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Volume 47, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 0810-2686
  • E-ISSN: 2517-620X
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Abstract

Independent youtubers who create content on political, social and economic issues attract very large audiences and are increasingly the object of study for journalism scholars. This article contributes to the literature by conducting a detailed analysis of the Australian YouTube channel friendlyjordies. Rather than comparing the channel to the journalistic field, this article assesses whether friendlyjordies produces journalism by applying definitions based on journalism’s democratic functions. With the democratic functions approach the critical question is not, but This question guides the research that combines the analysis of three friendlyjordies videos with data from an interview with a producer of the channel. From this analysis, this article argues that friendlyjordies produces platform journalism, an emerging form of journalism that applies the norms and affordances of a specific platform, in this case YouTube. Moreover, when a democratic functions approach is applied to friendlyjordies, it becomes evident that the channel engages in public interest platform journalism.

© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Intellect Ltd.
This article is Open Access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The CC BY licence permits commercial and noncommercial reuse. To view a copy of the licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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2025-06-03
2026-04-14

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/content/journals/10.1386/ajr_00178_7
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Platform journalism on YouTube: A democratic functions approach to analysing journalism on digital platforms
Australian Journalism Review 47, 97 (2025); https://doi.org/10.1386/ajr_00178_7
/content/journals/10.1386/ajr_00178_7
/content/journals/10.1386/ajr_00178_7
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): friendlyjordies; journalist; news media; public interest; social media; youtuber

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