YouTubers and Vloggers

This is absolutely the stuff of Media in the Online Age. It would suit practically any question that comes up.

Given how recent YouTube is, its size and reach is phenomenal. Can you describe / quantify / measure that for the examiner?

YouTube's slogan used to be "Broadcast Yourself". What does that suggest? Is that why it is an important example of the online age's change from the pre-online age dominated by traditional elite / corporate broadcasters?

Does (did) user-generated content constitute a new media form? What genres can we name / describe among user-generated content? The gameplay video, the reaction video, the haul video, the fail video...

Does the amount of this content, the number of people uploading it and the number of views and amount of time people spend consuming it, represent the rise of prosumers (consumers who also produce)? How would David Gauntlett discuss the creativity?

YouTube hosts strong evidence of participatory culture. What forms could you identify? Fan videos, tributes, the crazes (Numa Numa, Harlem Shake etc.), the memes, virals... Leave Britney alone.
Besides thinking about the relationship of some of these to the original media text, what could you say the audience / consumer gets from them? A sense of community (there are other people like me out there)? A feeling that you have to keep up with these, so you are not missing out in social situations? Fandom? Creativity?

What else should we consider about audience consumption? What are typical patterns of behaviour? Do consumers schedule their YouTube viewing into their daily lives? Is YouTube structured to support and encourage that in its invitations to subscribe to channels? How is this tied into the "sharing" / "following" culture of social media consumption? What do the "recommended" function  and the 12 videos that appear on screen at the end of a video depend on (cookies' record of our browsing history and tagging)? What do we do with it (willingly follow a trail of related videos)?

What about YouTube as a business? For Google, is it really just a traditional media business model built on Google selling advertising space before and during videos, and promoting sponsored content higher up the results list?

For the YouTuber is it a newer media business model, based on micro-payments? What are some of the ways to maximise your income? On the other hand, is it still similar to any other media business in that it depends on creating content that will attract viewers, with more viewers leading to more income from advertising?

When did big media start moving their content onto YouTube? When did they stop asking YouTube to remove their intellectual property that had been unofficially uploaded (have they stopped)? Who dominates consumption now - the Vevo-based music videos and official game and film trailers, or the user-generated content? What do most people consume most of, most of the time? How much else is there? How obscure does it get? Is YouTube prime evidence of Chris Anderson's Long Tail?

Another topical set of questions (topical because of the "war on terror") is about extreme content. Advertisers have asked for their ads not to be placed with extremist content, while Disney dropped PewDiePie after a series of videos were criticised for being anti-semitic. Should there be any regulation of content? Censorship? If so by whom? And where? YouTube operates globally (nearly), so which country's laws should regulate it? However, Google argue that YouTube is a platform, not a broadcaster. In other words they think they should not be regulated in the same way media companies are.

And then there are questions of dominance relating to YouTube and even more so, Google itself. World domination? Conspiracy theory or just old-fashioned business competition between the giants of the online age (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon...)?

You could write entire exam answers, MediaMagazine articles, university dissertations, blogs and books about this. Or make a video and upload it...