Performans, Görünürlük ve Ticarileştirilmiş Çocukluk: Çocuk YouTuberların Öznellik İnşasına Etnografik Bir Bakış

With the increasing integration of digital platforms in everyday life, the phenomenon of childhood is gaining more and more visual images, squeezed into the duality of the viewer and the broadcaster, and turning into a commercialised field. This new cultural backdrop brings child YouTubers onto the public stage and shapes the phenomenon of digital labour and the subjectivity of the child. This study aims to trace the digital childhood experience and understand this complex phenomenon by addressing the subjectivities developed by children who produce content on the YouTube platform on the axis of performance, visibility and commercialisation. The YouTube ecosystem was chosen as the venue of research and 5 channels from YouTube Turkey were selected through the purposive sampling method. The video content and viewer feedback of the channels were taken as data, analysed through the online ethnography method, and the data obtained were thematically coded through reflexive thematic analysis and contextually interpreted under 3 main themes and 12 sub-themes. The findings reveal that children are positioned as active content producers, commercialised actors with economic value. The repetitive narrative patterns in the content and sensitivity to audience feedback indicate that children’s subjectivity has evolved into a form that is increasingly demand-driven, shaped by performance pressure, and based on sustainable visibility strategies. By positioning themselves as potential brands in content promotions, children construct themselves within a commercialised fiction. These processes show that digital subjectivity is constructed through a reciprocal and dynamic interaction between the platform, the child subject and commercial relations.