawing upon the public profile of ‘KevJumba,’ a teenager who makes videos of himself on YouTube, the article suggests that representational practices of adolescents on YouTube can serve an important educative function. They can do the work of disrupting conventional constructions of adolescence in popular culture, of demonstrating that adolescents can be savvy critics and skillful negotiators of the social constructions made of them, and of highlighting how external controls inform the presumed autonomy that online practices self-expression offer young people. Paying attention to the popular cultural practices of adolescents on spaces like YouTube can offer a contemporary educative venue from which to contemplate how young people do the work of defining and contesting their place in the popular imagination

Adolescent development · Developmental psychology · Mathematics education · Sociology · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Music History and Culture · Psychology

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