Platformed creativity: Female chuktubers in Korean football media

This study proposes the concept of platformed creativity to examine how new technologies have engaged in the social dynamics of creative practices. In recent years, a few Korean female digital creators have become visible by producing and sharing gender-bound football media content on YouTube. Based on a critical discourse analysis involving the channels of four female Korean chuktubers, I found that this user-generated media platform offers these female digital creators the opportunity to capitalize on their unpopular and unconventional characteristics and narratives, allowing them to transform their creative practices into collective resistance against gender norms and hierarchies in the football media industry. However, YouTube also limits these chuktubers’ creative possibilities to the extent that it does not fundamentally intervene in the existing gender architecture within society. This study concludes that user-generated media platforms invigorate the social dynamics of creative practices while simultaneously controlling the social potential of creative imagination.