An Analysis on the Practice of YouTube Content Creation by the Sri Lankan YouTubers as Next Generation Mainstream Platform for Video Media; an Innovative Solution for the Economic Crisis

Abstract

Among many streaming media platforms, "YouTube" is the largest and most popular video-sharing platform. YouTube is the key reason behind online video culture. YouTube has given an opportunity to video creators to earn through their video content. Accordingly, creating videos for YouTube freelancers, nowadays identified as ‘YouTubers’, is one of the most recognized professions in the world. Thus, YouTube can be used as an effective method by the Sri Lankan YouTubers to overcome the current economic crisis in Sri Lanka by earning foreign currency. The study is focused on how content creators used their video creation practices to succeed on the YouTube platform. The study mainly focused on the top 200 YouTube channels in Sri Lanka and narrowed it down to the most viewed 15 video creations from the most subscribed 15 channels. Film linguistic elements, story-telling elements, visual elements, and creativity of these video contents have been analyzed through the content analysis method. Further, the study has discussed how to develop the overall quality of these video contents to increase the popularity of the YouTube channels created by the Sri Lankan YouTubers based on the gathered data. The study evidently proved that contents created by the top Sri Lankan YouTube channels lack the qualities of Originality, Creativity and they have not considered philosophy and theoretical values, in their video productions.