The Youtube(r) Conspiracy: How Does ‘Performing the Most Mundane Tasks In Front of a Camera’ Become the Next Big Thing?

Abstract

This paper focuses on the Internet phenomenon of Youtube celebrities -aka Youtubers- and their rising success and fame in popular culture. The primary aim of this research is to pinpoint which underlying factors play a role in bringing this aforementioned success to Youtube celebrities and how these factors can be interpreted for future content creators. To reach this goal some important events (e.g. when the initial audience is captured, the significant recognition is gained, the large audience is maintained, etc.) that take place in the career timeline of Youtubers are evaluated through qualitative methods by getting insights from both the audience and the content creators. The theories driven from marketing (e.g. tribal marketing), branding (e.g. self as a brand, brand communities etc.) and social media literature (e.g. social network, audience analysis, Youtube, etc.) guide this paper; however, they are not vis-a-vis implemented. At the end, data analysis shows that Youtube success is finding the good ratio between factors that influences how Youtuber’s channel, persona and content are perceived as well as forming and maintaining a strong online community.