This article explores monetization and networking strategies within the consolidating creator economy. Through a large-scale study of linking practices on YouTube, we investigate how creators seek to build their online presence across multiple platforms and widen their income streams. In particular, we build on a near-complete sample of 153,000 "elite" YouTube channels with at least 100,000 subscribers, retrieved at the end of 2019, and investigate the URLs found in 137 million video descriptions to analyze traces of these strategies. We first situate our study within relevant literature around the creator economy, the role of platforms, and issues such as social capital building and economic precarity. We then outline our data and analytical approach, followed by a presentation of our findings. The article finishes with a discussion on how monetization and networking strategies via placing URLs in video descriptions have become more important over time, but also differ substantially between channel sizes, content categories, and geographic locations. Our empirical analysis shows that YouTube, as a highly unequal platformed media system, thrives on the economic pressures it exerts on its creators.

This paper analyses how fans engage on Twitter with the 22 players in the starting line up during the week of the 2019 UEFA Women's Champions League final. It explores fans' entangled representations of female professional footballers on Twitter from a postfeminist sensibility. Out of 200 tweets posted by the players during the day of the final and the week after, the research focuses on the 1468 fans replies to the 20 most engaged players' tweets. To facilitate this, we developed an analysis instrument called the 3Fs Spiral, which helps to disentangle the complex meanings of the fans' replies on Twitter. Results highlight the fans' entangled representations and the continuous flow of disruption and reinforcement of the gender order that emerge from them in a set of tweets. The decentralised nature of Twitter has the potential to slowly promote the change of dominant gender narratives and frames in female football.

Este artículo recopila la experiencia acumulada durante 9 años en el diseño y ejecución de data sprints en el marco del Máster en Comunicación y Marketing Digital de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Con más de 90 proyectos distintos a sus espaldas, estas jornadas han sido un punto de encuentro para profesionales, académicos y estudiantes, posibilitando el intercambio de conocimiento y la transferencia de técnicas entre métodos de investigación del ámbito académico con la investigación aplicada al marketing digital. Al mismo tiempo, el formato data sprint facilita el conocimiento práctico y la adquisición de competencias comunicativas, organizativas y el proceso de resolución de problemas. El artículo presenta tres ejemplos de proyectos realizados para ilustrar la actividad llevada a cabo y aborda su impacto a partir de un focus group realizado con varios participantes, para señalar los beneficios de la experiencia, así como su dificultad de aplicar el formato en el entorno profesional.

This article compiles the experience accumulated over 9 years in the design and execution of data sprints within the framework of the Master’s Degree in Digital Communication and Marketing at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. With more than 90 different projects behind them, these conferences have been a meeting point for professionals, academics and students, enabling the exchange of knowledge and the transfer of techniques between academic research methods and research applied to digital marketing. At the same time, the data sprint format facilitates practical knowledge and the acquisition of communication, organisational and problem-solving skills. The article presents three examples of projects to illustrate the activity carried out and discusses its impact based on a focus group with several participants, to point out the benefits of the experience as well as the difficulty of applying the format in the professional environment.

This chapter examines the predictive features that digital platforms make available to marketing and advertising professionals to create and manage digital advertising campaigns. In a series of interviews, digital marketing practitioners provide an account of the state of the art of predictive analytics: in which processes intervene, how reliable they are and to what extent they have been adopted by professionals. Despite the fact that digital platforms provide sophisticated tools to make data available, automate processes and forecast performance, these tools are not seen as precise as they are depicted in popular culture. On the contrary, even though professionals acknowledge that they are increasingly accurate in their predictions and can outperform humans in many areas for managing ad campaigns, they also identify several limitations on the tools and techniques that digital platforms make available to them. 

The impact of Twitter can be strongly felt across a number of areas of professional and day-to-day life. By combining quantitative and qualitative methods, this article analyzes how young college students create content on Twitter in an academic setting, and how they perceive this content creation. To this end, a purposive sample of three groups of students was formed, a sample of 10,291 published tweets was collected, and a focus group was set up for each group of students. Among other findings, this study shows that students prioritize academic instructions and requirements and report that the way they use the platform depends on whether it is for an academic assignment or not.