Does the “big tent” include non-academics? Social media content creators conducting critical scholarship

Purpose LeftTube – a loosely connected community of left-leaning content creators on YouTube – includes a subsection of video essayists that conduct scholarly work seemingly adjacent to critical research. Exploring this digital community of critical scholars may precipate opportunities for collaboration and reciprocal learning to better academic qualitative research approaches. Therefore, the purpose of this exploratory study is to (1) examine if and how this digital community engages in critical scholarship, and (2) initiate a call for academic qualitative scholars to watch this digital space as a potential source of collaboration, an opportunity for co-learning and consideration for inclusion in the qualitative “big tent”.Design/methodology/approach Using an algorithm-based sampling procedure, 143 videos were sampled across 23 Black women content creators. Videos were analyzed for characteristics of critical research using multimodal-ethnographic semiotic analysis.Findings Findings suggest that 11 strategies of critical scholarship were used with themes of knowledge production and ethical framework. Such results indicate that this subsection of LeftTube video essayists are conducting critical scholarship.Originality/value The most significant implication is the expansion of the qualitative “big tent” to include international social media content creators who conduct social science research. This would have many benefits to academic qualitative researchers, including learning how the studied community (1) makes critical scholarship impactful and influential in civil discourse, (2) mobilizes critical language, and (3) resists neoliberal and capitalist systems attempting to marginalize critical research.