Marketization in cultural domains: the case of Brazilian YouTubers

Abstract The motivation to develop this research comes from the marketization which was happening in some cultural domains and led to the orientation change in the cultural domains from cognitive rationality to instrumental rationality. The cognitive rationality is based on values, ethical principles, and religious beliefs to reach an objective. On the other hand, the instrumental rationality is based on a utility evaluation or a cause and consequence analysis (Weber, 2009). From that, it is relevant to comprehend how a new occupation in a particular cultural domain is affected by the marketization process. This research aims to analyze and describe how the marketization process affected the YouTuber occupation in Brazil. For the achievement of this research, 17 semi-structured interviews were conducted with Brazilian YouTubers. The results show that still does not exist a clear definition of a YouTuber, and the term is still in construction. During the development of this research, it was identified that YouTuber’s activities are oriented by more than one type of rationality; however, in some moments, there is a prevalence of only one type.