Rather than striving for more transparency in the algorithmic selection and recommendation processes of YouTube, this paper examines to what extent the platform can be considered as an epistemic device, as it always performs editing operations that cannot be reduced to partly opaque and commercially or ideologically oriented outputs.
We have formulated together an observation according to which a majority of discourses expressed in the public space about the media, about their productions or about the practices attached to them, put at stake a series of key paradigms, which end up forming a common horizon of recurrent values: independence, impartiality, transparency, emancipation, participation, reflexivity (2). These paradigms expressed in the discourse on media – whether this discourse is carried out by journalists, or by media education actors – form a network of media meta-categories that interact with each other and seem to activate a series of preconceived delimitations (true/false, legitimate/illegitimate, transparency/secrecy, passive reception/critical activity).
