You Tube and the paticipation gap

When a friend first told me about Youtube three years ago, it was as a way to watch episodes of my favorite tv show, before networks were willingly putting all of their content online. We used youtube to watch copyrighted content produced by mainstream media, and put on the site by users in violation of it's community guidelines. Videos like these are not the what the site is intended for, and are often taken down, but they got me onto youtube and looking around, where I could see what kind of videos were being produced and uploaded within the community.

I was interested to read the articles discussing the feelings of the youtube community when the company was purchased by Google. I had only been using the site for a few months at the time, and this was certainly before it had become a part of the average American's daily life, so it's hard to imagine how the site's evolution would have been different had they never been bought up. I think that the participtory culture that had been started with the grassroots efforts in the site's early days was encouraged, only now the popularity was rapidly increasing, and creators had the possibility of going from underground to internet celebrity.

While I have certainly watched, and even subscribed, to homemade videos made by average joe youtube users, it's relationship with mass media is more where my personal interests in it lie. The Jenkins aritcle describes how major media companies were forced to either join in or opt out of the participatory culture. Major networks and shows began making their own youtube accounts and posting some of their more popular clips. Like the article mentions, youtube became a place to find and watch mass media content that had been missed during it's original airings. The articles mention that the most watched videos were predominantly from caucasian Americans, but as of right now, almost all of the most watched videos are clips from mass media tv shows and music videos. So while McMurria seems to consider the youtube participation gap a class issue, the bigger gap seems to be between mass media and individual user generated content of any kind.