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.

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.