Yesterday I was at the MediaMutation3 conference with Agnese Vellar. We presented a talk about the study of Glee audience and fandom on YouTube . The research (see the slides blow) addressed a couple of interesting research questions for contemporary fan studies and audience studies. We were interested in understanding if (and with what kind of implications) YouTube could be considered an online space for the observation of specific fandom of tv series. While most of fan communities studies take place in specific (dedicated?) online spaces we wanted to observe how a mainstream product, such as glee, generates online interaction in a specific online space (with its own culture) such as YouTube.
In order to deal with these questions we used a mixed methodology based on the analysis of the 100 most viewed glee videos on YouTube. Starting from these videos we made an analysis of the of the video typologies and of the comments arising around them. In addition we retrieved the friends list of the authors of the videos and we mapped them (authors + authors’ friends) with Social Network Analysis techniques.
Most interesting findings so far (we made a preliminary presentation, we’re still working on it) that most of the Glee content share on YouTube is not a derivative work but seems to be posted online just with a “promotional” function of the series itself. Nevertheless by doing this the users gain a specific reputation of reliable sources for Glee videos. Please note that despite the fact that FOX itself shares a lot of Glee clips, in many countries this “official” content is not available due to local availability of the Official Fox Channel.
Another interesting point is that the interest toward Glee content seems to be more focused on the music aspect of the show instead of being focused on the story or on the characters (may users use YouTube as an audio tool just to listen to the songs). This lead to the fact that the large majority of comments speaks of the song (often comparing it with the original version) instead of speaking of the show.
The social network analysis of the YouTube friends connections shows that surprisingly there is just one macro element connecting almost all the authors of the most viewed videos together. Even when they are not directly connected as friends they share one or more connections. Despite that it is interesting to notice that the linking users (those who are not authors of the videos but seem to be shared connections among them) are not related to Glee but to a more general pop music fandom.
Enjoy the presentation:
ps: Thank you very much to Prof. Roberta Pearson and to Prof. William Uricchio for the Interesting discussion and the precious suggestions they gave to us.
Tagged: audience, fandom, glee, mediamutation, mms3, sna
