Burgess and Green say that the media tends to frame YouTube
as either:
Ø
A lawless repository
for user content
Ø A big player in a new economy
These frames make for news stories that always seem to
cluster around:
Ø
Celebrities, youth,
and morality
Ø Media business and copyright laws
Burgess and Green believe that “media discourse – whether celebratory,
condemnatory, or somewhere in between – cannot help but both reflect and shape
the meaning of new media forms as they evolve” (15). Burgess and Green state
that they are not aiming to say that mainstream media discourses about YouTube
are wrong, but rather they want to provide alternative perspectives on the
matter.
Something the authors point out struck me as very odd: “One
of the most striking things about mainstream reporting of YouTube is the degree
to which these matters of concern conflict” (16). They go on to say that
current affairs programs would one day praise YouTube as a site of “wacky,
weird, and wonderful user-generated content” (16), and a few days later, the
same program would say it is “an under-regulated site of lawless, unethical,
and pathological behavior” (16).
This leads Burgess and Green to a discussion of media
panics. “In press coverage, YouTube is often used to express familiar anxieties
about young people and digital media, especially in relation to the risks, uses
and misuses of [the] Internet” (17). Young people are connected to media
through metaphors of newness and change and this leads adults to believe in an “intergenerational
digital divide” where youths are assumed to be YouTube’s default users.
This relates to the idea of the digital native that we
learned about in class. James Sturm touches on the idea of the digital native
in his blog “Life Without the Web”. He believes that for digital natives or
youths the internet “is like a body part” (4). Because they grew up with
technology youths or digital natives are just assumed to be the prominent users
of YouTube, but in a later part of the book Burgess and Green point out “the
most prominent lead users . . . are adults in their twenties or thirties” (72).
It also relates to the idea of the digital divide that we
discussed in class. The digital divide we learned about was concerned with
access. The worry was that those without access were falling behind. With the
intergenerational digital divide, access still plays a part but it is more
concerned with participation and literacy. Burgess and Green explore this point
further in Chapter 4.
Burgess and Green move on to discuss some points brought up
by the media. One man claimed that on YouTube large amounts of sinister content
were only a few clicks away. He believe youths are agents who post the content
but also victims who are exposed to gruesome and harmful footage. Others point
to stories about cyberbullying (using digital technologies to bully). One man
even wrote a book saying that YouTube and participatory culture was eroding intellect
and moral standards. In response to these points Burgess and Green point out
that many of these same concerns “emerged around the pauper press . . . and the
emergence of the portable hand camera” (20). They also point out the fact that
many of “the offending videos uncovered by journalists had very few views
before their exposure in the national or international press” (21). The
reporting itself is drawing attention to the videos. Overall, Burgess and Green
found that in many cases the amount of “sinister content” was overstated.
The next subtopic of the chapter is The Meanings of Amateur
Video. Burgess and Green found that with YouTube people often assumed that if
they posted footage of their raw talent on the site they could achieve
legitimate success and fame (like the band OK Go), but these people don’t
realize that they still need to have the ability to pass through the “gate-keeping
mechanisms” of traditional media culture (i.e. getting a recording contract or
filming a TV pilot). People who become popular on YouTube may be stars, but
that does not necessarily mean they are a celebrity.
It’s actually kind of astounding how certain videos become “viral”.
Some of the most popular videos are about very mundane, everyday things. But
Burgess and Green believe that is why people like them “because it’s reality .
. .[they are] so spontaneous and natural” (26). Audiences seem to put
themselves in the position of the user. This also explains why audiences dislike
users who “break the code” so to speak. Burgess and Green use the example of
LonelyGirl15 who captured the hearts of millions and in the end turned out to
be a complete fake with scripted content. Audiences have come to expect a
certain amount of authenticity in videos.
Burgess and Green also make it a point to say how mainstream
media neglects to see YouTube as a social network. Media seems to assume that
self-promotion is the only type of motivation behind content creation; but in
reality many of the users upload content to take part of the social networking
community on the site.
But, above all else, YouTube and mainstream media interact
the most when it comes to copyright infringement. One of the three myths of
YouTube’s creation (Chapter 1) was that it was to be a site for illegal file sharing.
A big problem YouTube has is that it is expanding so rapidly that it has
trouble creating and/or enforcing digital rights management strategies. Traditional
media companies are not happy about this. Burgess and Green note that there
appears to be an “always-looming avalanche of lawsuits that might, at any
moment, bring the company to its knees” (31). Despite all the copyright
lawsuits, YouTube has been able to make some revenue sharing deals with big
media companies.
Burgess and Green move on to say that in participatory
culture the rules around copyright infringement and piracy tend to get a little
fuzzy. Many users utilize a process called redaction which is “the production
of new material by the process of editing existing content” (35). Some argue
that this is not copyright infringement it is a process of “enunciative
productivity”.
In summary, Burgess and Green state that though YouTube is
gradually “becoming incorporated as a mainstream part of the cultural public
sphere” (36), mainstream media still does not seem exactly sure just what
YouTube is for. Burgess and Green believe that it is helpful to understand
YouTube as occupying an institutional function that “operates as a coordinating
mechanism between individual and collective creativity” (37).
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