Austin's Internet Culture Blog

This article, by Erika Morphy, brings a very interesting characteristic of the internet to light: it wants to take over everything. No, not in the destroy the world kind of way, but it wants to take over other media functions in our lives. Rather than listen to conventional radios, we now have internet radio, granting us access to almost any radio station on the planet. E-mail has taken over traditional postal services. Who needs to make a phone call when you can video chat instead?

YouTube has been changing it’s features in order to make it more interactive, more sensitive to the types of videos each person likes to “consume”.

The layout is simpler and more streamlined. The video appears at the top of the page, and the subscribe button, social actions and video information are directly underneath the player. Playlists appear to the right of the video. The changes are designed to encourage consumers to treat YouTube as a de-facto television experience, complete with the ability to channel surf. All of the tweaks serve to make the site stickier.

 

This change in YouTube shows that, once again, the internet is trying to take over some integral part of our lives. However, I don’t think that the takeover, if it happens, would happen any time soon, because ” television is still a major medium that no advertiser or content provider can ignore”. Aside from this fact, television has been so ingrained in our culture that it cannot be uprooted so easily as mail or radio. 

In my opinion, one of the major reasons that the internet will have trouble taking over television’s role in our lives is sports. Television companies have a strong hold on professional sports organizations, and as a result, it will be hard for internet to take their places, let alone YouTube. YouTube is known for hosting short videos, or muli-part clips that create the full episode. It is not known for full-length features. As a result, it will have trouble marketing itself as a viable option to television unless it can expand into this market.

“YouTube didn’t become the success it did by copying another media,” Bogardus said. “It created something new and different that no one had seen before. Copying an existing service seems like a step back innovation-wise, rather than a step forward.

YouTube is is an innovative company. If it does succeed in taking over television, I can’t wait to see what changes they make in order to claim dominance.

 

After reading the article “Thanks to Decades-Old Law, Your E-mail is Far From Private“, I started thinking (once again) about privacy issues and the themes found in Little Brother. One of the scariest things is that the majority of Americans don’t realize this. This is particularly troublesome because of how commonly we use e-mail to communicate and share information, be it something we want to keep private or not.

One very important question is: How often is this information requested?

Google, reported earlier this month in its biannual transparency report that in the first half of 2012 it received 20,938 requests from governments to hand over user data (including e-mail, searches, and other stored information)—a more than 50 percent increase over 2010.

While the number of requests is small when compared to the amount of people who use e-mail, it does highlight some privacy issues regarding how we view digital communications. This is another example of how the law has not yet been able to catch up to technology.

[In the early days of the internet], most people downloaded and stored e-mail on their personal computers. So it was assumed that any e-mail left on a server (such as Earthlink or AOL) for more than 180 days had been abandoned.

Since we now have this great and wonderful method of storage called “The Cloud”, we no longer need to download our emails. However, since we are allowing a third party to host them, all any agency needs in order to access these communications is a subpoena. While we, the general public, expect our emails to be private regardless of where we store them, apparently the law does not.

This is a real world example of some of the privacy issues that were mentioned in Little Brother. Government and law enforcement agencies can keep databases filled with all of our electronic communications, and we’d never know that they had them. It’s not enough that they can track our movements through methods like security cameras, cell phone gps, or Clipper Cards for MUNI. Now they can even track what we are saying, and who we’re saying it to.

We all became upset when we discovered that the Patriot Act expanded law enforcement’s abilities to spy on us, and then we rationalized it by saying that we shouldn’t care if we have nothing to hide. But what about those of us who are private people? What if we like privacy for privacy’s sake? First we learn that they (the government) can wiretap our phones without us knowing about it, now we learn that they can read and store our emails, too. Where will government’s intrusion into our personal lives end?

One thing that really scares me about this issue is that we “shouldn’t assume that personal information collected about you by local police departments is secure and could not be misused by criminals”. Just because it’s on a police database somewhere in cyberspace doesn’t mean that it’s safe. And the more information that is stored there, the more tempting a target it makes.

My parents always tell me to be careful of what I post online, and now it looks like I’ll have to be careful about my emails as well, since it seems like Big Brother likes to read them, too.

Scene: A School in a metropolitan area that is highly industrialized. It’s mid-afternoon with a traffic jam outside the school.

 

Marcus gets out of school and runs into Zeb. Zeb is dressed as the typical homeless person, with shoes that looked like they went through a wood chipper.

 

Zeb Sits up

 

Zeb: “Sorry buddy, didn’t see you. You hurt?”

 

Marcus: “Um. No, it’s OK.”

 

Zeb and Marcus shake hands.

 

Zeb: “I’m really sorry.”

 

Marcus: “It’s no problem.”

 

Zeb and Marcus shake hands.

 

Zeb: “Zeb,”

 

Marcus: “Marcus”

 

Zeb: “A pleasure, Marcus, hope to run into you again sometime!”

 

Zeb laughs and runs away.

 

[New Scene]

 

Marcus is walking down a city street, with some skyscrapers and smaller buildings as well. He is upset and talking to himself.

 

Marcus: “I can’t believe that I told the Xneters to back off. I’m not even their leader. Why should they listen to me? It’s not like I’m calling the plays. Why did I have to be the one to suggest chillin’ for a bit?”

 

Van’s voice: “ They see you as the leader because you created the system”

 

Marcus: “That doesn’t mean that I should be treated as a leader”

 

Marcus walks for a few meters

 

Marcus: “It’s not like I signed up for this. I just want Darryl back….”

 

Van: “First of all, the creator is always seen as the leader unless some other person takes the spotlight. You didn’t yield it, so you are the de facto leader. Deal with it. You overreacted and now you have to deal with the consequences”

 

Marcus: “But I had to do something to help Darryl. We’ve been friends since forever… Besides, it’s not my fault that he was taken. It’s not like I planned for us to get abducted by the government”

 

Van: “Don’t rationalize it. You were the one to pull us out of school so deal with it and move on. We did have the option to refuse, you know…… Besides, it was a smart move to tell your following to lay low. No sense in them getting arrested”

 

Marcus: “That’s exactly what I was thinking. I mean, I already feel responsible for Darryl, how could I possibly deal with anyone else getting arrested or disappeared because of me and my vendetta?”

 

Van: “You may have started it, but I’m pretty sure that the people who joined only joined because they believe in the cause. Despite how much you want revenge, you did make your intent very clear. You want to take out the DHS. That’s something that pretty much every teenager dreamed of participating in. They knew the risks. They joined anyways. All you were doing was being responsible by recognizing and spreading the word that the current methods were too risky. Every now and then we need to switch up the game plan”

 

[NEW SCENE]

 

[Marcus heads up to his room, to try to distract himself]

 

Marcus: “I finally started completing one of my projects”

 

Ange: “Which one?”

 

Marcus: “My Lego pinhole camera. It should be pretty bomb when it’s completed. You want to come over and see?”

 

Ange: “Why not? It’s not like I have anything better to do. So, you don’t know what to do, do you?”

 

Marcus: “What do you mean? I know how to finish my camera.”

 

Ange: “You know what I mean”

 

Marcus: “Yea… Well, I have an idea, but…. it will put all of us in danger. I need to come forward. I can’t hide anymore and let other people get arrested for something I started. Anyways, can I call you back in 5 minutes? I need to evaluate my plan of action”

 

Ange: “OK. If you don’t call back in 10, I’ll call you in 20”

 

Marcus:”Sounds good. Love you”

 

Ange: “Love you too”

 

[Marcus gets comfortable, and changes into sweats and a t-shirt. In the process, he finds a note in his pocket. He reads it aloud]

 

Marcus: “Dear Marcus,You don’t know me but I know you. For the past three months, since the Bay Bridge was blown up, I have been imprisoned on Treasure Island. I was in the yard on the day you talked to that Asian girl and got tackled. You were brave. Good on you. I had a burst appendix the day afterward and ended up in the infirmary. In the next bed was a guy named Darryl. We were both in recovery for a long time and by the time we got well, we were too much of an embarrassment to them to let go. So they decided we must really be guilty. They questioned us every day. You’ve been through their questioning, I know. Imagine it for months. Darryl and I ended up cell-mates. We knew we were bugged, so we only talked about inconsequentialities. But at night, when we were in our cots, we would softly tap out messages to each other in Morse code (I knew my HAM radio days would come in useful sometime). At first, their questions to us were just the same crap as ever, who did it, how’d they do it. But after a little while, they switched to asking us about the Xnet. Of course, we’d never heard of it. That didn’t stop them asking. Darryl told me that they brought him arphid cloners, Xboxes, all kinds of

technology and demanded that he tell them who used them, where they learned to mod them. Darryl told me about your games and the things you learned. Especially: The DHS asked us about our friends. Who did we know? What were they like? Did they have political feelings? Had they been in trouble at

school? With the law? We call the prison Gitmo-by-the-Bay. It’s been a week since I got out and I don’t think that anyone knows that their sons and daughters are imprisoned in the middle of the Bay. At night we could hear people laughing and partying on the mainland. I got out last week. I won’t tell you how, in case this falls into the wrong hands. Maybe others will take my route. Darryl told me how to find you and made me promise to tell you what I knew when I got back. Now that I’ve done that I’m out of here like last year. One way or another, I’m leaving this country. Screw America. Stay strong. They’re scared of you. Stay strong. They’re scared of you. Kick them for me. Don’t get caught.

-Zeb”

 

[Marcus starts crying]

 

Marcus’s Mom: “Marcus, are you alright? It sounds like you’re crying.”

 

Marcus: “Mom, I’m fine”

 

Marcus’s Mom: “No you’re not. I can hear you sobbing. Honey, what’s wrong?”

 

Marcus: “Nothing”

 

Marcus’s Mom: “You know you can tell me. I know you’ve been really upset about Darryl, but, Honey, you need to talk to someone about it”

 

[Marcus starts crying]

 

Marcus: “Mom, you don’t know the half of it”

 

[New Scene]

 

[Marcus is talking to Zeb after he becomes a wanted man. Setting is freeway underpass. Zeb is handing Marcus a piece of pizza]

 

Zeb: “You like pineapple on your pizza? Freegans can’t be choosy”

 

Marcus: “Freegans?”

 

Zeb: “Like vegans, but we only eat free food.”

 

Marcus: “Free food?”

 

Zeb: “You know ­­ free food. From the free food store?”

 

Marcus: “You stole this?”

 

Zeb: “No, dummy. It’s from the other store. The little one out behind

the store? Made of blue steel? Kind of funky smelling?”

 

Marcus: “You got this out of the garbage?”

 

Zeb: “Yes indeedy. You should see your face. Dude, it’s OK. It’s not like it was rotten. It was fresh,just a screwed up order. They threw it out in the box. They sprinkle rat poison over everything at closing­ time, but if you get there quick, you’re OK. You should see what grocery stores throw out! Wait until breakfast. I’m going to make you a fruit salad you won’t believe. As soon as one strawberry in the box goes a little green and fuzzy, the whole thing is out”

 

Marcus: “Sounds all right, I guess. It will probably take me a while to get used to living like this”

 

Zeb: “Off of trash?”

 

Marcus: “No, off of handouts. Out of all the ways my life could have gone, I never would have expected this”

 

Zeb: “Well, that’s what happens when you have DHS looking for you. You’re lucky you have such good friends”

 

Marcus: “No I’m not. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t been so selfish in wanting to win that game.”

 

Zeb: “You can’t change the past, but you can change the future. You’ve already begun by going public with your story. I couldn’t have done that. You’re a braver man than I’ll ever be”

 

Marcus: “Do you think it will all be worth it in the end? I mean, I started a revolution against the government in order to save my friend, but in the end, is it worth it?”

 

Zeb: “It’s worth it only if you think it is”

 

Marcus: “But what if I’m the reason that hundreds or thousands of kids get disappeared? Just for following my lead?”

 

Zeb: “Think of it this way: those ‘kids’ are willing to do anything for the cause. You know the arrest rate. Eventually, it will be worth it, regardless of if you are here to see it or not. Don’t fret about the future, you’ve already changed it. Now it’s time to worry about the present. Prepare yourself for the worst, and hope for the best”

 

[Marcus and Zeb get caught.]

 

[End Story]

After finishing Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother  all I can say is wow. Apart from the storyline, which I loved, it also brought up some important issues that are important to recognize in society today.

The obvious issues are freedom in terms of the bill of rights and government surveillance. However, there are also issues of morality and how private corporations track consumers as well. One of the best examples of this is when Marcus decides to get the video footage on the air. While this is a great example of selfless service to a cause, it also highlights the main character’s growth through the entire ordeal.

One of the biggest iss

ues that I had with the ending is the fact that despite the evidence going public of government corruption and complicity in the detention of American citizens, no punishments were handed out. This isn’t just a fictional occurrence, when operations go south, government closes rank. Often, this leads to just one or two persons being punished, while everyone else who was complicit in the event gets away punishment free.

These ideas are just some of the issues that are presented in Little Brotherbut they are all overshadowed by an even more interesting message: Get Out And Vote. Out of all of the possible ways to end the book, a Get Out And Vote campaign was the last thing I expected. But in retrospect, it makes sense considering that a great deal of the book was based on the idea that governments are c

reated for the people, by the people.

The fact that Marcus and his community did not like what the government was doing serves to show that the government that they existed within had stopped serving its people, and as such they were forced to undermine that government’s rule in order to try to establish one that would serve the greater good of the people.

While we can’t all go and change government by hacking their servers or software, there is one tool that is readily available: voting. This is the point that Marcus wanted to make at the end of the book, and it’s something that we should all keep in mind, especially since we just went through a very historic election last Tuesday.

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, journalist, and activist who was formerly Director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that defended freedoms related to technology, law, policies, and standards. His book, Little Brother, is a provocative tale about a high school senior and his group of friends. This book not only highlights some of the freedoms that he believes in, but also provokes the reader into questioning what they believe in regards to civil liberties and basic rights.

Set in San Francisco, it follows their exploits as they evolve from technology savvy students into guerrilla fighter trying to defend what they perceive as fundamental freedoms and basic rights from overreaching governmental authorities following a fictional terrorist attack on the Bay Bridge and BART.

This book brings to light several basic issues of civil liberties and poses the question: how many of our liberties should we be willing to give up in the name of safety and security amid an age of terrorism?  The answer that the book suggests is none. That despite governmental crack downs, we should be actively fighting for our liberties and for our privacy.

This is an important question that we need to ask ourselves, especially concerning the events that have happened in recent memory. The United States response to the September 11^th terrorist attacks marked a huge shift in the way our country operated in terms of liberties and privacy. Not only were the powers of governmental agencies expanded “in the name of security”, but they were given authority to perform tasks that even a year before would have been deemed grossly inappropriate and highly illegal.

Terrorism is about terror. Little Brother helps illustrate the point that unconditionally surrendering basic freedoms for the illusion of security proves that terrorism works and in some cases, can fuel it. The response that government has to said terrorism is highly ineffective in the sense that it doesn’t just target terrorists; it targets anyone who doesn’t fit a predetermined mold. While the general population may see this as a good thing because it seems effective on the surface, there are too many casualties that result from this way of thinking.  People become unfairly targeted for investigation based on something as innocuous as the way they dress or how they talk.

Let’s take the Patriot Act, for example. In terms of domestic and international surveillance, it expanded governmental powers in 4 ways:

1. Records searches. It expands the government’s ability to look at records on an individual’s activity being held by third parties. (Section 215)
2. Secret searches. It expands the government’s ability to search private property without notice to the owner. (Section 213)
3. Intelligence searches. It expands a narrow exception to the Fourth Amendment that had been created for the collection of foreign intelligence information (Section 218).
4. “Trap and trace” searches. It expands another Fourth Amendment exception for spying that collects “addressing” information about the origin and destination of communications, as opposed to the content (Section 214).

(from the  ACLU website)

Not only did it allow for previously illegal policies to be placed into effect, but it also allowed for government to trample all over the constitutional rights of private citizens. While the Supreme Court has ruled in several cases that privacy is a basic right as a citizen, in times of terrorism, it seems that constitutional rights go out the window. We’re exchanging our rights and our freedoms for what we think is safety.

While I understand that the government has to be seen doing something, treating constitutional rights as if they’re optional is not the right approach to solving the problem, it only proves to the terrorists that their tactics work. Just because we want security doesn’t mean that we should be willing to give up basic rights that our country was founded upon.

 

 

 

The article The Revolutions Were Tweeted: Information Flows During the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions is an interesting article that helps explain the role that social media (Twitter specifically) played in the Arab Spring and how it became an invaluable resource both for finding and disseminating information. It was written by six authors: Gilad Lotan (Data analysis and visualization expert), Erhardt Graeff (Graduate student and researcher), Mike Ananny (Assistant professor at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism), Devin Gaffney (Researcher interested in social network topography and online activism), Ian Pearce, and Danah Boyd (senior researcher at Microsoft Research). They are also parts of various other projects and studies, such as Social Flow, Web Ecology Project, and Microsoft Research.

The Social Flow project is one that is based on the idea of reaching the most consumers possible, at times when they are most likely to pay attention to the message. Its goal is to intersect advertising and social media in a way that optimizes gaining consumer attention. By understanding the real time conversations that people are having, corporations can better market their products to consumers. Previously, corporations have had to guess as to what the best time to insert their ads are, but with Social flow, the guesswork is much more accurate.

The Web Ecology Project’s goal is to data mine the internet to track trends and cultures that are occurring online. They are currently in the midst of creating a science around social media and community planning. They are building tools and methods for launching projects that are supported by network sciences.

Microsoft Research is an organization that is dedicated to research regarding computer science and software engineering.

The focus of this article, how information was spread via Twitter during the Arab Spring, is a great study for these organizations, because an event like this had never really occurred in history before. With new and innovative ways to use social media to organize communities, the Arab Spring was a perfect case study for these projects and research groups. It provided them with real data to see where information originates, and which groups in the chain work to propagate the information so that it is disseminated to an entire section of a population.

The excerpt from This Machine Kills Secretsprovides an interesting view into Daniel Domscheit-Berg’s attempts to create a truly anonymous version of WikiLeaks. It was written by Andy Greenberg, who is a technology, privacy, and information security reporter who has a vested interest in concepts such as WikiLeaks and the nature of how information is leaked and to whom it is leaked to.

The excerpt chronicles events surrounding the Chaos Communication Camp, basically a convention for hackers, and their attempts to create a more secure version of WikiLeaks. Domscheit-Berg’s goal for the convention was to test his OpenLeaks programming by allowing the 3000 hackers in attendance to attempt to hack into the site. While the project ended up failing, it did promote conversation concerning the nature of how leaked material is propagated and how to protect the privacy of the individuals risking themselves by leaking the information

The goal of the project was to allow leakers to post information to the OpenLeaks website, and the website itself would then forward the information to the appropriate parties so that the identity of the person providing the information would be completely concealed, while at the same time the information becomes available to the general public in order to create transparency.

I found this concept very interesting, considering that almost every website or browser contains programming designed to track user movements across the web, taking note of what websites they visit along with other information. Privacy is not something that is found frequently online. While we all engage in online activities that we think are private, they really are not. There are always programs monitoring our movements, collecting data about us.

For someone who wants to leak sensitive information, privacy is a huge concern. Even when the leaked information is proven to be beneficial to the general public, if it’s not information that a corporation or government wants leaked, trouble follows. As a result, many people who are in the positions to provide information of this nature may choose not to, out of fear of personal safety or retribution. The concept of OpenLeaks, if it had been successful, would have changed all that and allowed for a push for greater transparency in society.

Domscheit-Berg hits the nail on the head when he says:

Leak sites have to first have a leak. But how do you get this leak? For that you need publicity. Now the publicity is there, and the web-site is not. And maybe some of the leakers are turned off. In the short run, it’s a disappointment. But in the long run the issue is the leaks. To leak or not to leak, that is the question.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUZgfLT8Czo[/youtube]

When it comes to writing geared towards online publication, I never knew that I would have to so dramatically alter my style to conform to the demands that the online world wants. The article “Writing Style for Print vs. Web” helped me understand how internet readers choose what information to engage.

The article brings up an interesting distinction:

Print publications – from newspaper articles to marketing brochures – contain linear content that’s often consumed in a more relaxed setting and manner than the solution-hunting behavior that characterizes most high-value Web use.

Because I mainly use the internet to watch television (on sites such as Hulu, Netflix and Xfinity) the general formatting for text seemed irrelevant to me. I approached online writing the way I approach essay writing, and as a result my first few attempts were marred by what this article would see as errors.

Web writing is much more focused, much more straight to the point. Readers are not looking for filler information, something that I have become used to adding because, for me, it helps clarify a point or give a different way of understanding. I didn’t understand that people reading online want to “construct their own experience” rather than have it constructed for them. This concept, I’ll admit, still confuses me. Maybe it’s because I don’t spend enough time online looking for information that I don’t understand the necessity of proper formatting. Either way, it’s something I will definitely have to work on.

The second article I read was titled “Information Pollution“. This article argues that less is more, a concept that I strongly disagree with, but understand as necessary in the context of the internet, where everything is accessible instantly. What I take from this article is the idea that “if users don’t need it, don’t write it”. However, this is a problem for me, because if that were the case, I feel like everything write would be no longer than 3 or 4 sentences.

Studies of content usability typically find that removing half of a website’s words will double the amount of information that users actually get.

I found this quote especially troubling, because we are in the information age, and I’ve often equated writing with the transference of information. Clearly I need to rethink how I view the internet.

Writing online is a battle for attention. There are so many things going on in any given webpage that it’s almost impossible to fully gain the attention of anyone reading it, unless the information presented is exactly what they are looking for.

As an added bonus, this YouTube video provides some excellent tips for online writing.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1n4QKOZ8D4[/youtube]

 

 

The article “Wikileaks and the Unmasking of the Global System” provides an interesting insight as to how Wikileaks and social media started worldwide revolutions and how those movements evolved.

Wikileaks is described as a non-profit organization that specializes in leaking classified or government material attained by anonymous sources. The organization gained significant media attention after releasing around 100,000 classified documents surrounding the Afghanistan war. This organization was instrumental in providing information to the general public that proved corruption in government. As a response, people began to organize, and demand government reform in countries from North America to Europe to Africa to the Middle East. The article explains how the movement spread:

Egypt was the next to topple a dictator and soon enough Tahrir Square became an emblem of popular struggles. The same model was later exported to the Puerta Del Sol in Madrid as it spread across Spain, then Europe, and finally to North America, where Occupy Wall Street took the protest to the physical heart of the issue. The bold move received widespread support in the U.S. As other cities followed their lead, and the media began paying attention, the movement went viral.

This was not an isolated incident, but an actual political movement. What resulted from it was a revolution in two forms: the physical revolution where people would actually camp outside of institutions in protest, and a digital movement where corporations who were viewed unfavorably were hacked via cyberspace. What’s noteworthy is the means in which these protests were organized. They did not have a formal system of government; they were organic in nature. The Occupy protestors organized themselves into a communal form of democracy. All decisions made were by group consensus, with no singular leader. Whatever the community needed was provided by the community. In terms of the Anonymous movement, they operated in a similar manner, with decisions made by the community, with membership open to everyone.

One aspect of these protests that I found interesting is how they ran parallel to each other and at the same time helped one another.  “When the uprisings in North Africa started, Anonymous and various other hacktivist groups defaced and shut down websites related to the Egyptian and Tunisian governments, who were censoring and repressing their citizens”. Not only does this show that the members of these movements are thinking in a global sense, but it also illustrates the larger underlying question that the article points out: Where is civilization headed? This is an important question to address, because our world has much more connectivity than it did ten or twenty years ago. With the internet, everyone has access to information, not just a select few. And with social media, anyone can start a protest or become a citizen journalist. People can no longer afford to think purely on a national level. The world has become so restructured that we must now think globally.

Henry Jenkins is currently the Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at USC. However, the article was written during the time he spent at MIT, where he was the  director of the Comparative Media Studies Program. Some of the main focuses of his works include the intersection of real world and media cultures and how the media matters both from the consumers and producers points of view.

His article, “Nine Propositions Towards a Cultural Theory of YouTube” is basically an outline as to how he believes that YouTube will become more relevant in society and culture with each passing year. Granted, this article was written in 2007, so some, if not all of his predictions, have come true, but they still offer an interesting insight into how websites like YouTube become highly integrated into today’s internet culture. Some of his predictions include: YouTube becoming a meeting place where different segments of society can interact and co-exist, a starting point for grassroots movements, and a means of social networking.

One of his most interesting ideas that he presented was the idea that YouTube was a device where anyone could make something newsworthy; all that’s needed is access to a phone with video capabilities.

YouTube operates, alongside Flickr, as an important site for citizen journalists, taking advantage of a world where most people have cameras embedded in their cellphones which they carry with them everywhere they go. We can see many examples of stories or images in the past year which would not have gotten media attention if someone hadn’t thought to record them as they unfolded using readily accessible recording equipment.

In recent history, YouTube has actually evolved to the point where it helped spawn uprisings and major changes to governments. The adoption of YouTube as a main form of media to voice alternative points of view has become vital, and for certain movements, it was. Take, for example, the Arab Spring, which led to protests, some major some minor, and in some countries it actually led to the citizens overthrowing their government. Without the use of social media, especially YouTube and Twitter, this would not have been possible, especially given how repressive some of those governments were/are. Through these mediums, unhappy citizens were able to finally voice their opinions without their voices being quashed. These mediums also allowed for the convergence of people who held similar ideas, and the result was political revolution. However, it’s important to keep in mind that this example does not demonstrate one or two of Jenkins’ predictions, but rather it actualizes most of them. It’s use during the movement was not only grassroots in nature, but it also allowed for like-minded people to meet, to gain power over what they saw as culturally important, and were able to show and document what their struggles were and how determined they were to fight for what they believed in. And because of the spreadability that comes with social media, once their message was online, it was there forever.

While the Arab Spring is just one example among many as to how Jenkins’ ideas were actualized, it does help to hammer in the idea that social media is not going away. It’s a medium that is continually growing and evolving, constantly being integrated and reintegrated into our lives in new and revolutionary ways. It’s already been proven that it can help give power to those who were perceived as powerless, even having the power to reform or tear down governments. Given the drastic changes to the internet and the time at which this article was written, it’s interesting as to how Jenkins was correct in how social media would evolve to become much more fluid and accessible to a general public, but it would be even more fascinating to hear his ideas on where YouTube and websites like it will go from here.