Comparing YouTube’s impact on politics, culture, news in India

One more week is gone and this week as part of assignment for Understanding Media by Understanding Google we need to explicitly rank YouTube’s impact in these three areas – politics, culture, news and then explain our choice for the area we believe to have been most affected. Here is my take on that:-

I live in India and as per my opinion YouTube’s impact us (in India) in following areas in descending order:-

1. Culture
2. News and Politics

Culture is a very broad term. It can be considered as group of people or society bound by  :-

– ideas
– customs
– social behavior
– education
– arts

Now if in every second, more than one hour of video is uploaded on YouTube  and with over 6 billion hours of videos watched each month , a niche culture is getting created every part of the World. Again this aligns with Google’s goal to serve the long tail. India is no exception here. If we look at the YouTube channels for India then we’ll see following :-

– Best of YouTube
– Featured
– Music
– Comedy
– Films and Entertainment
– Gaming
– Beauty and Fashion
– From TV
– Sports
– Automobile
– How-to and DIY
– Tech
– Science and Education
– Cooking and Health
– Causes and Non-Profit
– News and Politics
– Lifestyle

Inside each of these categories there are many sub-channels. From the definition of culture we can consider each of these categories as a type of culture. I am sure each one of us would be part of one or more types. I personally visit YouTube for Music, Tech, Science and Education and News often. As far as I know most of friends and family members visit channels from one or more categories.

From the above I can say that YouTube’s imapct on culture in the most.

Also from the above list  News and Politics is a sub-category and can keep them in same bucket. If we look at the trend dashboard for India :-
http://www.youtube.com/trendsdashboard

we do not see many people are interested in following News and Politics on YouTube.