Henry Jenkins is the Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. He has written and edited multiple books discussing media and popular culture. Jenkins is also the principal investigator for Project New Media Literacies (NML). NML is a group focused on developing and testing educational materials, which prepare students to work with the new media landscape. Jenkins also held a position at MIT as the director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program, prior to his professorship at USC. Jenkins also holds a PhD in Communication Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Jenkins’ extensive background in communication and new media studies enables him to offer insight into the popular website, Youtube. Jenkins writes a blog about various new media technologies and websites. His blog post, “Nine Propositions Towards a Cultural Theory of YouTube,” discusses the place of YouTube in contemporary culture. One of his nine propositions I found to be interesting was number eight, which stated,

In the age of YouTube, social networking emerges as one of the important social skills and cultural competencies that young people need to acquire if they are going to become meaningful participants in the culture around them. We need to be concerned with the participation gap as much as we are concerned with the digital divide. The digital divide has to do with access to technology; the participation gap has to do with access to cultural experiences and the skills that people acquire through their participation within ongoing online communities and social networks.

This statement resonated with me, because I have personal experience with the “participation gap”. I don’t surf YouTube regularly, so I am usually the one in my group of friends that doesn’t know what YouTube video they are quoting or laughing about. YouTube allows people to be creative and express themselves in a variety of ways. There is a lot of intellectually stimulating and important information on YouTube, and with such a large percentage of the population involved on YouTube, if people are not participating, they are missing out on this valuable information. YouTube allows people to watch important political debates, educational videos, music and hear up-to-date news stories. YouTube also enables the average person to upload videos to express their thoughts and opinions on various issues for the public to see. YouTube opens up the floor for a public discussion on many different topics, which teaches people how to collaborate with others, engage in thoughtful reflections and debates. Because of this, I think that the participants of YouTube become a lot more open-minded and develop skills to critically evaluate issues in our society.

YouTube was a relatively new phenomenon when Jenkins published this blog post, but I think he accurately predicted what a huge impact YouTube would have on our culture. YouTube has become part of our daily lives, and has contributed to the social networking hype. Many social networking sites, such as Google+ or Facebook allow you to easily insert YouTube videos on their sites. This makes YouTube even more accessible, which I think has decreased the participation gap over time.

Ted Talks is an example of a video available on YouTube that enhances society’s understanding of various issues ranging from technology and science to social issues. Ted Talks is a series of videos that offers information that, as Jenkins states, “…young people need to acquire if they are going to become meaningful participants in the culture around them”. Ted Talks aims to spread the word about innovative and interesting new ideas. One of the Ted Talks videos features Sir Ken Robinson, who delivers the talk titled, “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” This talk is the top Ted Talks video, in which he discusses how our education system is stifling creativity rather than promoting it.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY