YouTube Stars vs. Mainstream Celebs
A new study by Variety reveals that teens are more influenced by YouTube stars rather than mainstream celebrities. In a survey, Variety presented 20 well-known celebrities and 20 well-known English-language YouTube stars to 1,500 teens, asking them to rank the people based on “approachability, authenticity and other criteria considered aspects of their overall influence”. From this, a score was compiled in order to rank these star and celebs. Surprisingly, not only did the YouTube stars fare well in competition with the celebrities, they completely made up the top 5 and took up 6 out of the top 10 spots. While the mainstream group had been rated “more reliable and smarter”, teens rated the YouTube stars as “relatable”, which was a big factor in the reason for their popularity. Teens do not like the “PR” version of celebrities and would rather connect to the less filtered YouTube stars that are also more accessible to them through the web.
Another reason that these YouTube stars may have become more popular than the mainstream celebrities is the idea of both information cascades and the “rich-get-richer” model. The fact that these YouTube celebrities are based on the internet allow the internet/tech savy teens of this age become more exposed to the YouTube stars, therefore allowing them to create an affinity to these stars. When the friends of these teens see that more of their friends investing more time in YouTube stars, they then start to notice these YouTubers as well. Furthermore, when the ratio of friends that like YouTubers more exceeds the ratio of friends that like celebrities more by 2, then an information cascade will begin, influencing a large chunk of the teen population.
The “rich-get-richer” concept works well for this case as well. In the “rich-get-richer” idea, if one person randomly decides to follow the decision of a preceding node — in this case, a fellow teen friend — then the probability that the same decision will be made again increases, since the other nodes after have the same probability of making the same decision. Thus, adding in the fact that teenagers are very susceptible to copy their peer’s behavior, this concept is very strong in this environment, making it easier for the YouTubers to become popular rather than the mainstream celebrities.
http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/survey-youtube-stars-more-popular-than-mainstream-celebs-among-u-s-teens-1201275245/