Read: Nine Propositions Towards a Cultural Theory of YouTube
Blogged by Henry Jenkins
YouTube
Source: YouTube to 3GP
YouTube has changed the face of social networking over the Internet. Henry Jenkins talks about this Internet culture in a blog from his official weblog “Confessions of an Aca-Fan.” This blog, “Nine Propositions Towards a Cultural Theory of YouTube,” is just a section of his talk that he gave at the “What’s So Significant about Social Networking?: Web 2.0 and Its Critical Potential” plenary session. He talks about nine ideas that Youtube incorporate YouTube to our contemporary culture.
Henry Jenkins III was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and is still alive today at the age of 54. He earned his M.A. in Communication Studies at the Univeristy of Iowa, and his Ph.D. in Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is currently a Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, & Cinematic Arts at both the USC Annenberg School for Communication & the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He is an American media scholar and is known for his theories of “world-making” and “media convergence.”
Henry Jenkins
Source: Wikipedia
In Jenkin’s blog, he states nine different points interconnecting YouTube and contemporary culture. The first point he makes is that YouTube provides a space where “commercial, amateur, nonprofit, governmental, educational, and activist content co-exists and interacts in more complex ways.” Next, YouTube in his perspective is a place where specific communities of practice make public their content and information. This creates a form of cultural collaboration, which he believes to be the most powerful stance that YouTube has in our culture. YouTube is also a site where amateur curators are able to look at the commercial content and re-present them in different ways for various communities of consumers. His fourth point is that YouTube has shifted from the era of stickiness towards the era of spreadability. The era of stickiness is when the goal was to “attract & hold spectators on your site,” while the era of spreadability is when “active agency of consumers in creating value and heightening awareness through circulation of media content” is emphasized.
Next, Jenkins states that YouTube provides an important space for citizen journalists, where all can see recordings of anything. Now that many people have access to cameras, availability of stories and images are immense. YouTube also embodies a “particular opportunity for translating participatory culture into civic engagement.” For example, YouTube may benefit Obama in his presidential campaign. YouTube also helps us to see the changes that occur in the cultural economy. Furthermore, social networking is considered an important social skill and cultural competency among young people. As YouTube as grown and become more complex, there is a participation gap and digital divide that is occurring. Lastly, YouTube has shown us that a “participatory culture is not necessarily a diverse culture.” Although diverse people may have access, white middle class males are contributing most to the content.
I agree with all of Jenkins’ points about the interaction between YouTube and our current culture. I find that many of these points have not changed drastically over time, but only in the sense that technology has advanced a lot since the past five years.
For the next part of this blog, I will be focusing on one of the points that Jenkins proposes. This point will be the one stating that YouTube has provided a space for people to post videos and images of events that may be hard to usually record. This access has been increasingly readily available. There are phones that are being advertised because of its amazing camera and capabilities to produce high quality videos and images. A great example of this is the contest that was created, where owners of a particular phone will have to create a short video with it and post it on YouTube.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAafD_64ZgE[/youtube]
This YouTube video shows the awesome capabilities that cell phones have now with their cameras. The resolution is unique and the quality overall is decent.