Chapter 3 - YouTube's Popular Culture

Before writing this book, Burgess and Green selected 4,320 videos over a three month time frame. These videos were from the categories: most favorite, most viewed, most discussed, and most responded. They analyzed the content but also looked at the way particular types of videos moved through the system in an attempt to find significant patterns.

When analyzing the videos they took note of what the videos appear to be and where they appear to be from to see how content might be perceived and function within the site. They selected the videos from the four categories (listed above) so that they could compare across categories to get a sense of the way different kinds of video were made popular by audiences.

Actual Charts from the Book

Under the subtopic of The Two YouTubes, Burgess and Green again bring up the two frameworks that coexist in the site:

Ø  Top-down framework (traditional media)

Ø  Bottom-up framework (user-created content)

About 50% of the content they analyzed was user-created. 42% was from traditional media sources, and the other 8% was of uncertain origin or had been removed before analysis was complete. Burgess and Green then spend significant time breaking down the four categories and analyzing which types of videos show up in each. In the end, they report that “there is a great deal of slippage between the categories of traditional media and user-created content” (47).

Moving onto Clips and Quotes: Uses of Traditional Media Content, Burgess and Green report that YouTube really only makes sense if it is seen as something people use in everyday life. Utilizing the framework of participatory culture, audiences can respond to culture without going to auxiliary media sources.

YouTube is filled with short “quotes” of content that users share to draw attention to programs. They are not intended to be seen as an attempt at file sharing, but rather as a way people can “catch up on public media events . . . break news stories, and raise awareness” (49). At the time of the research (2007/2008) there were also vast amounts of presidential campaign footage because YouTube was a site where both top-down and grass roots campaigning could occur.

 

YouTube can help you see what you missed:

A short clip from the President's response to the Connecticut shooting.



 

Blogger, Jenna Mourey, isn't afraid to go there.

Burgess and Green then move on to talk about the vlog which is almost an emblematic form of YouTube participation. Vlogs are the cornerstone of participatory culture because creators address the audience directly, they invite feedback, discussion, and debate more than any other video type that Burgess and Green could find. Vlogs were also on occasion used as business ventures.

At the end, Burgess and Green report that to understand YouTube it is helpful not to draw a sharp line between user-created content of professional/traditional content. YouTube is more easily thought of as a continuum of cultural participation where everyone who uploads content is a participant and all activities of content creators and audiences are practices of participation.