About

Pioneering YouTube exists to investigate what makes various YouTubers successful.  It is a digital humanities initiative at Messiah College analyzing contributions made to the YouTube community.  We are seeking to understand evaluate successful YouTube channels in an effort to fully understand their popularity based on original research and analyses.

We evaluate each channel in two parts:  1) YouTube videos that discuss the channel on a macro level, looking at the channel from its early stages to current state. 2) Annotated essays that discuss a specific video from the channel that is particularly important.

Our goals:

• Analyze and critique what makes a YouTuber successful.
• Discuss the convergence of social media, how the user utilizes Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and their website(if any) to draw people to their videos.
• Investigate specific videos and how they are representative of the channel.
• Analyze the evolution of the channel from inception to current state.
• Find a connection(if any) between the YouTuber and traditional media(TV, Radio, Film…etc)

 What Pioneering YouTube is not:

• A website to promote YouTube channels.
• A website existing solely for commercial purposes

Essentially, Pioneering YouTube is an academic investigation of the digital media frontier that is YouTube.