Sports discourse on “YouTube”: structure and specificity of content

INTRODUCTION. YouTube video hosting has become an effective platform for the functioning and development of sports discourse. The relevance of studying YouTube sports content is determined by the insufficient knowledge of this issue, despite the growing interest of researchers in sports discourse and in multibodal texts that provide content for blogs. The purpose of the study is to systematize sports YouTube channels, identifying their general, structural and genre-format features.
MATERIALS AND METHODS. The material for the research are YouTube channels of sports topics. As a main method, the method of content analysis of sports YouTube channels collected using the continuous sampling method is used. The entire range of YouTube channels is characterized by several parameters: the economic basis of media activity, the level of technical support of media activity, thematic and genre-format specificity of the content.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. The work distinguishes between three types of channels: channels of sports media and sports leagues - media texts of the first order, original YouTube projects of professional journalists about sports and materials of non-professional bloggers - media texts of the second order, content of ordinary users - media texts of the third order.
CONCLUSION. A study of existing media practices operating in the Russian-language sports segment of YouTube allows us to conclude that channels of a variety of formats are represented in the sports sector of video blogging. We can talk about the dominance of professional channels in which specialists, athletes, and journalists talk about sports.