ABSTRACT
YouTube is the world’s largest platform for creating, sharing, and watching video content. Each day, users watch a billion hours of videos, and as of July 2015 more than 400 hours of video content were uploaded to YouTube every minute. Launched in 2005, the video-hosting platform was bought by Google only a year into its existence, and is now, twelve years later, one of the most visited websites overall. Given its popularity, YouTube has become something of a cultural phenomenon. As of 2016, YouTube is the most popular social media site in the United States based on penetration, reaching 72% of the population. In the northern European context, YouTube has seen a massive growth in popularity in recent years, particularly amongst the younger population. In 2016 the number of children and teens in Denmark who consumed YouTube content on a daily basis almost doubled from 2014, reaching over 70% of young people between 7 and 12 years of age. As Jean Burgess and Joshua Green write, “YouTube clearly represents a disruption to existing media business models and is emerging as a new site of media power” (2013, p. 5). While YouTube has certainly challenged the existing business models of the television industry in particular, less visible is the way in which YouTube is constantly challenging the existing dynamics of its own industry from within.
