Nurul Khansa Fauziyah | Giving-to-Others Videos on YouTube: Representations of Poverty and Inequality in Indonesian Philanthropic Culture

Indonesia has had the highest level of generosity in the world in the last five years. This philanthropic culture is represented by viral content on YouTube and is welcomed by content creators, who increasingly produce content about donations to the poor. In this research, I call these “giving-to-others videos” to distinguish them from organized “donation” videos. Videos that depict poverty and heroes who help in surprising ways are popular among Indonesian viewers. At first glance, this content on social media looks very positive: inspiring public figures help poor people. However, in addition to the visible positive impression, several researchers have looked more critically at the influence of such videos on people’s thinking and behavior. In these giving-to-others videos, there is careful planning about who is suitable to enter the frame and what is attractive to potential viewers, even though poor people in the spotlight are often humiliated. Several public figures in Indonesia frequently and consistently produce similar content on their social media accounts, especially YouTube. The high number of viewers (more than four million in some cases) seems to encourage content creators to produce similar content. My research addresses the following questions: How is giving-to-others content developed on YouTube channels in Indonesia, and how is it supported by the economic and technical infrastructure of YouTube? How do such videos depict inequality in Indonesia? How do the giving-to-others videos describe relationships between the affluent and the poor, and between content creators and their viewers? By engaging these questions, my research aims to uncovering economic and technical infrastructure problems of YouTube which have the potential to perpetuate the problems of poverty and inequality in Indonesia. Also want to re-awaken the public to the fact that poverty in Indonesia is not a short-term social problem that can be solved only by helping each other; but there is also a government that has responsibility to eradicate poverty in a more structured and comprehensive manner.