The document analyzes popular content on new media channels like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. It finds that the most viewed YouTube videos generally fall into categories like sports, makeup tutorials, viral videos, music (especially rap), and celebrity interviews. On Facebook, users join groups to express interests and engage in trends, while the news feed encourages communal interactions. Twitter allows users to post short messages about what they're doing, like a public journal, and tweets often include facetious jokes or references to popular music and artists. Overall, new media users seem to enjoy lighthearted, viral content that allows them to socially engage and express personality.

1. Research Into New Media Channels Popular new media channels such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are user driven. It is their content which attracts audiences. It seemed appropriate then, to research into what content users were choosing to consume, and how this might be categorised and indeed the interests which could be exploited in their appeal in our project.

2. When browsing the 'most viewed' page of YouTube categories with mass appeal quickly established. These, ordered in least to highest appeal, are; Sport, particularly boxing and football Make-up/Fashion monologues and anecdotal tutorials Perhaps indicating a strong male audience, as well as a violent media consuming audience. This disputing the strong male audience, indeed a strong female audience. It might be more accurate to say an indifferent gender based majority but rather a supply of content gear toward stereotypically male/female interests.

3. When browsing the 'most viewed' page of YouTube categories with mass appeal quickly established. These, ordered in least to highest appeal, are; Viral Spoofs Calamitous slapstick events in the vein of "You've been framed" This would indicate a wide appeal of light hearted, slapstick and quirky content.

4. When browsing only the most popular content in the music category these trends were found; Mass consumption of rap orientated content. Grime is well represented in particular too. The videos have a very independent quality to them, it would be perhaps too pejorative to call them amateur, but they are of home video cinematographical quality.

5. When browsing only the most popular content in the music category these trends were found; Pop music, from major labels. Major labels do feature on YouTube, but they do not have position as gatekeeper by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed, users seem to be open to less professional content that these labels produce. YouTube breaks down the inability of joe public to publish content to a sizable audience. Viral marketing is perhaps an extension of the often guerrilla tactics used by smaller, independent people or institutions producing content, it does have some similarity to fly poster marketing, it is quick, easy, done in mass and effective in engaging and attracting the public audience.

6. When browsing only the most popular content in the music category these trends were found; Interviews, many with rap artists. There would seem to be large rap consuming audience, very reachable through YouTube.

7. Facebook Facebook is a social networking site. As such it is a very social environment. Users 'friend' each other and may write messages on each other 'walls'. The news feed is an aggregator, like an RSS feed. It is a bullet point form way of keeping track of the interactive chat among friends and friends of friends indeed, enforcing a sense of communal space, a user may find out what others are talking about.

8. Facebook Facebook is a social networking site. This communal aspect lends itself to harbouring viral interests, users are driven to wondering what others are doing and saying. Facebook also has the phenomenon of groups. These are often light hearted and facetious, prone to crazes. Users can choose to belong to a group and his will be alerted across their network on the news feed page. This enables others to see which groups others are choosing to be part of. This is obviously, again, prone to crazes.

9. Facebook Facebook is a social networking site. Users will join groups to reflect their interests, expressing their individuality. They may also join facetious spoof like groups for fun, partaking in the joke. This coupled with the high appeal of spoofs on YouTube suggests that new media users are a somewhat cynical and joking demographic.

10. Twitter Twitter is a service where users will write short messages about whatever they are doing recently, it acts like a journal. An interactive journal, that is.

11. Twitter Twitter is a service where users will write short messages about whatever they are doing recently, it acts like a journal. Similarly with Facebook's news feed twitterers may subscribe to other users to view their updates as well as all of those that they are subscribed to, notice the similarities with facebook, they seem to be the same technology merely using a different parlance.

12. Twitter Twitter is a service where users will write short messages about whatever they are doing recently, it acts like a journal. Again twitters are of a tendency toward facetious comical comments, this perhaps due to the communal aspect, flaunting their selves as 'the joker in the pack' and 'a somebody' of character and a fun personality. The same susceptibility to trends would apply here as with Facebook.

13. Twitter Twitter is a service where users will write short messages about whatever they are doing recently, it acts like a journal. Twitterers may tag posts often with rather superb zealous wit. Customs such as this are quick to establish in new media, online, social culture.

14. Twitter Twitter is a service where users will write short messages about whatever they are doing recently, it acts like a journal. Another is the writing of what they are listening to, or praising artists material and advocating it's purchase "Go cop that", "Get that in" are phrases which firmly establish their selves as trends in the, welcoming to informal and colloquial custom, atmosphere which twitter breeds.

15. Conclusion These new media are then decisively social. They make large exhibition of personality, charm and comedy. These traits which rap is often full of and may explain it's popularity among these media. They are of viral nature and so if content was to abide by the conventions established in new media it would be favourable to a viral success.