YouTube users watching and sharing the news: A uses and gratifications approach

Abstract

Internet sites such as YouTube represem importam changes in the way in which video content can be delivered. YouTube lets viewers access videos on demand and makes it easy for them to share videos with others. The unique nature of on-demand user-supplied video content is of particular interest to the electronic publishing community because of the relative ease with which videos can be produced, uploaded, and shared. Users are now active participants in the media distribution chain. Because users play an active role in the production, distribution, and receipt of YouTube's media content (e.g., creating, sharing, and viewing), it is appropriate to examine YouTube use from an audience-centered perspective. One such approach is a theoretical framework called "uses and gratifications." It is used in this study to look at how college students view and share news content on the YouTube Web site. We found that different motives predicted watching and sharing different types of news-related content. Viewers of news in a more traditional format were doing so primarily for information reasons; viewers of news in comedy and satire formats were doing so primarily for entertainment. Interpersonal communication motives predicted sharing of news videos on YouTube. The results suggest that viewers may be driven by one set of motives for watching news clips on YouTube, and a different set of motives for sharing them.