YouTube Family Vlogging as a Promoter of Digital Child Labour : A Case Study on ‘The Bucket List Family’

Abstract: Over the past decade, there has been a considerable rise in popularity of family vlog channels on YouTube. However, these videos have been receiving growing criticism for hosting the children as the main ‘stars’. With YouTube being the main source of income for some of these family units, concerns rise regarding the possibility of family vlogging accommodating a new type of child labour. For this reason, it is crucial to understand how the children’s rights might be threatened. At the same time, research within this field is still limited as family vlogging concerns a fairly recent phenomenon. Accordingly, the current thesis aims to fill these research gaps by contextualizing the practices of family vlogging through a rights-based approach. To do so, a case study was conducted on a YouTube account named ‘The Bucket List Family’. Using content analysis, 5 of their videos were analysed qualitatively and 100 of their video titles were analysed quantitatively. Findings confirm that the children played a central role in contributing to the popularity of the videos. Moreover, the children’s images were consistently and successfully used to further capitalize the family’s brand. Therefore, one can conclude that these children are being exposed to digital child labour, which can mean a possible breach of their rights. The considerable exposure of the children in the videos not only robs them from their privacy, but it also does so without their explicit consent, leaving them extremely vulnerable. As such, the conclusions of this thesis implicate that more research in this field is needed, so that future policymaking can be guided towards a better protection of the children. Additionally, by exposing the digital child labour practices behind family vlogging, this study hopes to bring more societal awareness to the topic.