Interaktivitet på YouTube
En kvalitativ användarstudie av interaktivitetens roll på YouTube
This essay is an investigation of the level- and importance of interactivity on YouTube for the active user. YouTube is a great example of a user-friendly Internet environment which enables the users to take part in a virtual community where they can create the content and, with the various functions the site has to offer, interact with each other. With Uses and Gratifications as a tool for this research we look at the motivations and needs of the user and how they come into play on the most popular video distribution site in the world today. Qualitative interviews on Swedish respondents give us insight in how the YouTube-users with their own words perceive this relatively new highly interactive era. We focus on a narrow group of the most popular age-group of YouTube-users to go deeper - not to expand. Results show our discovery of patterns that indicates social motives behind user interaction on YouTube, but does not prove these patterns to be generalizable to YouTube users as a whole. We also discover interesting inconsistencies which give us insight in what further studies can develop.