YouTube The Premiere Platform for News
YouTube is a video platform that has been around since the early days of the internet. It originally was used to upload videos for people to share amongst friends and family but has now expanded to cater to all types of audiences from sports fans to make-up artists. Among all the types of content YouTube carries, the way YouTube releases news and important stories makes it easier for their audience to stay informed and digest the information than any other platform.
Why?
There are many ways YouTube news can compete against other sources of news, such as the Apple News app or Yahoo News, and it comes down to three big points: accessibility and ease of use, digestibility, and how quick it is.
YouTube can be accessed on most devices an average person carries. Whether it be your smartphone or gaming console, YouTube makes it easy for its consumers to quickly access news and other forms of content just with one press of a button.
Not only is YouTube extremely accessible, but it is also very easy to navigate and access all forms of content, especially news content. There is a whole section of YouTube dedicated to news and all things related where channels such as ABC or CNN post live updates to breaking news or upload videos of important conference meetings with the president. With one click or a simple search in the search bar, hundreds of thousands of hours of videos and content can be accessed on YouTube for you to view your heart’s content.
YouTube is also very digestible in the sense that videos are quick and easy to watch. You can either sit down and watching it traditionally or put it on in the background while doing some work. Features such as autoplay allow the audience to watch videos consecutively and hands-free. This benefits content like news as audiences can watch videos of similar topics consecutively, whether in the background or not.
YouTube is very quick. In 2019, TubeFilter, a website, revealed that 500 hours of footage is uploaded every minute of the day with 720,000 hours uploaded by its end. With this much content uploaded every minute, news on YouTube is always up-to-date and relevant.
These YouTube features make it one of the top platforms for people to consume news on the internet. With content always up-to-date and easy to digest, viewers can be informed about important topics and stay on top of the news.
Variety, Variety, Variety
On YouTube, you can get a wide variety of content. News, in particular, has many categories viewers can choose to watch.
There are specific channels for hard news such as ABC or CNN where viewers can stay informed about issues or topics that affect citizens on a local and national level, depending on which channel you watch. Hard news on YouTube is constantly being updated to stay the most relevant and accurate, making it one of the premier types of news you can watch on the platform.
YouTube also has channels that cover feature news. Channels such as the South China Morning Post make videos on individuals whose story has a greater meaning behind it. For example, on April 19, 2021, they released a video on a man who created a VR experience that simulates being pulled over as an African American in the U.S. While the video followed the creator, Bryant Young, and how he made the VR experience. The entire message of the video was to show people how African Americans are treated much differently than others in America.
Internet news is another type of news that is very popular on YouTube. Channels such as Phillip DeFranco or Omni, give mostly daily coverage of internet and social media news. However, some channels such as Phillip DeFranco also cover some hard news alongside internet news as his goal is to give you the most important news of that day.
Different Channels, Different Demographics
Different channels have different demographics.
For example, hard news channels on YouTube typically cater to an older audience whose age range is from 40-60. While internet news channels cater to a younger audience who range from 18-35.
Having these different demographics shows that anyone can watch YouTube get their news and it isn’t all limited to one channel. It also means that people are getting to choose who they want to watch and who they rely on to get their news.
The benefits of this are that the viewers get to have a channel they can consistently rely on for news and the type of coverage they are getting.
Conclusion
While there are plenty of other platforms for people to get their news from, YouTube is one of the better ones as it updates quickly and is extremely accessible. It also has a wide variety of channels that can cater to the audience with the type of news they cover and the different content they have on these channels. All in all, YouTube is one of the best platforms people can get their news from as it updates quickly and has a large variety of news to watch.