Parasocial attributes and YouTube personalities: Exploring content trends across the most subscribed YouTube channels

This study seeks to analyze the relationships between content features, video attributes, and parasocial attributes-the characteristics that could lead to the creation of parasocial relationships-among the top most subscribed YouTube channels. A quantitative content analysis was utilized in order to explore the videos of the most popular YouTube personalities. A stratified random sample was used to select 24 videos from each the top ten most subscribed YouTube channels. The findings of this study illuminate the relationship between content features, production features, and parasocial attributes. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.