YouthTube: Youth Video Authorship on YouTube and Vine Svetlana Yarosh Elizabeth Bonsignore Sarah McRoberts Tamara Peyton University of Minnesota University of Maryland University of Minnesota The Pennsylvania State University Minneapolis, MN College Park, MD Minneapolis, MN University Park, PA [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT informing the design of platforms that can foster creativity What kinds of content do children and teenagers author and and collaboration around online video content while still share on public video platforms? We approached this ques- protecting online safety and privacy. Additionally, this tion through a qualitative directed content analysis of over work contributes to an important thread within CSCW on 250 youth-authored videos filtered by crowdworkers from understanding how teenagers and young adults develop public videos on YouTube and Vine. We found differences unique practices with social media, including videochat [9] between YouTube and Vine platforms in terms of the age of and instant messaging [17]. Revealing the differences be- the youth authors, the type of collaborations witnessed in tween the practices of teenagers and adults can highlight the videos, and the significantly greater amount of violent, both generational and developmental differences in the use sexual, and obscene content on Vine. We also highlight and attitudes to common social media technologies. possible differences in how adults and youths approach online video sharing. Specifically, we consider that adults We use an expanded definition of video author [10], as one may view online video as an archive to keep precious having an active role in creating or contributing to the crea- memories of everyday life with their family, friends, and tion of original video content. Perhaps it is more helpful to pets, humorous moments, and special events, while children specify who is not an author based on our definition: one and teenagers treat online video as a stage to perform, tell who simply reposts existing content without change (e.g., stories, and express their opinions and identities in a per- capturing a scene from a movie) or one who is unaware that formative way. the video is being created (e.g., a toddler captured in the park in natural activity is generally not taking an active role Author Keywords in the creation of the video). We know a great deal about Child; teenager; authorship; online video; YouTube; Vine. how adults author online video; for example, we know that ACM Classification Keywords 18% of adults post original content on online platforms, H.5.1. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): such as YouTube and Vimeo [30]. We know that teenagers Multimedia Information Systems: Video. are comfortable using video as a communications medium to “hang out” [9]. We also know that teenagers are fre- INTRODUCTION quently active participants in online communities and social In 2015, Frontline released “Generation Like,” highlighting networking sites like Facebook, Snapchat, and Vine [24]. how social media has changed the way children and teenag- However, we know very little about how children and teen- ers connect and enact identity, which has in turn changed agers author and share video content, despite the leading who creates the content that influences the opinions and role that authors as young as seven take in some of these practices of this generation [42]. Whereas in the past, communities [43]. In this paper we aim to address this gap youth-targeted content was authored primarily by media by answering a single research question: What kinds of giants such as Disney’s The Mickey Mouse Club and MTV, content do children and teenagers author and share on the new media empire increasingly includes content au- public video platforms? thored and shared by other children and teenagers [43,44]. What does youth video authorship and sharing look like in a We answer this question by examining the videos children generation where Internet fame may only be a single viral and teenagers make publicly available on YouTube and post away? We contribute to answering this question by Vine as primary sources of evidence. Through this content investigating youth video authorship online, in the hope of analysis process, we contribute not only a novel under- standing of youth video authorship practices, but also artic- Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for ulate an effective approach to filtering relevant content au- personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are thored by a particular population of interest. not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for com- We begin this paper with a brief overview of video sharing ponents of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Ab- platforms, describing why we chose to focus this investiga- stracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission tion on YouTube and Vine. We describe the related work in and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]. this domain to help articulate our contributions both in CSCW '16, February 27-March 02, 2016, San Francisco, CA, USA terms of the findings of our study and the particular ap- © 2016 ACM. ISBN 978-1-4503-3592-8/16/02…$15.00 proach we take to filtering relevant content. We briefly de- DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2818048.2819961 scribe a situating study looking at parents’ understanding of their children’s online video sharing practices, before dis- massive number of contributors, 63% of the most popular cussing the methods and findings of our content analysis of uploaders were primarily sharing user-copied (rather than youth-authored online video. We end with a discussion user-authored) content [11]. Looking more closely at spe- highlighting unique aspects of Vine as a platform, a com- cific user-authored content, Biel and Gatica-Perez’ investi- parison of the differences in use of video platforms between gation examined specific media characteristics of user vlogs youths and adults, and a reflection on our methodological and how they correlate with popularity [8]. Farnham and approach. Churchill suggest that people maintain faceted lives online, choosing identity presentation based on the affordances of VIDEO SHARING PLATFORMS various technologies [12]. Finally, Rotman et al. enhanced There are many platforms and communities that support video sharing: our understanding of what motivates people to contribute content to YouTube through a mixed-method investigation • YouTube is the largest community for sharing video of perceived community and sense of belonging on this content online. It has no genre constraints or time lim- platform [33]. Despite the fact that we know that age affects its and provides billions of public, searchable videos. authorship in online video communities [30], none of these • Twitch hosts a large collection of public videos fo- studies examined youth authorship on video sharing plat- cused on live-streaming of video games including forms. game tournaments, screencasts, and play-throughs. Vine has been investigated considerably less than YouTube, • Vine is a public video-sharing platform owned and though we know that a quarter of teenagers have Vine ac- operated by Twitter and best known for its 6-second counts [24]. Zhang et al. quantitatively examined repost time limit. traces of over 50,000 video clips and 1,000,000 user pro- • Instagram began as a photo-sharing platform but has files on Vine, showing that this platform is distinct from recently expanded to support short (3-15 second) video others in several ways, such as encouraging unique batch shares. viewing practices and exhibiting an unusually strong skew • Snapchat is an app that provides mobile picture and in the distribution of views, with the top 5% video clips video sharing with a particular feature of content “ex- accounting for more than 99% of all reposts [41]. However, piring” after a certain time period. Public sharing is en- neither of the above investigations examined video post abled through the story feature, which displays a shared content. Although Vine has been identified as an important video or photo for only 24 hours. part of the research agenda for understanding video interac- • Facebook is a general-purpose social networking site. tion [23], we are one of the first to examine the content of It allows sharing videos and photos with different pri- the videos shared through this platform. vacy settings. Understanding Parenting of Children’s and Teenagers’ While all of these are popular with children and teenagers Online Practices [24], we chose to focus on YouTube and Vine as the two Studies of children’s and teenagers’ use of social network- most popular platforms where public video sharing is the ing and online sharing platforms have largely focused on primary purpose. parenting and privacy practices online. For example, through over 100 semi-structured interviews with parents, RELATED WORK Our work is situated in previous investigations of public we know that that many parents carefully consider, curate, video sharing platforms and understanding and parenting and shape their children’s online presentation [4]. Another online practices of teenagers, but we contribute a novel paper in this series of studies has also identified a number understanding of youth-video authorship practices. While of rules and practices that parents have for limiting their our efforts are methodologically influenced by work that children’s online presence [40]. However, these studies filters and analyzes videos of specific populations of inter- may have been limited in their findings by not including the est, we also contribute a new approach to filtering relevant voices of the children or teenagers, since other studies have content.