Browsing by Subject "YouTube"

The purpose of this study is to find out how do Finnish children and adolescents portray their free time and school on their YouTube videos. Social media is nowadays a big part of life of almost every children and adolescent in Finland. Especially the video sharing site YouTube is really popular among younger generations. The level of school satisfaction is traditionally quite low in Finland, even though pupils generally regard school as an important part of their life. That’s why it is interesting to find out whether they bring out their school dissatisfaction also on their YouTube videos. I’m focusing mostly on the content of the videos, but I’ll also clarify, why do children and adolescents publish such videos they do and tell the things they tell in the videos. The research material consists of 10 diary-like vlog videos from 10 different vloggers, aged from 9 to 15. The videos were uploaded to YouTube during years 2016–2018. My method for data gathering was IRI-research (Investigative Research on the Internet) and I used content analysis to analyze the videos. After the analysis I then compared the findings to different surveys about children and adolescents’ free time and social media and internet usage. I also compared the findings to some studies about children and adolescents’ social relations. Vloggers researched in my study produce mostly basic diary-like description of their everyday life on YouTube. One interesting finding of this study was though that many of the videos included presentations of clothes and belongings. By showing their clothes and telling where they were bought from, the children and adolescents try to increase their social income and, in this way, improve their status among their peers. School was mentioned quite a lot in the videos. The children and adolescents talked for example about their schooldays, teachers, school supplies and also their feelings about school. School was mostly referred to either in a neutral or a negative way. Talking about school negatively can also be seen as a way of trying to improve status among peers, in a similar way as the presentation of clothes and belongings. In addition to information about children and adolescents’ free time and opinions about school, the results of this study give also further information about the meaning and role of social media as part of their social relations.

The aim of the study was to describe and interpret how the Amish patchwork, especially patchwork quilts, appear on the social media channel YouTube. The study dealt with the methods of qualitative research on how a specific craft tradition comes to the fore in thematic videos and tutorial videos, which have been made by people outside the Amish communities. The study also compared the messages of the videos to the legalities of Amish patchwork quilts which came up in the theoretical basis. The quilting tradition is old and Amish patchwork quilts are a big part of their culture where modern technology is not allowed. YouTube is one of the most popular search engines in the world and is also widely used among crafters. The modern way of bringing out a traditional craft may help to preserve the skill and give people outside the Amish communities an opportunity to learn how to make beautiful patchwork quilts with background knowledge and symbolism. Not much previous research has been done, at least from the point of view of YouTubers, but there are other studies regarding amish patchwork quilting available. The research material was first selected with certain restrictions and then mainly as random samples. The study is a qualitative media study in which five thematic videos and five tutorial videos were analyzed using two different types of analyses. From the five thematic videos, an attempt was made to bring out the tradition of Amish patchwork quilts on a general level with the help of representational analysis. The videos were opened and interpreted both together and one video at a time. The tutorial videos were studied with the help of theory-based content analysis by comparing the information on the videos to the theoretical basis of the study. The specific interest was on what kind of traditional features of Amish patchwork quilts can be found in these tutorials. Based on the research, the traditions of the Amish patchwork quilts came out well in YouTube videos at a general level. The content of the videos varied a lot in some cases, but in terms of actual significant contradictions in these ten videos selected for the study, did not appear. The points brought out in the selected videos were consistent, although some videos were quite narrow in content and in other videos the topic was brought out comprehensively. YouTube can be said to be, at least in this case, one possible channel for finding information and doctrine, as well as a means of preserving tradition.