Research Paper – Draft Introduction

YouTube is a platform for so many users worldwide. It has a sense of community online for users to create, upload and share their content for other users. The aim of this YouTube research project is to find out exactly what attracts people to YouTube, and why it has had such huge success.  There are many theories that have been  discussed on this topic and this paper will discuss those theories further and draw conclusions about the findings presented.  What is happening with Web 2.0 is interesting, it gives the user the chance to create their own content, this is something which did not previously happen as consumers were ‘passive recipients’ rather than ‘active participants’. This further strengthens the argument that there is a shift from analogue media to what is now referred to as the ‘digital age’. But is it fair to say that with the idea of the ‘digital age’, everything is new, or is there some form of convergence between the two technologies going on here as Terry Flew suggests?

Literature Review

YouTube is a platform for so many people worldwide, and there are reasons why people are using this site as a platform for self expression and storytelling. During my reading, I have found that a growing trend seems to be that as consumers, there has always been a sense of participation involved with regards to media, but now, because YouTube is so accessible to everyone, the choice and the freedom is more readily available than ever, inevitably making the popularity of YouTube soar.

One particular article I have read, by Jose van Dijck, points out that while the idea of creating previously privatized media online may seem new, it is not. The article states that as ‘ordinary people’, we have always been involved in creating our own media, as home television or amatuer movies, but because of the accessible forms of networking available, sharing and uploading this content is really the thing in which people are getting excited about. It states that there is a form of ‘talk-back’ going on, which is nicely compared with the way in which a studio may work, but now because people are more involved with the participatory side of media, it is as if they are their own production company creating their own content.

JOSE VAN DIJCK. Users like you? Theorizing agency in user-generated content. Article [Online]. [Accessed on: 20/12/09].

I also read an article on Web 2.0 which was interesting in terms of content about what it is and how it is used. The article states that Web 2.0 delivers a platform for users to consume and remix data, as well as providing their own data in a form that allows remixing to others. In the case of YouTube, this ‘data’ would be video obviously. But this article nicely backs up the previous one about users having said platform available now.

BRYANT, L. (2009). What Is Web 2.0? Headshift. Weblog [Online]. 29th September. Available from: http://www.headshift.com/blog/2005/09/what-is-web-20.php [Accessed on 03/11/2009].

Even though these two articles raise some interesting points, they do not pinpoint exactly why people may be using YouTube as much as they are. An article by John Hartley which I read does give some idea why. It states that YouTube videos may be seen as stories, as he discusses social media is a form of self-expression and storytelling within a community, a comunity which he states is species wide.

The last point does provide an interesting point to think about. YouTube can be seen merely as a stage for people to perform; they create their own content and upload it to share it with others, encouraging feedback and video responses from other users, but, again, why?

Hartley suggests that  “However, few of the videos are ‘stories’ as traditionally understood; and the best of those that are, for instance lonleygirl15, pretend to be something else in order to conform to the conventions of dialogic social networks.”.

JOHN HARTLEY. Youtube, Digital Literacy and the Growth of Knowledge. [Online]. Available from: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/Conference/Conference_Papers_Keep_them_here/media@lseHartleyconferencepaper2008.pdf. [Accessed on 07/11/09].

While I have been carrying out my research, I have managed to watch other videos that are similar to my own research project. One of these is Gingerale’s video under the ksudigg09 tab on facebook. It is available here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUkzFl1zUsE&feature=PlayList&p=60659E52B7B18BD7&index=2. The focus of the video is about identity and how people may be creating identities based on what other people on YouTube think, and this leads on to the point raised that there could be a sense of flattery going on. It is interesting because the point is one in which everybody can relate too, in all parts of life, people like attention and like to be flatter, so it would only make sense that people are using YouTube for exactly the same reason, being part of a community where this type of flattery and publicity goes on.

“Social networking tools creating a stage on which anybody can perform.” This is the idea of performativity and that is that people are merely putting on a show for people through YouTube and other social networking sites. The slideshow goes on to state that ‘the cult of celebrity’ is now ‘the cult of personality’. So, perhaps people are now more obsessed with unknown users on YouTube and focus on watching their content on YouTube rather than obsessing over celebrities in magazines, because YouTube is so popular, and there are many people part of that community that log on to YouTube so that they are able to respond to users they like.

Final Proposal

Taking all of my blogs into account, and all of my reflective reading and blogging I am now confident in what I want to know. I aim to find out, by pinpointing actual YouTube participants, why they upload their particular content to the site.

I have read numerous amounts of articles on YouTube as a form of self-expression and such, and I have to say that most come to a similar conclusion. Take, for instance, Jose van Dijcks article ‘Users like you? Theorizing agency in user-generated content’.

“Over the past 15 years, viewers have increasingly acted as participants in game shows, quizzes, talk shows and make-over programmes. Particularly the surge of reality television has boosted the participation of ‘ordinary people’ in broadcast productions (Teurlings, 2001). In addition, the popularity of personal and communal media (home movies, home videos, community television) has profoundly affected television culture, particularly since the 1980s. What is different in the digital era is that users have better access to networked media, enabling them to ‘talk back’ in the same multimodal language that frames cultural products formerly made exclusively in studios. This is partly due to the availability of cheap and easy-to-use digital technologies, which certainly should stimulate audiovisual production of audiovisual production, but a more important driver is the many internet channels, particularly UGC sites, that allow for do-it-yourself distribution.”

Here he is pointing put that as consumers we have always took an active interest in media, and so the newness of YouTube is not quite so new, but in fact it as a traditional idea which now has the platform for users to upload their own material to be shared by many different users across the world.

This is definitely one of the reasons why people are uploading their material to YouTube, and, in fact, why they are taking their own time to do so, however it cannot be the only reason, there will be personal reasons that range in responses from the users I contact through YouTube and this is what I am mainly interested in finding out, the personal reasons from user to user.

I am not discounting the work I have read you see, I am merely reaching out for more evidence which backs my particulary hypothesis up. The work I have read is extremely interesting stuff and keeps me thinking about YouTube ans its popularity among users around the world, and in the next few weeks there will be more blogs to show you what other work I have been reading as well as my Literature reviews which will tie up all of my background reading.

Reflections – 26/11/09

Over the past 15 years, viewers have increasingly acted as participants in game shows, quizzes, talk shows and make-over programmes. Particularly the surge of reality television has boosted the participation of ‘ordinary people’ in broadcast productions (Teurlings, 2001). In addition, the popularity of personal and communal media (home movies, home videos, community television) has profoundly affected television culture, particularly since the 1980s. What is different in the digital era is that users have better access to networked media, enabling them to ‘talk back’ in the same multimodal language that frames cultural products formerly made exclusively in studios. This is partly due to the availability of cheap and easy-to-use digital technologies, which certainly should stimulate audiovisual production of audiovisual production, but a more important driver is the many internet channels, particularly UGC sites, that allow for do-it-yourself distribution.

Again, another article that backs up the idea that people have always been participants in media, it is just in the past the media and technology was not as freely available as it is nowadays, and with the popularity of YouTube, along with its ease of access and function, people are now creating content more than ever because they have a platform to do so. But surely, it can’t just be because YouTube is so easy to use as to why people are sharing their originally privatized bedroom cultures and reenactments with the world can it? There surely has to be other reasons …