Abstract

Advances in technology have enabled ordinary people to become more visible, and consequently have created a new class of celebrities and influencers that did not previously exist. Turner (2010) conceptualizes this phenomenon as a “demotic turn”; this describes the construction of celebrity and its ability to open up a new field of relations between media and culture. The chapter, therefore, explores the complex relationship between the creation of online celebrity and the economic context of YouTube-based programs in Saudi Arabia by employing grounded theory methodology, which allows the emergence of new meanings in order to better understand the process and configurations of YouTube in the context of the Saudi experience. It focuses on the bottom-up approach of YouTube-based programming created exclusively by professionally generated content producers for YouTube in Saudi Arabia. It explores the cultural and economic context of the emergence of locally made programs for YouTube, by one of the marginalized segments of the society—Saudi youth—between 2010 and 2016.