Madden, Amy and Ruthven, Ian and McMenemy, David (2013) A classification scheme for content analyses of YouTube video comments. Journal of Documentation. ISSN 0022-0418 (In Press)
Abstract
YouTube is one of the most visited sites on the Internet, and attracts 800 million unique visitors per month. It allows users to upload and share video clips on a diverse array of topics, and also incorporates a growing number of additional features that allow users to interact with the content and other users. Users can review or rate what they have watched, and associate comments with videos to express their opinions or respond to the video content. The user comments facility has become a medium for other forms of communication unrelated to the video content. Comments are used for self-expression, providing emotional support, reminiscence, grieving and advice, as well as direct comments on the video itself. In this paper, we explore the types of comments provided on YouTube, proposing a classification schema to categorise comments on YouTube. This scheme was based on a content analysis of 66,637 user comments. Our classification schema consists of 10 broad categories referring to the major classes of comments and then a detailed breakdown into 58 subcategories which allow the classification of comments into coherent groups of comments.
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