Creating a taxonomy of online video

Creating some kind of map as to the various taxonomy of online video content is one of the major goals of my research project this summer. As I was starting to come up with concise and definitive categories of content it dawned on me how self-reflexive and aware content producers have become. It seems that each new viral video is a comment or hybrid formulation of the genres that came before. Nevertheless, it is important to have the basics down and to be able to define the elements that create each particular genre of online video.

As I see it there are three major types of online video content:
1. Pre-aired: Short for previously aired or distributed. This includes all of the streaming TV shows and movies as well as the downloadable forms of these programs. This content can be broken down into two types:

• Legal content: Includes ad-supported, streaming video, pay to rent or pay to own downloadable content (i.e. iTunes service, unbox, etc.), and downloaded video players (i.e. Joost) that delivers TV and film content
• Illegal, pirated content (P2P sites and torrents)

2. Web intended: This type of video is more difficult and most definitely varies the most in terms of style elements and production values. Web intended content includes the following types of video which are produced both by amateurs and professionals:

• Home videos
• User-generated mash-ups
• Vlogs
• Webisodes
• Instructional videos
• Short Films (i.e. content on Babelgum)

3. Captured content

• news footage
• TV clips

In the upcoming posts on this blog I will be working through these various categories and genres out as I attempt to culminate this online video mining experience.