What better way to start this new research blog off than this?! Yesterday night me and my colleagues got the fantastic news that our research project on “YouTube as a performative arena” has received funding from The Knowledge Foundation. More information about this [in Swedish] can be found here and here.

Within this three year project, running 2009-2011, we will analyze YouTube as a place were young people in Sweden express themselves in creative and artistic ways.This will be done in three interrelated subprojects. The first one, YouTube as Hybrid Media Space, is based on ethnographic research and media analysis and is centered around three Swedish youth groups and their use of YouTube in performance. Stephanie Hendrick is the one responsible for this research, and an example of her ideas on this can be found here. The second one, The Discourse on YouTube as Youth Culture, will be headed by myself and consists of an analysis of medialized reactions to young people’s use of YouTube. The third and final one, YouTube, Creativity, and Extended Concepts of ‘Text’, will mainly be run by Patrik Svensson and investigate how YouTube culture relates to learning processes in Swedish schools. We will cooperate with Kulturverket in Umeå. This will be an extremely exciting thing to be part of.