How To YouTube: A Study on the Filipino Youth’s Experience of YouTube
ABSTRACT
Since its creation in 2005, YouTube has grown and evolved into one of the biggest sites on the internet. It has been the host of countless viral videos and it continues to attract users to its bottomless variety of content. The strength of YouTube is in the freedom it grants its users to create and explore around the site. Its many features allow users to utilise the site in a variety of ways. For this reason, this study seeks to find out how young Filipino YouTube users create their own experiences of YouTube. Using an integration of the Narrative theory and the Hypertext theory, the research traces the process taken on by users as they forge their paths on the site as co-authors and narrators of their YouTube engagement. This study presents an integration of the technical side and cultural side of using the internet. Through qualitative interviews and self-reports, it was found that users are able to craft their own versions of YouTube through a complex combination of the website features that they utilise and the users’ personal habits and filtering systems. The users’ narratives of usage show that it is the users’ unique cultures of use that ultimately mould their experiences of YouTube.
Ferraris, M. C. D. (2014). How To YouTube: A Study on the Filipino Youth’s Experience of YouTube, Unpublished Undergraduate Thesis, University of the Philippines, College of Mass Communication.
Keywords: YouTube, hypertext, narrative, new media users