Participatory Culture on YouTube

“Participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices. A participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another.” (Henry Jenkins. 2009) Looking at this broad definition of participatory culture I will be exploring how YouTube as a media platform encourages and develops this culture between consumers and producers.

Within YouTube the growth of this culture has been fairly significant with a majority of its audience being active providers of its content. Its users take full advantage of the interactivity available to them across this platform. YouTube was initially created as way to quickly and easily share video content but in its current development it seems that it has provided this and more as has become a fully social media platform allowing its users to respond to other YouTube videos with their own videos. They then expand on to other platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and more to communicate with their audiences and peers.

In regards to YouTube’s eligibility as functioning platform for participatory culture, it would seem it is the perfect place for it. As an online broadcasting channel which allows users to upload their own content, it allows users the freedom to create their own persona, content and essentially their own regulations within their channel. They have complete control over how much they reveal and what is uploaded. The main contribution to the growing participation of audiences is how much they can access and relate to their preferred “YouTuber”. Looking again at Zoella and her growing reign over the internet, it is clear that her personal interaction with her audience is the key to her growing popularity. “What is unique about YouTube as a platform is that it strips away a lot of the artifice. The one thing people really respond to on YouTube is people being personable, and so when have that kind of connection with your audience people who are watching Zoella feel like she’s a friend, she feels accessible.” (Adam King- The Guardian Article, 2014)

As well as the audiences connecting with each other and the YouTuber, we have also seen more of these online stars collaborating across their channels. This shows again the growing opportunities surrounding the participatory culture on this platform as even the well-established producers are taking advantage of it grow and connect with a bigger audience and produce more content for their initial audience which causes a domino effect of the growth of audience, participation and interaction with YouTube itself. When we take into consideration that YouTube has only been around for ten years the interactivity it has developed is overwhelming. Although to some ten years may seem like a very long time, when we consider what the platform has achieved and produced in contrast to standard platforms like television and radio, it is clear that the internet has a distinguished advantage in terms of growth of interaction and development.

When looking into this it is important to take into consideration what is causing its success over all and it seems apparent that the social side of this network is the main contributor. The main reason young people use the internet is to socialise and when the internet is promoting and creating its own stars on the platform which we use so much it becomes obvious why these YouTube stars are becoming so big. They are now almost everywhere we look and becoming household names. The growth of participatory culture alongside social media has become the guiding force for or current generation, leading them into a world lead by prosumers. Which leads us into a further discussion of why do we enjoy their content and how much control and relevance do these online stars have?