  This article provides an overview of the web video production context related
to science communication, based on a quantitative analysis of 190 YouTube
videos. The authors explore the main characteristics and ongoing strategies of
producers, focusing on three topics: professionalism, producer's gender and age
profile, and community building. In the discussion, the authors compare the
quantitative results with recently published qualitative research on producers
of popular science web videos. This complementary approach gives further
evidence on the main characteristics of most popular science communicators on
YouTube, it shows a new type of professionalism that surpasses the hitherto
existing distinction between User Generated Content (UGC) and Professional
Generated Content (PGC), raises gender issues, and questions the participatory
culture of science communicators on YouTube.
