YouTube and Agenda Setting
Paper accepted for presentation at AEJMC:
The primary purpose of this study is to refine gatekeeping theory, by examining it in the new context of user-generated news content. Videos from YouTube were utilized as an approximation of user-generated content, due to YouTube’s leadership position in the online user-generated video streaming market. A quantitative systematic content analysis of the most popular YouTube political news videos during the months preceding the 2008 presidential election was conducted to investigate: (1) if YouTube effectively enabled non-elite groups to partake in the mainstream public discourse and (2) to what extent the traditional media dominate the most popular news content on YouTube. Results offer support to both Internet pessimists and optimists by showing that both elite and non-elite groups find a meaningful way to utilize the user-generated media environment. The fact that the non-elites are able to do so, however, is notable and has important implications for journalism and democracy.
Citation: Dylko, I., Landerville, K. D., Beam, M. A., & Geidner, N. W. (2009). Gatekeeping and YouTube: News Filters and the Intermedia Dynamic in the Age of User-Generated Content. Paper submitted to the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in Boston, Mass.
This paper was also in the top three for the Communication Technology Jung-Sook Lee Student Paper Competition.