A timely account of this incredibly popular site of online participatory media.
The authors provide a clear and comprehensive overview of this phenomenon. The book also includes important contributions by Henry Jenkins and John Hartley, both experts in this field.
YouTube is one of the most well-known and widely discussed sites of participatory media in the contemporary online environment, and it is the first genuinely mass-popular platform for user-created video. In this timely and comprehensive introduction to how YouTube is being used and why it matters, Burgess and Green discuss the ways that it relates to wider transformations in culture, society and the economy.
The book critically examines the public debates surrounding the site, demonstrating how it is central to struggles for authority and control in the new media environment. Drawing on a range of theoretical sources and empirical research, the authors discuss how YouTube is being used by the media industries, by audiences and amateur producers, and by particular communities of interest, and the ways in which these uses challenge existing ideas about cultural 'production' and 'consumption'.
Rich with both concrete examples and featuring specially commissioned chapters by Henry Jenkins and John Hartley, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in the contemporary and future implications of online media. It will be particularly valuable for students and scholars in media, communication and cultural studies.
The authors provide a clear and comprehensive overview of this phenomenon. The book also includes important contributions by Henry Jenkins and John Hartley, both experts in this field.
YouTube is one of the most well-known and widely discussed sites of participatory media in the contemporary online environment, and it is the first genuinely mass-popular platform for user-created video. In this timely and comprehensive introduction to how YouTube is being used and why it matters, Burgess and Green discuss the ways that it relates to wider transformations in culture, society and the economy.
The book critically examines the public debates surrounding the site, demonstrating how it is central to struggles for authority and control in the new media environment. Drawing on a range of theoretical sources and empirical research, the authors discuss how YouTube is being used by the media industries, by audiences and amateur producers, and by particular communities of interest, and the ways in which these uses challenge existing ideas about cultural 'production' and 'consumption'.
Rich with both concrete examples and featuring specially commissioned chapters by Henry Jenkins and John Hartley, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in the contemporary and future implications of online media. It will be particularly valuable for students and scholars in media, communication and cultural studies.
"Jean Burgess and Joshua Green insightfully weave together an engaging and much-needed cultural narrative of the astonishing new phenomenon that is YouTube with an incisive critique of its rapidly-mythologised yet deeply uncertain transformative potential." -- Sonia Livingstone, London School of Economics and Political Science
"This book is an important and timely contribution to the literature on participatory culture and media. The analyses provide empirical bases for understanding the diversity of YouTube users' practices and sophisticated theoretical consideration of the social, cultural, political, historical and economic contexts in which these practices are situated and which they so often disrupt." -- Nancy Baym, University of Kansas
"This book is an important and timely contribution to the literature on participatory culture and media. The analyses provide empirical bases for understanding the diversity of YouTube users' practices and sophisticated theoretical consideration of the social, cultural, political, historical and economic contexts in which these practices are situated and which they so often disrupt." -- Nancy Baym, University of Kansas