Fail Videos and Related Video Comments on YouTube: A Case of Sexualization of Women and Gendered Hate Speech?

Fail videos showing mishaps/accidents are very popular on YouTube. But is this genre affected by sexism, that is, are women portrayed more often than men in an objectifying, sexualized manner in the video clips (H1), and are women more likely than men to be the target of gendered online hate speech in the video comments (H2)? Quantitative content analyses of 500 video clips (derived from 50 videos) and of 1,000 video comments (derived from 5 “male” and 5 “female” videos) from YouTube’s most popular fail video channel FailArmy were conducted. Women in fail videos were portrayed in an objectifying, sexualized manner twice as often (H1), and were the target of gendered hate comments nearly five times more often (H2) compared to men. Future research could analyze videos and comments from additional fail channels and investigate the reasons for the sexualized portrayals as well as for the audience’s hateful reactions.