Literature Review
January 20, 2010
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.
