For my website, I have decided to analyze the phenomena of YouTube as a new source of media. Popularity (number of hits per video) seems to be the fundamental organizing structure of corperate YouTube, catering to the "lowest common denominator" because of it's capatalistic incentives. Is it possible for YouTube to function as an intellectual/academic medium of new media? Will the structure of YouTube break away from it's roots of measuring success through numbers i.e. number of users and number of hits that in return rake in money? I predict that YouTube will never serve as a productive space for academia, but only time will tell.

Proposal Edit:
YouTube has the potential to become a productive academic space via the creation of channels dedicated to academia (i.e. Youtube's YouChoose08'). If this were to be incorporated into YouTube's structure, it is plausible to conclude from what we know of Anderson's The Long Tail, that these channels would feed the creation of academic niche groups. Academic channels would perpetuate an intellectual space through the social networking of academic videos alike. One factor that could deter the creation of YouTube as an intellectual medium would be the freedom to tag videos under any channel category. On my website, I will show links between various academic driven YouTube channels/videos to illustrate the notion of the creation of an academic niche via social networking (linking of information page-page to create a plethora of intellectual info). YouTube may be the next phase of academic learning amongst new media.