This dissertation explores the current use of YouTube in music studies in higher education while suggesting a reconsideration of the academic as both source and resource in the neo-information age. In it, I summarize interviews with ten current YouTube content creators who run music education channels, focusing on their role as teachers in an invisible classroom. I also share findings from a nationwide survey of instructors who teach music studies in higher education. The results illustrate how music professors use YouTube for teaching and learning in a post-pandemic world. I aim to bridge the divide between the ivory tower and cybersphere by highlighting current collaborations between traditional and YouTube academics and suggesting how the two can cooperate to maximize learning effectiveness for Generation Z. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction and provides a brief history of YouTube. Chapter 2 offers a literature review. In Chapter 3, I review the sociology of knowledge, hyperreality, and the idea of the “unacademic,” all of which are philosophical concepts central to my discussion of YouTube content creators and their role as educators in relation to traditional professors in higher education. Chapter 4 describes the survey results, and Chapter 5 summarizes the content creator interviews. In the conclusion, Chapter 6, I offer my thoughts on the future of music studies in the traditional university and YouTubiversity. / Music History

A growing percentage of this content consists of reaction videos, a new type of user- generated content that has been on the rise within this social media platform, in which individuals record themselves reacting to any sort of content. This paper aims to explore the dynamics involved in this type of content, not only from the perspective of the creator but also from the angle of the viewer, to try and understand what leads to the popularity of these videos. The current thesis aims not only to dissect the topic but also to present the field of Media and Communication studies with relevant and unprecedented insight into the motivations that lead viewers to engage with this kind of content and contribute to debunk this contemporary audience phenomenon. To do so, a case study was conducted on a YouTube channel named ‘REACT’. The study utilised Uses and Gratifications Theory as well as the concept of mediated voyeurism to help contextualise the reaction genre. Using content analysis, 4 of their videos were analysed qualitatively. Plus, a focus group was conducted in order to not only understand the overall sentiment towards the reaction video genre, but also identify the possible reasons for it to be a global success. Results show that reaction videos can be characterised as dynamic, highly engaging and extremely relatable videos. Furthermore, they can be of amateur nature – unscripted, spontaneous and organic, or more professionalised – scripted and edited. Additionally, while most of the needs these videos fulfil can be categorised as diversion needs, the remaining ones can be perceived as both personal identity and surveillance needs. The current research can be seen as a useful tool for society to interpret relevant patterns of content creation and consumption within the current digital age.

Denna uppsats undersöker hur feministiska budskap kommodifierar och exploaterar marknadsföring riktat till kvinnor, även kallat femvertising. Detta har gjorts genom en multimodal kritisk diskursanalys (MCDA) av det amerikanska rakhyvelföretaget Billie Inc:s två reklamfilmer Project body hair från 2019 och Think of a woman från 2021. Genom en MCDA analyseras de feministiska budskapen i relation till de valda semiotiska resurserna: karaktärer, attribut, blick, vinklar, miljö, fokus, färg, ljud och text. Det ska framhållas att femvertising är en central del i denna studie då fenomenet genomsyrar Billies reklam, studiens syfte, tidigare forskning och resultat. Vidare består det teoretiska ramverket i denna studie av postfeminismen, som anknyter till den postfeministiska diskursen kommodifierad feminism, samt genuskonstruktioner och könsstereotyper i reklam. Studien resulterar i att Billie Inc kommodifierar och exploaterar feministiska budskap genom att inkludera och förkasta feministiska ideal. Vidare konstruerar Billie Inc kvinnorna i reklamfilmerna med både stereotypa och normbrytande inslag, detta i likhet med den kommodifierade feminismens förena feminism och femininitet. Genom detta, konstruerar Billie således en superkvinna, vilket slutligen resulterar i att varumärket neutraliserar det politiskt laddade budskapet, samtidigt som de främja en positiv samhällsutveckling.

YouTube is the second largest social media platform in the world, with a multitude of popularchannels which combine politicised commentary with news reporting. The platform providesdirect accessibility to data which makes it possible for the commentators to adjust theircontent to reach wider audiences, however done to an extreme could mean that the creatorspick topics which are the most financially beneficial or lead to fame. If this were the case itwould highlight populist newsmaking and the mechanisms behind it. To investigate theproduction-consumption interaction, data from the 10 most popular channels for 2021 wascollected. Using latent Dirichlet allocation and preferential attachment analysis, the effect ofcumulative advantage, and whether topic choice was driven by views were measured. Apositive feedback loop, where prevalent topics become more prevalent, was found in all buttwo channels, but picking topics which generated more views was only present for onechannel. The findings imply that the top political news commentators over a year have a set oftopics which they return to at a high degree, but choosing the topics which simply are themost popular for the time is not a general feature.

This is a quantitative content analysis that dives deep into the Fresh and Fit podcast channel on YouTube. The study uses the framing theory and the gender theory. We wonder why other creators choose some of the video material from the channel Fresh and Fit podcast and make it their “best of” edition. All videos from other creators made between the years 2022 and 2023 have been selected for the study and through this a total selection has been made. To each video the top 5 top comments are analyzed to see which tonality dominates. Through gender theory, the comment field will be examined and thus focus on the dominant tonality.The reason for not including videos presented by Fresh and Fit themselves is to exclude their own opinions and only concentrate the study on the choices of other creators. This is interesting as larger YouTube profiles more easily get further sharing by other people's accounts, who in different ways comment or cut out material that is further presented to the audience. It may affect different major accounts in different ways as their own material may be angled in ways that are beyond the bigger channels control. In addition, the creators can get help to spread their material more easily through the interest that exists in the larger channel's already established following, which can further result in the smaller creator's account growing even larger. This is the case for Fresh and Fit, which over the course of four years has grown so large that a number of different creators have chosen to use their material and republish it. So too satisfy curiosity, we have chosen to dive deeper into how other creators take liberties with Fresh and Fit material published on YouTube. The results show that it turned out that the creators were mainly interested in bringing up topics of conversation that dealt with women's behavior. In addition to this, the study concluded that those who mainly got to speak were the hosts together with female guests, but that male guests were given more space of their own to express themselves.

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