‘Kids, these YouTubers are stealing from you’: influencers and online discussions about taxes

ABSTRACT

This article's main aim is to analyse public discourses about tax avoidance in Spain by studying the scandal stirred up by the announcement by ElRubius (the most popular YouTuber in Spain, with 40.3 million subscribers) that he was moving to Andorra to pay lower taxes. To fulfil this aim, we use thematic analysis to study the most viewed and commented videos posted on YouTube by both YouTubers and the traditional media, as well as their comments sections, to identify how taxes are defined, how YouTubers and their audiences are portrayed and what forms of identification these stories offer. Our results show that ElRubius’ announcement sparked a polarised debate. On the one hand, traditional media framed the debate as a moral one, attacked ElRubius using a ‘naming and shaming’ strategy and defended redistributive taxes as a means of financing public services and achieving wealth redistribution. On the other hand, YouTubers defended a neoliberal agenda by portraying taxes as a burden, promoting self-interest and denouncing the Spanish state as too big, inefficient and corrupt. The analysis of the comments shows how the traditional media strategy of shaming ElRubius failed, as audiences mostly identified with him and endorsed the discourse of YouTubers who defended him. Thus, although the welfare state is still very much legitimised in Spain, we can see how new hegemonies are being created and promoted in the context of social media.

KEYWORDS:

• Audience
• celebrity
• taxation imaginaries
• YouTube
• YouTubers
• social media

Acknowledgement

Mercè Oliva is a Serra Húnter Fellow.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In Spanish, solidaridad means being supportive and caring of others, sharing what you have (usually with the less fortunate) and thus creating a sense of community with fellow citizens.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the European Union (Next GenerationEU), the Spanish Ministry of Universities and the National Plan for Recovery, Transformation and Resilience, through Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) in Barcelona.

Notes on contributors

Mercè Oliva

Mercè Oliva is an Associate Professor and Serra Húnter Fellow in Media Studies and Popular Culture in the Department of Communication at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain). She is the Director of the BA programme in Audiovisual Communication and the Coordinator of the UNIC Research Group. She is also a member of the Medium Research Group. Her research focuses on popular culture, media studies and neoliberal imaginaries. She has published articles in journals such as European Journal of Cultural Studies, Convergence, Celebrity Studies and Games and Culture and she is the author of the book Telerrealidad, disciplina e identidad: Los makeover shows en España [Reality TV, Discipline and Identity: Makeover Shows in Spain] (Ed. UOC, 2013). Dr Oliva was the Principal Investigator of the research project ‘Heroes of the crisis: Narrative and social discourses in contemporary popular culture’ (Ref.: CSO2014-56830-P), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and she is a PI of Redistributive imaginaries: digitalization, culture and prosocial contribution (ReDigIm), funded by MCIN/AEI /10.13039/501100011033 and NextGenerationEU/PRTR (Ref: PCI2022-135059-2), under the programme CHANSE Cofund (PL: Rebecca Bramall, UAL, UK).

José M. Tomasena

José M. Tomasena is a Margarita Salas Postdoctoral Fellow at the Faculty of Information and Audiovisual Communication, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain. His research interests include literary prosumption in social media, the platformization of cultural production, and media literacies, particularly reading and writing. He has worked as research assistant for the project ‘D-Stories' at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), and as external advisor on writing literacies for the PICCLE Project (Intervention Plan for Citizens Competent in Reading and Writing), part of Portugal’s National Reading Plan.

Ona Anglada-Pujol

Ona Anglada-Pujol is a PhD Student in Communication at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain) and a member of the Medium Research Group. Her doctoral research is about slash fiction practices about gamers and their discourses around gender, sexuality, romantic love and sexual consent, as well as the relationship that these YouTubers establish with those texts. She teaches in the BA in Audiovisual Communication at UPF, where she has taught courses about screenwriting, research methods and image analysis. She also participates in the OPA (Observatori de la Producció Audiovisual; Audiovisual Production Observatory) researching the Catalan media ecosystem. Her main research interests are gender and queer studies, fan and celebrity studies, popular culture and television series.