Working on your own production linePlatform videographers and their sources of income

Following on from Viviana Zelizer’s work on the articulation between monetary practices and social relations, this article examines the relationship between videographers and their various sources of income: monetization by the platform, donations from internet users, commercial partnerships, and public funding. Each of these sources is invested with ‘qualities’, in Zelizer’s sense, which are independent of the amounts of money involved. The study is based on 24 interviews with content creators offering learning and popularization videos, mainly on YouTube and Twitch. The article distinguishes three sets of videographers according to their place in the hierarchy of success: ‘aspirants’, ‘institutional videographers’, and ‘established youtubers’. It shows that the various forms of remuneration are both cumulative and antagonistic, and that trade-offs have to be made between them in terms of the ways in which their legitimacy and uses are presented. This rhetorical exercise appears to be particularly necessary and difficult for the most visible videographers.