Exploring YouTuber Popularity: A Quantitative Analysis of Communication Styles among Black Beauty YouTubers with Varying Follower Counts

• Název práce v češtině: Zkoumání popularity YouTuberů: Kvantitativní analýza komunikačních stylů mezi černošskými YouTubery s různým počtem sledujících
• Název v anglickém jazyce: Exploring YouTuber Popularity: A Quantitative Analysis of Communication Styles among Black Beauty YouTubers with Varying Follower Counts
• Klíčová slova: Black Youtubers, Vlogs, Youtube, Popularity
• Klíčová slova anglicky: Black Youtubers, Vlogs, Youtube, Popularity
• Akademický rok vypsání: 2021/2022
• Typ práce: bakalářská práce
• Jazyk práce: angličtina
• Ústav: Katedra sociologie (23-KS)
• Vedoucí / školitel: doc. Mgr. Martin Hájek, Ph.D.
• Řešitel: skrytý - zadáno vedoucím/školitelem
• Datum přihlášení: 24.06.2022
• Datum zadání: 24.06.2022
• Datum a čas obhajoby: 23.06.2023 12:30
• Místo konání obhajoby: Jinonice - Nový Kampus, B228, 228, seminární místnost ISS
• Datum odevzdání elektronické podoby: 03.05.2023
• Datum proběhlé obhajoby: 23.06.2023
• Oponenti: Mgr. Jakub Sedláček, Ph.D.

Seznam odborné literatury

Biel, J. I., Aran, O., & Gatica-Perez, D. (2011). You are known by how you vlog: Personality impressions and nonverbal behavior in youtube. In Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 446-449).

Cox, S. (2021). 8 Types of Vlogs You Should Know [Best Vlog Niches]. Wondershare.
https://filmii.wondershare.com/types-of-vlog-video/8-types-of-vlogs.html

Kleinberg, B., Mozes, M., & van der Vegt, I. (2018). Identifying the sentiment styles of YouTube's vloggers. arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.09722.

Riboni, G. (2017). Between professionalism and amateurship: makeup discourse on YouTube. Lingue Culture Mediazioni-Languages Cultures Mediation (LCM Journal), 4(1), 117-134.

Statista,(2022), Global Social Networks Ranked By Number Of Users.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/
Werner, E. A. (2012). Rants, reactions, and other rhetorics: Genres of the YouTube vlog (Doctoral dissertation, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).

Wood, M. (2019). What makes a vlog a vlog. Diggit Magazine.

Předběžná náplň práce

Research Topic:

YouTube is an application or website where users are encouraged to create content and are even paid for doing so. Recent YouTube statistics indicate that it has achieved more than 2.5 billion active users monthly as of 2022. (Statista, 2022). After Facebook, it is the second-most popular social network. It is thus highly influential and attracts a large audience. Vlogs, short for video blogs, are one of the most popular types of videos at present. People use vlogs to document their lives, share ideas and learn. This paper examines makeup vlogs, specifically those created by Black Youtubers.

Problem Statement:

YouTube vlogs enable users to share little details of life with people all around the world. In addition, as the gap between amateurs and professionals has shrunk, even non-professional YouTubers upload how-to tutorials and attempt to use discursive skills and body language to convey messages. However, the proliferation of vlogs makes people wonder why some are more popular than others. This topic sparked many discussions about the traffic and the pattern of viral videos on the internet. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to lift the veil and uncover the reasons for the success of black YouTubers by analyzing, for example, setup, norms, language, and genre of speech. Although many studies have examined the components and details of a vlog and what it should consist of, they rarely focus exclusively on Black Youtubers. This paper may aid black content creators and non-profit organizations in gaining a thorough understanding of audience preferences and achieving their own goals, for example, gaining attention and spreading awareness of specific social issues.

Merit:

The research's merit is that it attempts to identify the factors that lead to a video's popularity explosion from a wide range of video genres, which can help governments and non-profit organizations reach a wider audience and communicate on social platforms like YouTube. As stated previously, YouTube is a powerful tool in the modern era. It would be advantageous for them to incorporate some of the identified elements into their future videos, as it reflects what people like and how authentic they find the video to be. These techniques can help spread a video further in order to raise people's awareness of specific issues, particularly those affecting the black community.
Literature Review:

Vlogs are typically defined as Video blogs, where individuals videotape things they wish to share with their audience informally (Werner, 2012). However, various categories of vlogs lack a consensus definition. One author of Wondershare classified them into eight categories: comedy, how-to video, travel vlogs, etc. (Cox, 2021). Christensson's (2011) classification of "instructional videos, travel updates, and personal commentary" shares similarities and overlaps with several of the eight categories. These articles are helpful in gaining a deeper understanding of existing categories and determining the scope and types of videos to include in my research, namely makeup tutorials, comedy, and travel vlogs.

There have been discussions about vloggers' attraction to attention in videos. For example, Biel, Aran, and Gatica-Perez (2011) discovered that "More Extraverted, Open to experience, and Conscientious vloggers are associated with higher average levels of attention inYouTube," while Kleinberg, Mozes, & van der Vegt demonstrated that the majority of popular vlogs consist of emotions and tones leading to a positive conclusion.

The so-called Speaking Model, which was developed by the sociolinguist Dell Hymes, is a well-known model in the field. " The model was consisted of "Setting Participants", "Ends" , "Act Sequence" , "Key", "Instrumentalities", "Norms", and "Genre". However, Jones later remarked that the model should place a greater emphasis on participant perspectives, as he views it as guidelines for analyzing factors that are significant to viewers. Consequently, the significance of some factors may outweigh others (Wood, 2019).

Another relevant paper was "Between Professionalism and Amateurism: Makeup Discourse on YouTube" by Riboni (2017), which discussed the closing gap between Amateurism and professionalism and the prevalence of makeup tutorials on YouTube from a linguistic perspective. It concludes that makeup YouTubers must maintain both their amateur and professional selves in order to attract sponsors and persuade viewers that they know what they're doing while simultaneously demonstrating their disinterest in financial gain. The author of this study did mention using signposting techniques such as "Next" and "To finish off" to appear more logical and professional. This parallels the "Act Sequence" of the Speaking model, which also emphasizes the order in which speech events develop. However, it would be intriguing to find out if this study reveals the same or a similar pattern, given that the target participants are black people and there are multiple categories, including Makeup.


Research Question:

RQ:What factors contribute to the popularity of black creators’ vlogs on YouTube?
This research question examines vlogs by black creators on Youtube in-depth and attempts to determine what makes a black content creator's vlogs blow up and what factors play the most prominent roles. The definition of Popularity/Success is as follows as these terms will be used frequently throughout the remainder of the thesis.

Definition of Success/popularity:
The primary indicator of each vlogger's and vlogs' success or popularity is the number of likes and views. This paper acknowledges that YouTube views are related to the length of their YouTube careers and accordingly divides chosen participants into three groups. However, the primary metric will continue to be the number of likes and views, as "younger" YouTubers tend to have more immature videography skills.

Methods of Data Collection

This research is conducted quantitatively to identify the factors that contributed to the success of black Youtubers' vlogs. To address the research question proposed above, all data come from Youtube videos, including 60 black vloggers' from a wide range of genres, including makeup tutorials, comedy, and Day-in-my-life vlogs (travel vlogs). They are divided into three groups according to their career age on Youtube. The three groups are Beginner (1-2 years), intermediate (3 years), and advanced (more than 3 years). One of these vloggers' videos is selected for analysis. In addition to evaluating the videos, audience interaction, i.e., comments, is also assessed. Using the "Sort by" button and the "Newest first" option, comments are ordered from newest to oldest. The first 20 comments are chosen for analysis. Here are some comments from one of Nyma Tang's videos (makeup genre) named "Just Having FUN with Makeup|| Nyma Tang."

-New subscriber
-You are too beautiful. I actually can’t handle it.
-Flawless. Perfection
-Damn, Nyma has no business being the most beautiful woman in the world ❤w❤
-I love to watch you transition! You look like you are having so much fun! I love to see this, and I look forward to watching you! You know I’d love to see you in white face to see your bone structure! Could you do that one?
-The eyeshadow and lip color suits you so well!!
-your skin is insane. Im obsessedddd
-your skin and technique is just perfect
-so beautiful.
-This look (3*fire emoji) I need the bronzer, concealer, setting powder and highlighter (crying emoji)
-She is pretty
-Your skin is amazing and glowing. Love this look!
-You look so lovely how you have your lovely nice long hair in a hair band too nyma and i love your top too and i love your make up too amd i will always be your lovely nice friend to you too and i love you so much to you too and you look such a lovely nice cute princess too and you have a lovely nice cute smile too and you have lovely nice black skin too and i will always love watching your lovely nice chanel too and you are such a lovely nice l cute too and lots of love to you too i will see you soon on your next viideo too xxx
-You're so beautiful, I am subscribing, although I think just as a new subby I would love to see you go a little higher on the forehead area w the concealer for a more heightened face. Will be hitting that notification bell!!
-Love those colors on your eyes... Love it
-My favorite look of you
-Stunning!
-It came out absolutely beautiful
-The look! AWESOME.
-Listen! Lol...yo everything about this video is fire. Even the robe and the headband situation is fire. I didn't ask to be slayed like this okay. Its abuse and its gonna have to stop

Method of Data Analysis:

The research analysis section relies on the model named the Speaking model. I employ Taguette to code videos in the eight Jones categories and correlate them with the number of followers. The reason is that Jones emphasized that certain factors might be more important than others, which aligns with the purpose of the research to find categories that play the most important role in determining success. This step will identify similarities between these videos and factors contributing to the popularity of black creators' videos. Apart from that, comments are an essential part of the analysis. They are coded as they reveal how the audience perceives the characteristics of the YouTubers, such as tones, settings, scenes, etc., in the videos. The components of the S-p-e-a-k-i-n-g model are setting and scene, participants, ends, acts sequence, key, instrumentalities, norms, and genre.


Ethical Consideration:

In this study, I will objectively evaluate various facets of a vlog while avoiding harming any of the subjects in any way. It embraces anonymity and will not disclose any names. I will give credit to the original authors when quoting or referencing their articles out of respect for the work of previous scholars. I will not deliberately fabricate false data or conceal data and data collection procedures. As this research includes 60 videos and 20 comments published under each video, it automatically assumes the consent of the video creators and audiences for any analysis.