What is Transactional Relationships

In first-hand social videos, people who move between the Global North and Global South share their own first-hand experienced stories through visuals and narration and a personality frame (and voice). Within these narrations about societal interfaces, there are stories of human transactions: tuition for learning (talent for tuition), money for products/services, money for travel and tourism, health interchanges, and friendship and conflict. These interchanges may be broken down into three metanarratives of the transaction: >, <, and = (greater than, less than, and equal to), or “who comes out ahead.” This work involves the visual analysis of selected personal social videos shared on YouTube to better understand the visual messaging around >, <, and = in Global North and Global South transactions and what these visuals in social videos might suggest about human-to-human social transactions, advantage-taking, and people taking each other's measure, at the micro (or ego) level.