From local to global: Village YouTubers and rural creator cultures in South India

Abstract

This article examines emerging rural creator cultures in South India. Specifically, it focuses on the uptake and production of YouTube videos by village creators, a relatively understudied but increasingly important phenomenon given the rapid spread of social media entertainment in rural India. Through a case study on My Village Show, a YouTube media collective, this article shows how rural cultural producers transformed into ‘media workers’, ‘creators’, and ‘influencers’. The South Indian YouTubing landscape, with a multitude of village-centric social media entertainment channels, reveals a new dynamic of cultural production in the Global South, distinguished by collective, collaborative, and formalizing creator labor practices. Drawing upon ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews with rural cultural producers, this article analyzes and conceptualizes rural creator cultures within particular socio-cultural, vernacular, and regional dynamics in India.

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