Research Topic:
The research topic I am proposing is a study on a YouTube video channel named Gingeronymous. The channel features an elderly man telling stories about his life as a WWII veteran, his family life and his love life. His daughter was able to capture these stories on tape before he passed away in 2007.
My interest is to find out why this particular lady decided to post these videos. In this society, we are accustomed to remembering the dead in private ceremonies, such as funerals, or only talking with relatives about a death of a family member. This particular woman chose to use technology to do this, which is something I want to understand.
Rationale:
The impact of new social media tools had an enormous amount of growth in the past four years. From 2006 to 2008, the percent of people watching video clips online jumped from 32% to 83% and 41% of people had watched videos of user content in the last week alone (Smith, 2009). YouTube in particular is growing every day, due in part to the ease of use. The fact that this site and video viewing in general is a part of so many people’s lives makes it critical to study. On YouTube, all you have to do is sign up for a free account and begin uploading videos, watching and commenting on all types of videos.
This ability changes the face of mass communication. YouTube even has a Facebook page and a Twitter account. So in essence, a giant website that allows people to express themselves over video has their own Facebook (a social site to connect people with people, products, etc.) and their own Twitter account which allows live updates about a person, company, etc. Something that has such a wide audience demands attention and research.
Scope:
This amazingly vast network is difficult to study as a whole. Therefore, taking a case study of one channel on YouTube can be a promising starting point. The case of Gingeronymous is especially unique in that it isn’t a music video, or a visual blog, but a collection of stories about someone’s life. It’s a YouTube memoir, in essence.
Literature Review:
YouTube was founded in 2005, and since then, they have gained hundreds of millions of users. The videos on the site range from cooking channels to blogs to music videos. The impact of YouTube on today’s world is immeasurable. The particular channel, Gingeronymous seems to be one of many videos posted by an everyday person. It is easier than ever to publish your own thoughts, music, or movies to people all over the world. All you need is a free YouTube account and a video recording camera.
Studies done on YouTube have looked at the uses, political impact and the impact of YouTube beyond the site itself. While the literature is abundant, much future research will need to be done since YouTube is a fairly new phenomenon in the world.
Uses
Several studies have investigated why people choose to become users or consumers of social media and YouTube. One study found that sharing videos with friends and family was a big reason for why users had accounts. This shows that not all YouTube content is for the mass, but some is created for only certain social circles to see (Lange, 2007). There has also been evidence of other reasons as to why people watch YouTube videos, including convenient entertainment, convenient information-seeking, co-viewing and social interaction. The reasons for posting videos are slightly different with social interaction, co-viewing and convenient entertainment being the top reasons (Haridakis & Hanson, 2009). Perhaps the case of Gingeronymous was one of creation for a certain group of people. Since the research shows some videos are not meant for the masses, maybe this woman created these videos mainly for her family to see.
In China, it has been found that people use internet as a means of having fun. The study shows that 65.7% of users have engaged in user generated content (UGC) (Henry 2009). Haridakis et. al (2009) report that YouTube is a social medium and not a personal one. This benefit has been noticed by marketers. Several uses have been adopted by marketers including building community, working with brands to create research communities, using external platforms to build community, widgitising, and embracing social media platforms as research platforms (Smith 2009).
It is unlikely that Gingeronymous is being used as a means for business. The personal nature of this channel points to its use as being more privatized. As noted above, the woman that created this channel may have meant it only for certain people. However, one may wonder why she would not just share the videos by e-mail or a private blog instead of taking the time to post them on YouTube for everyone to see. This provides even more reason for studying this particular user’s motivation for posting videos.
Political Impact
In 2007, for the first time, presidential candidates took part in YouTube debates. Young participants sent in questions by video over YouTube to the presidential candidates who then had to respond. These debates had several impacts. Political cynicism decreased for both Democrats and Republicans who were exposed to the debates. Their efficacy also increased after watching the Democratic and Republican debates which overall enhanced the younger audience’s civic engagement attitudes (McKinney & Rill 2009). This is in agreement with the finding by Jarrett (2010) that YouTube is about a culture and community.
Henry (2009) explored the YouTube equivalent used in China more than thirty years ago as voicing political opinion. However, these “Big Character Posters” were also used for Mao to punish those who dissented on his views. Once those particular posters were published, the authors were labeled as “rightists” and “capitalist-roaders” who were going to sabotage Mao’s rule. The people in question were then sent to jail or to the country side so they could be re-educated (Henry 2009).
As discussed earlier, the particular channel in this research is a personal one, and not concerned with the political realm. However, like the political realm, it does show how YouTube can become a sort of culture and community. Perhaps there is a cultural rule on YouTube, allowing people to remember the elderly with these memoirs. Or maybe Gingeronymous was hoping to engage the community in a discussion of grieving or even just her father’s past.
The YouTube Community and Beyond
YouTube has been shown to have unexpected effects that reach beyond the computer screen. New connections are often formed. In one case, two groups of college students living in the same dorm met over YouTube, rather than in person (Lange, 2007). In China, a young girl who failed to get into dancing school several times posted a video of herself dancing. Students forwarded this video and soon enough she was on talk shows and in newspapers. She now travels to perform and has her own website (Henry 2009).
The woman behind Gingeronymous may have found her own unexpected outcomes of creating her channel. People may have begun a relationship with her over YouTube because they too have lost a loved one. There are so many possibilities to how these channels can reach the world, so every situation is different.
Clearly the social media landscape is being reshaped by social media and YouTube in particular. These studies have provided me with a framework to investigate YouTube with a smaller scope. Political uses, uses for fun, connection, and for the self have been studied. I hope complete my study with a closer look at the uses of social media in more detail and attempt to create connections between previous research cited here as well as other well known theories in the world of Mass Communication.
Method:
I will conduct a qualitative study of the YouTube channel “Gingeronymous”. I will use the interview as the means for getting data. Because Gingeronymous is in an unknown location, I will first contact her by means of YouTube message. Assuming she replies, I will ask if she would like to participate in my study which investigates mainly uses and other questions regarding her YouTube channel. If she agrees, I will allow her to choose between the following two interview options: (1) I send her an e-mail with questions which she will respond to, or (2) We will add each other on Skype, so I can conduct an interview that way. The questions I will be asking her are as follows:
1. How did you get the idea to video tape stories of your father’s life?
2. Why did you decide to post the videos on YouTube?
· Were these videos meant at all to be primarily for your family to view? If so, what made you decide to share them on YouTube instead of a more private venue like through e-mail?
3. How did you feel about posting something so personal to the public?
4. What type of responses have you gotten from people on YouTube?
· Have you formed strong connections with any YouTube users in talking about your channel, your father, etc.?
5. Overall, are you glad you created the channel Gingeronymous?
6. Have you run into any negative outcomes on YouTube or for your channel in any way?
7. Is there anything else you feel is important to tell me about your overall experience with YouTube or your channel? Feel free to say whatever you’d like, there is no right answer.
The follow up questions I provided below some of the questions are there because I wanted to know the answers to them, but I wanted to ask a more general question first so that I did not influence her answers.
Because I will be studying the uses of YouTube for Gingeronymous, it is important to define a main theory of mass communication that could aid in analyzing my results. The uses and gratifications theory is defined by Severin & Tankard (2001) as “It attempts to determine what functions mass communication is serving for audience members” (Severin & Tankard, 2001, p. 293). There are a couple of functions of the media that I also will be using in my analysis. I will consider if Gingeronymous used the media for any of the following reasons: diversion, personal relationships, personal identity or individual psychology, surveillance, cognitive needs, affective needs, personal integrative needs, or social integrative needs (Severin & Tankard, 2001, p. 295-296).
Predictions of her Answers:
I predict that Gingeronymous will report using social media for her channel because of three reasons. First, I believe some of her reasoning will be personal identity or individual psychology, defined as “value reinforcement or reassurance; self understanding; reality exploration, and so on” (Severin & Tankard, 2001, p. 295). I think she will report this use because YouTube could be a part of her reinforcement of how she herself is dealing with the death of her father and the celebration of his life. It’s a way she can personally express the love she had for her father and possibly receive some therapeutic effects from it.
I also predict she will report using YouTube for social integrative needs, defined as “strengthening contacts with family, friends and so on” (Severin & Tankard, 2001, p. 296). I believe this will be true not only because this definition is the main reason for social media, but because of the way Gingeronymous uses YouTube. She does not create videos for people to passively watch (say someone shows a skateboard trick being performed on YouTube) but she creates videos that are conversations with the users. Her father is telling stories to her, and the YouTube audience. Gingeronymous even has a video in which she talks to the video recorder, making the probability of this use even higher.
I believe she will overall report a good experience using YouTube, because if anything majorly negative happened she may have deleted her channel. I am unsure about her posting videos for her family, because there is little about the rest of her family on her site. I also am unsure of her answer on using such a public forum for such a private memoir. I myself would feel uncomfortable with the idea, but she clearly does not, so it is hard for me to say what her reasoning may be.
The implications of this research will be to understand YouTube users in a more qualitative, in depth way. Much research has focused on YouTube as a site rather than on channels within the site and the people who created them. Limitations will include that since it is a case study, it may not be useful information to generalize. However, this is not the hope of this study.
References
Haridakis, P., & Hanson, G. (2009). Social interaction and co-viewing with YouTube: Blending mass communication reception and social connection. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 53(2), 317-335. doi:10.1080/08838150902908270
Henry, S. L. (2009). The turn to the self: From “Big character posters” to YouTube videos. Chinese Journal of Communication, 2(1), 50-60. doi:10.1080/17544750802639077
Jarrett, K. (2010). YouTube: Online video and participatory culture. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 24(2), 327-330. doi:10.1080/10304310903362734
Lange, P. G. (2007). Publicly private and privately public: Social networking on YouTube. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 361-380. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00400.x
McKinney, M. S., & Rill, L. A. (2009). Not your parents' presidential debates: Examining the effects of the CNN/YouTube debates on young citizens' civic engagement. Communication Studies, 60(4), 392-406. doi:10.1080/10510970903110001
Severin, W., & Tankard, J. (2001). Communication theories: Origins, methods, and uses in the mass media. (5 ed.). New York: Longman.
Smith, T. (2009). The social media revolution. International Journal of Market Research, 51(4), 559-561. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=42536207&site=ehost-live
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