{"id":92,"date":"2012-10-14T17:39:21","date_gmt":"2012-10-15T00:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/allemanau\/?p=92"},"modified":"2012-10-18T15:49:08","modified_gmt":"2012-10-18T22:49:08","slug":"5-nine-propositions-towards-a-cultural-theory-of-youtube","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/allemanau\/2012\/10\/14\/5-nine-propositions-towards-a-cultural-theory-of-youtube\/","title":{"rendered":"5: Nine Propositions Towards a Cultural Theory of Youtube"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Nine Propositions Towards a Cultural Theory of YouTube<\/em><\/a>, Henry Jenkins<\/a>, professor of communication, journalism, and cinematic arts at the University of Southern California and self-proclaimed ‘aca-fan’ (“a hybrid creature which is part fan and part academic”), provides a list of nine original conceptions of the cultural mechanics of YouTube circa 2007. As a “walking, talking oxymoron — a humanist from MIT”, Jenkins’ aim is to deconstruct social media in the hope of developing an understanding of the impact of participatory culture on facets of material life. He’s bitten off quite the chunk in attempting to distill these thoughts into nine propositions; in some sense, he does a good job of keeping each fairly general whilst providing a semi-specific example for each.<\/p>\n

One I found interesting, given that we’re actually in the midst of a presidential campaign, was #6: “YouTube may embody a particular opportunity for translating participatory culture into civic engagement.” In some sense, he’s right, except that the vast majority of the political discourse on YouTube is generated by a young generation, for a young generation. In an earlier post on participatory political culture<\/a>, he references The Legendary K.O., a Houston hip-hop group that expressed their disappointment in the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina relief through song (titled “George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People”) — and it seems to me that the brand of participation hasn’t much changed. Consider as an example the video I choose for today’s blog post below, “The Real Mitt Romney”, a mashup of Romney quips set to Eminem’s “The Real Slim Shady”.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: If you’re offended by the use of the word “masturbate”, two things. One: I just used it, apologies. Two: probably shouldn’t watch the video.<\/em><\/p>\n

httpvh:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bxch-yi14BE<\/p>\n

Participatory political culture is less a discourse than it ought to be. The present culture is founded on being clever and acting on popular belief — in the case of The Real Mitt Romney, YouTuber Hugh Atkin has highlighted Romney’s apparent inability to remain consistent, or provide a straight answer on a question of policy. While I don’t disagree with Atkin’s view, I can’t help but feel that YouTube won’t be the home to serious political discourse until the late-80s and 90s generation grows up. For now, many of us embrace Colbert Report-style news, which appeals to our sardonic sensibilities. Maybe a more pointed way of putting it: YouTube isn’t the home to terribly useful<\/em> political discourse, in part because it seems as though we (the younger generation) dominate the “created” (versus recorded) content. It’s not as sinister as the “waves of racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry” expected by Jenkins, but until a more holistic YouTube user population is present and willing to participate, it seems unlikely that Proposition #6 will come to fruition.<\/p>\n

BETTER, CONTRADICTORY EXAMPLE (I admit I focused far too much on presidential campaigns in my original post. This is a well-constructed example of YouTube political advocacy.):<\/p>\n

httpvh:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=CbIZU8cQWXc<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Nine Propositions Towards a Cultural Theory of YouTube, Henry Jenkins, professor of communication, journalism, and cinematic arts at the University of Southern California and self-proclaimed ‘aca-fan’ (“a hybrid creature which is part fan and part academic”), provides a list … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","kk_blocks_editor_width":"","_kiokenblocks_attr":"","_kiokenblocks_dimensions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"gutentor_comment":0,"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"allemanau","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/allemanau\/author\/allemanau\/"},"qubely_comment":0,"qubely_category":"Uncategorized<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"In Nine Propositions Towards a Cultural Theory of YouTube, Henry Jenkins, professor of communication, journalism, and cinematic arts at the University of Southern California and self-proclaimed ‘aca-fan’ (“a hybrid creature which is part fan and part academic”), provides a list … Continue reading →","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/allemanau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/allemanau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/allemanau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/allemanau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/allemanau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/allemanau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/allemanau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions\/99"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/allemanau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/allemanau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/allemanau\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}