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UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Online Stars and the New UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Online Stars and the New Audience: How YouTube Creators Curate and Maintain Communities THESIS submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE in Information and Computer Science with concentration in Informatics by Nathaniel Lloyd Major Thesis Committee: Professor Bonnie Nardi, Chair Professor David Redmiles Professor Josh Tanenbaum 2015 © 2015 Nathaniel Lloyd Major DEDICATION To My wife Rebecca For unlimited encouragement (and free proofreading) ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES........................................................................................................................................ v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................................ vi ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS ..................................................................................................................... vii INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................................... 1 Relevance and Format of the Thesis .................................................................................................... 3 BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................................... 4 Content Creators, Fandoms, and Collaboration .................................................................................... 4 Content Poachers ............................................................................................................................ 4 Participatory Culture ........................................................................................................................ 6 Virtual Worlds, Collaboration and Meta-Design ............................................................................... 7 YouTube, Let’s Plays, and Content Creators ......................................................................................... 8 Early Platform .................................................................................................................................. 8 Subscriptions ................................................................................................................................... 9 Algorithms – Pre 2012.................................................................................................................... 10 Algorithms – 2012 to the Present ................................................................................................... 11 Let’s Plays ...................................................................................................................................... 13 Replay Culture ............................................................................................................................... 13 SomethingAwful and LPs................................................................................................................ 14 Let’s Play on YouTube .................................................................................................................... 16 The Rise of the Let’s Play ............................................................................................................... 16 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 19 METHOD ............................................................................................................................................... 20 Participatory Interaction .................................................................................................................... 20 Interview Participants ........................................................................................................................ 21 Materials ........................................................................................................................................... 22 Procedure .......................................................................................................................................... 22 Limits................................................................................................................................................. 23 Analysis/Results ................................................................................................................................. 24 DISCUSSION .......................................................................................................................................... 28 Creators’ Interaction with Content .................................................................................................... 28 iii Types of Content ........................................................................................................................... 28 DIY vs Professionalism ................................................................................................................... 31 Relationship with Created Content ................................................................................................ 35 Spreading the Spreadable Media ................................................................................................... 37 Creative Expansion vs Specialization of Content ............................................................................. 47 Monetization of Content ................................................................................................................ 49 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 51 Creators’ Interaction with Creators .................................................................................................... 53 Community .................................................................................................................................... 53 Collaboration ................................................................................................................................. 56 Hierarchy and Class Structure ........................................................................................................ 61 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 65 Creators’ Interaction with Audience .................................................................................................. 66 Communication Centered Medium ................................................................................................ 66 Everything in Service of the Audience ............................................................................................ 68 Communication: From Small to Large ............................................................................................ 69 Comments and Discussion ............................................................................................................. 71 Seeking them out: Audience hunting and growth ........................................................................... 73 Shotgun Approach vs Target Demographics: Refining the Audience ............................................... 75 Real-Life Stars ................................................................................................................................ 77 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 78 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................................ 81 Summary ........................................................................................................................................... 81 Future Research ................................................................................................................................ 83 REFERENCES .......................................................................................................................................... 86 APPENDIX I – Interview Questions ........................................................................................................ 98 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1: List of Participants……………………………………………………………………………………… 25 Table 2: Content Creators and Size…………………………………………………………………………… 81 v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost I’d like to thank my committee chair and advisor, Professor Bonnie Nardi. It was her who supported this project from inception to completion, guiding and advising throughout. Her knowledge and enthusiasm for qualitative research, online communities, and games research has been invaluable. Without her guidance, this would still be an overly broad, unfocused pipe dream. It is very much thanks to her that this thesis saw completion. I’d like to thank my committee members, Professor Josh Tanenbaum and Professor David Redmiles for their support, critique, and vigilance at uncovering typos. I’d specifically like to thank Josh for his enthusiasm for both games and media research, and David for his vision and research into virtual worlds that helped provide a framework for this paper to leap forward from. Both of you have provided inspiration that has proven invaluable. I’d additionally
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