“Let’s Go Make Some Videos!”: Post-Feminist Digital Media on Tween-Coms

Abstract

Our paper looks at three popular tween shows premised on tween girls creating digital content—iCarly, Bizaardvark and Coop & Cami Ask the World. Using the theoretical frameworks of critical digital labor studies, girls’ media studies, and feminist theory, we argue that the tween-coms imagine the tween content creator as a post-feminist neoliberal subject in three ways: first, by hiding the labor behind the affective sentiments of play; second, by obscuring the misogynistic structure; and third, by framing childhood digital spaces as separate from adult spheres, legitimizing corporate encroachments into children’s digital lives. The shows are a distillation of the neoliberal, post-feminist ideologies that define late-stage capitalism. The discursive formation of digital girls on children’s television has been overlooked in the field of digital studies and girl studies. Our paper explores how digital content creation is discursively constructed within the cultural imaginaries of children’s media.