Understanding
Mediatised Play and Participatory Culture Within Kidfluencers’ YouTube Content
Phenomena: The Case of Emmanuella
Chisom
Mary Adigwe
University of Glasgow,
Scotland, United Kingdom.
Abstract: The global shift
from traditional play to mediatized play has raised critical concerns across
fields invested in childhood and media studies. Kidfluencers, a term coined by
combining ‘kid’ and ‘influencers’, refers to young people who are both
consumers and active producers of media content. This contemporary phenomenon
has sparked scholarly debates about children’s data protection, the
commercialization of childhood, and related issues. Unlike some countries in
the Global North and West that have policies to ban or reduce children’s
engagement with social media and phones, most developing countries in the
Global South still struggle with shortages of technological devices, especially
among children. Despite this limitation, children in developing countries in
the Global South continue to navigate the nuances of becoming active
participants in mediatized play culture just as their contemporaries. This
study contributes to existing scholarship on mediatized play and popular
culture amongst young people within the Global South context. This study
examines how YouTube affordances and audience engagement shape the creative
production of kidfluencers, particularly Emmanuella, and how kidfluencers’
digital agency and participation in media culture challenge traditional
perceptions of play in the Global South. The theoretical grounding will be
based on mediatized play and participatory culture.
Keywords: Kidluencers, mediatized, Participatory, culture, play,
YouTube
Introduction
The emergence of ‘kidfluencers’ in the Global South
reflects the transition from ‘convergence’ to ‘participatory culture’, where
young people are spectators and producers of their content (Jenkins
“Convergence and Culture” 2; Arora and Rangaswamy 899). With the increasing
shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 in media use, especially in the 21st
century, young people are becoming full participants in content creation and
consumption. This transition has also been reflected in the rapid adjustment to
screen play globally. The use of media affordances for leisure activities such
as games, life writing, content creation, Photoshop, and play may seem like a
typical behavior among young people in the West (Arora and Rangaswamy 898), yet
the opposite is the case in some communities in the Global South, due to
limited access to technology. Bird
argues that the move to Web 2.0 in audience media participation, especially in
the West, can cause certain hindrances to how children understand and make use
of ‘non-web-based’ platforms amidst the media revolution in industries (502).
This implies that there is a need to revisit traditional forms of play and
ensure a balance of both, despite the revolution introduced by mediatized play.
Notwithstanding, Willet et al. compare the affordances of mediatized play
against traditional play structures within the United Kingdom to examine how
cultural shifts in the structure of play influence and intertwine with each
other (4-5). Their findings indicate that play performs a vital role in a
child’s development, irrespective of the medium. This becomes the benchmark for
evaluating what should count as play for young people. In this lens, Piccone proposes the terms
‘media user’ and ‘media use’ as more encompassing concepts for transmedia
studies instead of ‘audience’ (378). The motive behind this is the need for an
encompassing terminology that captures the role of young people as producers
and consumers of media content. Despite these
scholarly perspectives, ‘mediatization’ remains an important concept focusing
on the interplay between media, history, culture, and society (Hepp et al. 314;
Livingstone & Lunt 704). To explore young people’s involvement in
mediatized play and participatory culture, this study adopts Emmanuella’s
YouTube Video Contents to address the problem statement:
How do Emmanuella’s YouTube content creation practices
function as a form of mediatized play, particularly their contribution to
kidfluencers’ agency through participatory culture in contemporary media use?
Emmanuella Samuel, known as Emmanuella, was born in July
2010. She is a popular ‘kidfluencer’, comedienne, and actress in Nigeria.
Emmanuella’s rise to fame started with her video content on YouTube. Her
theatrical journey began at the early age of 5 when she auditioned to feature
in a play directed by her uncle, Mark Angel (Olajimbiti 4-5). What started as a
joke suddenly transformed into something big when her play content gained the
attention of the public, leading to more subscriptions, views, and comments on
Mark Angel's YouTube channel. Currently, they have over 2 billion views and
millions of subscribers. In 2017, she proceeded to create a channel where she
posts personal content about her daily life. Emmanuella's breakthrough on
YouTube can largely be attributed to its affordances and the significant
increase in young people's consumption of video content over the years
(Johansen “Children and Influencers” 345), especially with the COVID-19
pandemic in 2020. Emmanuella has received global recognition, such as the
Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award, and invitations to visit several countries to
perform on stage, amassing both a national and international fan base.
This study will evaluate four of Emmanuella’s YouTube
videos: Video Game, Omni Knowest, Free World, and Sweet Revenge.
Applying these YouTube videos, this study will investigate the following
research questions: How do YouTube affordances and audience engagement shape or
influence the creative production of Emmanuella’s video content, and how does
Emmanuella’s digital agency and emancipation in media culture challenge the traditional
perception of mediatized play in developing countries like Nigeria? These
research questions will be analysed using mediatised play and participatory
culture as the theoretical lens for this study.
Mediatised Play
Mediatised play is a theory that explores how perceptions
and meanings of play in contemporary media culture are (re)negotiated,
(re)conceptualized, and (re)shaped, particularly among Young people. This
theory cuts across disciplines like media studies, digital sociology, childhood
studies, and cultural studies, highlighting how play is no longer limited to
physical environments but is increasingly performed, shared, and consumed
through various technological and media channels. Investigating the role of
playful media practices in different disciplines concerned with contemporary
childhood, Johansen, drawing upon the practical theory developed by Reckwitz, argues that “play should be understood as a
continuous exchange between media narratives, genres, expressions and the
concrete play practice, as it takes place
through the handling of different kinds of media, computer games, mobile
phones, tablets, web pages (like YouTube) or toys” (“Media and Play” 5).
This implies that ‘mediatised play’ focuses on combining children’s daily
involvement with technological and media spaces as a form of play and
communication. Children’s play may be seen as absurd and ambiguous from an
adult point of view, which makes its codes and practices often questioned, yet
play remains an act that enables children to emphasize their agency and
participate in popular creative culture (Willet et al., 1). By focusing on how ‘new media’ practices
shape and structure play, media becomes a “molding force” (Hepp, qtd. by
Johansen 4), renegotiating play through its technological and contemporary
affordances.
Willet et al. further draw attention to the importance of
investigating the commercialization of new media play, which is a serious
concern in media studies. This is evident in how children find inspiration for
play and games using the App Store or similar services, in the subtle
commercial and algorithmic structures of YouTube, and how children, in their
concrete play practices, combine play, information-seeking, learning, and
communication (Johansen “Media and Play” 3). Commercialization in media studies
has been part of a broader discussion on childhood and is a limiting factor for
more creative and imaginative play among children. Commercialization cannot be
overlooked in mediatised play. Regardless, Johansen explains that greater focus
should be placed on the impact of play on children and how mediatized play
fosters young people’s media culture and helps them reshape traditional play
culture, given that the essence of media studies is to evaluate how
mediatization affects or influences contemporary culture (“Media and Play”
4). These scholarly views show that play
may have evolved from its traditional structure to new media forms, yet it
retains its main purpose of being a means by which children build good social
relationships.
Participatory Culture
Participatory culture (drawn from convergence culture)
emerged as one of the most influential theoretical lenses for understanding
digital media engagement, audience agency, and the transformation of cultural
production in the contemporary media space. The term "Participatory
Culture" was proposed by Jenkins to explore the cultural shift of the
audience from passive spectators or bystanders to active participants who are
producers and consumers of materials in new and inclusive ways. The emergence
of the idea of the audience as a ‘Produser’, a term coined from the combination
of ‘producer’ and ‘consumer’ (Jenkins “Fans and Bloggers” 2), has sparked
concerns among media scholars who question the efficacy of this idea as the new
norm for media consumption and the position of other mediated practices (Bird
502). As relevant as this concern may seem, Jocson (ch.1) argues that the study
of how young people engage with media, whether in print or on screen, is
important because there is a lot to learn from young people who spend hours
creating content, assembling materials, and distributing content, especially on
different social media platforms
Describing the influence that youth
media culture can have on broader culture, Jocson (ch.1) demonstrates how it
supports expansive literacy practices and promotes civic engagement,
particularly among historically marginalized youth, such as those from
communities in the Global South. These scholarly lenses have positioned
participatory culture as a comprehensive theoretical approach that investigates
how digital technologies enable new forms of cultural participation, creative
expression, sharing, and community building with young people possessing the
agency to be the ‘produsers.’
Research Methodology
Out of over 100 videos of Emmanuella on
Mark Angel's comedy YouTube channel, this research draws emphasis from 4
taxonomical video contents by Emmanuella that were considered educative, funny,
and received relatively high audience engagement in terms of likes, comments,
shares, or memes. The titles of these specific videos downloaded from the
YouTube channel (@markangelcomedy) are: Video
Game, Omni Knowest, Free World, and Sweet
Revenge. These videos were painstakingly
downloaded and watched multiple times, taking into account the features that
resonate with Johansen’s (2018) idea of mediatized play and Jenkins’ (2006)
participatory culture, which are the theoretical groundings of this study.
After collecting the relevant data from the downloaded videos, further analysis
was conducted on fans' engagement in the form of comments, memes, remixes, and
sounds across other social media platforms to show how participatory culture
gives agency to the audience to function as ‘produsers.’
Emmanuella’s YouTube Content as a Form of Mediatized Play
Play encompasses activities typically enjoyed by young
people, such as video games, toys, and other forms of recreational engagement.
Emmanuella’s YouTube content as a form of mediatized play from a socio-cultural
perspective can be divided into two categories: (1) Class difference-induced
play, which focuses on the use of familiar play objects like toys in new media
to captivate the young viewers’ attention during playtime; (2) Taxonomic play,
which centers on the educational play that young people engage in during their
leisure (Olajimbiti 2). Emmanuella's content largely revolves around these two
categories of play. My analysis will focus on four selected taxonomic videos
exploring how Emmanuella trivializes educative activities, turning them into
playfulness. For instance, the video Game
Show is a humorous Taxonomic play in which Emmanuella engages in an
intellectual battle with her young cousin, while their Aunt acts as a
moderator:
Excerpt 1
Background:
Emmanuella’s Aunt gives them a tongue twister to recite. Whoever gets it
correctly is entitled to a spoonful of Ice cream, but the loser will take water
or tea.
Aunt:
Peter Piper picked a plate of pickled pepper, a plate of pickle pepper Peter
Piper picked.
Emmanuella:
Peter Piper Picked A Pickle Pepper Plate, A Pickle Pepper Plate Peter Piper
Picked (Failed)
Success:
Peter Piper Picked A Plate of Pickled Pepper, A Plate of Pickle Pepper Peter
Piper Picked.
(Emmanuella and Mark Angel Comedy)
Young people enjoy this kind of play as it's
very engaging. They may also attempt to participate in the tongue twister game
alongside Emmanuella and her cousin to test their own intellectual capacity,
making the game a participatory and pleasurable play.
Jocson explains that “youth media matters
because young people have tapped into an age-old practice of storytelling to
reveal specific ways in which society structures their lives to shape the kinds
of people they can or will be” (ch. 1). By implication, the affordances of
YouTube have been an enabling factor, allowing young people like Emmanuella to
be actively involved in socio-cultural issues in their environment. Media play
allows young people to act as agentic individuals constantly negotiating and
reshaping their identities. Emmanuella’s YouTube content is considered playful,
even though she approaches serious socio-cultural issues in child-adult
relationships in a humorous and sometimes mischievous manner. She can be
likened to a virtual playmate providing schemes and structures for play
(Johansen, 357). Emmanuella’s Taxonomic YouTube content challenges traditional
perceptions of educative play. Her tone and authentic expression portray a
child very assertive of their agency. An
instance is in the video Omini Knowest, where the lesson teacher
instructs them to list the names of Animals. Some children provided the right
answers, and others gave funny Answers:
Excerpt 2
Teacher: Who can give us the name of a big
Animal? …
Chukwuemeka: Goliath (All laughs)
Emmanuella: The fish
Teacher: Which fish?
Emmanuella: the one that swallowed Uncle
Jonah
Teacher: Who taught you that
Emmanuella: My uncle
Teacher: What does your uncle know? Listen, I
studied zoology, and there is no way a Whale can swallow a human, because it
has a small throat.
Emmanuella: Anyway, you are my teacher, you
know best. But when I go to heaven, I will ask Uncle Jonah
Teacher: And what if your Uncle Jonah is not
in heaven?
Emmanuella: Then, when you go to hell, you can ask Uncle
Jonah. Omni Knowest
(Emmanuella and Mark Angel Comedy, Episode
59)
Aside from the choice of words, what makes this content
engaging is also the use of humorous sounds and background music. There is a
power struggle between the child and adult authority, as they try to justify
their opinion. For context, private lessons are taken as a serious after-school
activity in Nigeria, yet Emmanuella effortlessly turns this into a form of
play. The manner in which the children provide answers based on the knowledge
they have acquired in the classroom and outside the classroom contributes to
the fun and entertainment of the video content (Olajimbiti 5).
Also, Emmanuella uses her real name as her
stage name, making it difficult for her fans to differentiate her real
personality from her digital identity. Furthermore, Emanuella shows that
children from adult-centric countries like Nigeria can question some ideologies
and teachings from adults that do not resonate with them using playful activities.
This aligns with the idea that children, as agentic beings, can make choices in
their child-adult relationship dynamics in society (Christensen 10). This
becomes an unusual phenomenon in the African context where young people are
expected to operate under the stipulated rules and regulations from adults
around them. Young people see her content as mirrors or windows (Bishop, ix) to
their reality. An instance is in the video, Free World:
Excerpt 3
Background:
Emmanuella’s uncle (Mark Angel) tries to outsmart Emmanuella and her classmate
David while helping with her assignment. Upon realizing he doesn’t know the
answers to the questions, he resolves to copy from David. He beckoned to David, who had finished with
his assignment, to bring it so he could scrutinize the assignment and make sure
David gave the right answers, but Emanuella understood his intention.
Mark
Angel: David, are you sure you have done your homework very well?
David:
Yes, Uncle.
Mark
Angel: Go and bring it, let me see.
Emmanuella:
(Laughs) Uncle, don’t tell me you cannot do this assignment, but you used to
tell me that when you were small, you did your assignment by yourself. David
give him to copy. it’s a free world. I am going inside. when you finish
copying, you can come and give it to me. Copy, Copy Uncle.
(Emmanuella and Mark Angel Comedy, Episode 53)
Emmanuella, through her humorous reply to Mark Angel,
ridicules the notion among adults that children are somewhat dumb, revealing
that children know so much about adults' tricks but may decide to exercise
choose silence.
The use of familiar realistic settings in Emmanuella's
video content also contributes to its playful reception among young people.
Instead of fancy environments and materials, Emmanuella uses authentic
traditional school classrooms and leisure locations that resonate with the
consciousness of an African child. For instance, Free World was shot
under a tree, with Emmanuella putting on a casual dress, and David washing some
clothes in a bucket. The trees provide shade and help in cooling off the body
temperature during assignments or leisure. These kinds of scenes are relatable
among young school children in Africa.
As Emanuella advanced in age and popularity, she created
her YouTube channel in 2017, more personal than her work channel
(@markangelcomedy). Her fans constantly wish she retains the playful content
she started with and does not delve into adult content. Some also wish she
could remain the younger version of herself who had missing teeth and appeared
so funny. This shows how leisure-based social media activities cannot be
differentiated from an adolescent influencer's professional social media
personality (Johansen 352). With the reactions from fans, Emmanuella and Mark
Angel created more playful content suitable for her age as well as her
audience. One such piece of content is Sweet Revenge, a series that
captures Emmanuella engaging in Taxonomical play with her uncle. First,
Emmanuella and her uncle take turns to ask each other questions like, “The past
tense of Go is what? or " The opposite of sit is what?” With every
question, they assume they are in an imaginary wrestling ring with boxing
gloves, where the winner throws a punch at the loser. This content is very
entertaining to their young audience, who play along, trying to guess the
answer correctly or predict the winner between Emmanuella and Mark Angel.
Emmanuella’s content, therefore, exemplifies how young
people can utilise technological and media affordances pedagogically by engaging
in educative playful activities during leisure (Johansen 2; Olajimbiti 5). Her
facial expression, choice of diction, and body movement are exceptional
features that make the video content extremely humorous and playful.
Participatory culture in Emmanuella’s YouTube content
In contemporary media culture, children have demonstrated
an interest in being consumers and producers of media content. According to
Jenkins, “the term participatory culture contrasts with older notions of passive
media spectatorship. Rather than talking about media producers and consumers as
occupying separate roles, we might now see them as participants who interact
with each other according to a new set of rules that none of us fully
understands.” (“Fans and Bloggers” 3). By implication, the digital age has
fundamentally transformed how children engage with play, shifting from
traditional physical spaces to virtual platforms where performance and
entertainment converge. This indicates that "if the work of media consumers
in Web 1.0 was once silent and invisible, the new consumers are now noisy and
public” (Jenkins “Convergence and Culture” 19). The concept of participatory
culture suggests that the audience is not merely consumers; they are also
producers who interact with new media through various affordances and agency,
such as fan fiction, advertisements, memes, and recreation. Participatory
culture can manifest in different ways depending on the platform utilized and
the affordances it offers. Also, the engagement of young people with YouTube
video content using the various affordances provided by the platform
represents, in itself, a form of mediatized play (Johansen 1). This is
explicitly illustrated in the audience's engagement through comments, remixing,
and the creation of fan pages for Emmanuela.
Emmanuela, as one of the youngest influencers in Nigeria,
inspires young people and has become a household name for young and emerging
‘kidfluencers’ interested in mediatized play in Africa. One of her earliest and
most viewed YouTube videos, Not My Real Face, has been used by fans to
create memes for interactions and funny reactions across various social media
platforms. Additionally, popular websites like Zikoko have also created
memes from Emmanuella's videos.
Aside from creating online YouTube content, Emanuella’s
manager allows her to participate in fan meets, birthdays, and stage
performances where she can physically interact with her fans and take selfies
with them. These events are often highly interactive and align with what
Johansen (351) describes as down-to-earth and underplay sense of humour, in
which there is room for jokes, like when fans demand that Emanuella make her
“this is not my real face” facial expression from her viral YouTube video, or
enquire about her upcoming content. She also participates in many activist
movements that concern the welfare of young people and gets printed on posters
or placed in promotional adverts to attract young people’s attention. An
instance is when she was featured in brands' advertisements during Children's
Day celebrations.
Currently, countless fan pages exist across various
social media platforms, amassing thousands of followers. These pages share
content about Emmanuella’s upcoming events. They are also used for voting
during award nominations. Young audiences utilize these pages to voice their
opinions on Emmanuella’s content. For example, her fans frequently express
opinions on Emmanuella’s weekly release through comments, likes, or reaction
videos. They also use those pages to share updates about Emmanuella so they
don’t miss out on discussions with friends at school or online. Within an hour
of Emmanuella’s video premiere on YouTube in a week, it garnered thousands of
views.
Additionally, fans have begun requesting
behind-the-scenes videos of Emmanuella’s content, and her management responded
by uploading these moments following the release of every 10 episodes of
Emmanuella’s content. Indeed, this is a testament that the daily engagement of
children with YouTube platforms warrants study, as it provides insights into
contemporary play culture and mediatized play, serving as inspiration and a
form of play, particularly for children who actively participate. Therefore,
the engagement of young people with Emmanuella’s content merits evaluation to
demonstrate how her work serves as a source of creative inspiration and
mediatized play for the audience and ‘produsers.’
Summary of findings and Conclusion
By examining Emmanuella’s content evolution, performance
strategies, audience engagement patterns, and the broader implications for
childhood development and media culture, especially in the global South
context, this essay reveals how young content creators or kidfluencers navigate
the complex intersection of play, performance, and commercial success in the
digital age. Mediatized play becomes the process by which traditional forms of
play converge with digital media platforms, creating new forms of performance
and audience engagement. This study also reveals how mediatized play supports
creativity and the pedagogical development of children.
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Appendix
YouTube Sources:
“Video Game” by Mark
Angel Comedy
https://youtu.be/DvuASqBCZHE?si=WUOeEvV4hTo9Llne
“Sweet Revenge” by Mark
Angel Comedy
https://youtu.be/jlT5WHrJFzQ?si=Lgnm3fLZI4bFaEDR
“OminiKnowest” by Mark
Angel Comedy
https://youtu.be/AGUdYPyHk2A?si=p1zc2y-csgpAZ1TS
“Free World” by Mark
Angel Comedy
https://youtu.be/uZiUHjL8ZYw?si=dN-MEcmyuSfdX-jp
“Real Face” by Mark
Angel Comedy
https://youtu.be/NqeO1Bw2x0c?si=aZSCl0hE5kC1aokH
“Behind the Scenes” by
Mark Angel Comedy
https://youtu.be/0OPb3cQXLjQ?si=e29snkh9rRRD_hYu