MEDIA EXPERIENCE AND SOCIAL INFLUENCE ON FLAMING ON YOUTUBE: A PERSPECTIVE OF FLAMERS ON YOUTUBE

Abstract

Media experience and social influence are two concepts in flaming on YouTube. Media experience and social influence in flaming on YouTube are factors in both flaming as behavior and interpretive sense-making act. Today, the YouTube website has been labeled as a page that contains a lot of flaming. This shows the need for flaming on YouTube to be studied for a particular purpose. The design of this research is to study the views on media experience and social influence on flaming on YouTube. This study uses a qualitative methodology. Indepth interview was conducted with five informants who were the flamers on YouTube. Thematic analysis method was implemented in order to analyze the data. The results showed that flamers use of harsh language, sharing on other social media, sarcasm, and usage of capital letters and exclamation marks to express their anger toward certain issues of the video. In terms of thought of flaming activity, informants stated this thought means for entertainment and norm. This means flaming activity as a platform to express emotions and a form of cyberbullying.
The ‘thoughts’ in this concept are seen as an element of belief, expectation, concern, feeling, and understanding of a certain issue. The results also show that ‘flamers’ on flaming experience YouTube divided into three sub-themes. Among them is religion or race issues, celebrity, and politics. The ways flamers handled flaming on YouTube replies back comments, does not get offended and defensive. Based on this study, it contributes to flamers using the right and prudent approach before indulging themselves in flaming activity. Flamers need to endure politeness in accordance with Malaysian culture before commenting on YouTube. Hopefully, this study will also be an advantage for the government such as Malaysia Communications and Multimedia Commission, Cyber Security Malaysia, and other related parties as it will provide input findings from YouTube on the flamers’ point of view. The government will then be able to implement certain campaign and activities to create awareness of the disadvantages of flaming activity to the community and YouTube users. Law enforcement could be done to maintain the well-being of the nation and racial harmony.