YouTube is one of the most well-known and widely discussed sites of participatory media in the contemporary online environment, and it is the first genuinely mass-popular platform for user-created video. In this timely and comprehensive introduction to how YouTube is being used and why it matters, Burgess and Green discuss the ways that it relates to wider transformations in culture, society and the economy. The book critically examines the public debates surrounding the site, demonstrating how it is central to struggles for authority and control in the new media environment. Drawing on a range of theoretical sources and empirical research, the authors discuss how YouTube is being used by the media industries, by audiences and amateur producers, and by particular communities of interest, and the ways in which these uses challenge existing ideas about cultural ‘production’ and ‘consumption’. Rich with both concrete examples and featuring specially commissioned chapters by Henry Jenkins and John Hartley, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in the contemporary and future implications of online media. It will be particularly valuable for students and scholars in media, communication and cultural studies.

Product Description: Ephemeral Media explores the practices, strategies and textual forms helping producers negotiate a fast-paced mediascape. Examining dynamics of brevity and evanescence in the television and new media environment, this book provides a new perspective on the transitory, and transitional, nature of screen culture in the early twenty-first century...read more

Product Description: How does one make sense of YouTube? There is no reliable sample of videos on YouTube; no easily identifiable way to determine its dominant themes; no way to evaluate quality or impact; no seminal literature. Through genre analysis and digital media criticism, this book presents an accessible, yet critical introduction to «reading» YouTube...read more

Product Description: An anonymous musician plays Pachelbel's Canon on the electric guitar in a clip that has been viewed over sixty million times. The Dramatic Gopher is viewed over sixteen million times, as is a severely inebriated David Hasselhoff attempting to eat a hamburger...read more

Great love story.