Consuming: ‘Mukbangs’

Abstract

Until the creation of YouTube in 2005, the most common form of marketing, advertisement and entertainment was through television (Sinclair, 2012). Due to YouTube’s rapid growth, it became one of the biggest platforms on the internet, attracting 2 billion users monthly. In 2009 the internet experienced a large inflow of YouTubers and bloggers which initiated the influencer phenomenon, allowing individuals to create careers through platforms such as YouTube. The ease of sharing and accessing videos through social media has meant that YouTube has enabled a vast number of videos to go viral (Broxton et al, 2013). This expansion of the viral phenomena, also considered as ‘the cultural politics of network culture’ (Taylor, 2001), gives viewers the power to both create and spread viral content.