”I really hope you guys are enjoying this. Thank you so much for watching!” : A qualitative and quantitative study of the interaction between YouTubers and their audience

The overall purpose of this essay, “‘I really hope you guys are enjoying this. Thank you so much for watching!’ - a qualitative and quantitative study of the interaction between YouTubers and their audience", is to study how YouTubers that play and comment video games interact with their audience, what kind of response these YouTubers receive and the interaction between viewers and fans in these YouTubers comment sections. This essay also studies if there is a difference between the response female and male YouTubers receive. The study is based on theories about fan culture, participation culture, collective intelligence, feminism and gender. A quantitative content analysis has been used to analyze 600 comments on six YouTube videos uploaded by six different YouTubers. The purpose of the quantitative analysis was to see what content of the comments most often occur as well as if the comment showed a positive, negative or neutral view of the YouTuber. The result of the quantitative analysis was used as a base for a qualitative critical discourse analysis, which also studied how the YouTubers behaved in the videos. The results of this study showed that the YouTubers mostly received positive comments about their personalities and their YouTube channel. They mostly received negative comments about the way they play the game. The female YouTubers received more negative comments than the male YouTubers, who in turn received more positive comments. The study also showed that YouTubers interact by talking directly to the audience and looking into the camera, by using the word “we” when talking about how they play the game as if they are playing with the audience, by asking the audience questions and by answering comments that the YouTubers have received. The YouTubers engage their audience by using strong expressions and by playing the game during a livestream. The YouTubers’ fans engage and interact by showing appreciation of the YouTubers and defend the YouTubers when they receive negative comments in the comment section of their videos. These ways which YouTubers interact with and engage their audience can be seen as part of a discourse about interaction and engagement online