This week I watched a YouTube video by Michael Wesch, a Professor of anthropology called 'An Anthropological view of YouTube".
Quotes and notes from this video referring to communities:
- Over 50% of YouTube videos have an 18-24 year old in them and the same number of 40-55 year olds watch YouTube as do teenagers
- When media changed - human relationships changed
- Why has community been in decline? Women went to work which meant less time for other activities, shopping moved from the corner store to the huge supermarket. These historical events resulted in "massive communities of suburbia becoming disconnected and connected only by roads and TV's. New forms of networks and communities began emerging"
- We are currently in a state of "networked but individualised" and we are becoming increasingly individual but many of us still have this strong value and desire for a community
What makes YouTube so popular?
- When recording a video you don't know who is going to be talking back to you, you have an invisible audience, it's asynchronies, you never know when they're going to watch you
- Context Collapse = when you talk to someone in real life you talk within a context, whereas when talking to a camera, there is no context. What you are saying or doing can be taken out of context by the viewers, however, and particularly if your video is remixed by another person
- There is a lot of reflection on YouTube - many people discuss their inner most thoughts because they are not anxious or shy talking about themselves in the privacy of their own bedroom. Nobody is around them. There are no faces staring back at them, so many people feel very liberated making a video
- YouTube offers the possibility of connection without constraint
- Over 200,000 videos are uploaded daily
The YouTube Authenticity Crisis
lonelygirl15 first came to international attention as a "real" video blogger who had achieved massive popularity on YouTube. The show was eventually proved as a hoax by suspicious viewers who identified the actress playing Bree as 19-year old American-New Zealand actress Jessica Rose. The three creators of lonelygirl15 were Mesh Flinders, a screenwriter and filmmaker from Marin County, California, Miles Beckett, a surgical residency dropout turned filmmaker, and Greg Goodfried, a former attorney with Mitchell, Silberberg.
When lonelygirl15 was ousted the, YouTube community was outraged and pleaded that YouTubers should be real people, that YouTube is a place for people to just be themselves. The creators of lonelygirl15 responded with this:
lonelygirl15 is a reflection of everyone.
She is no more real or fictitious from the portions of our personalities
that we choose to show (or hide) when we interact with people around us.
Did you know:
The thumbnail image which appears next to your uploaded video is taken from the exact centre of the clip? Some YouTubers insert a shocking or sexy image to grab the viewers attention which entices them to click the thumbnail and watch the video. Mmm interesting marketing ploy!
Wikipedia
We were asked to look at this article on Wikipedia about Virtual Communities and comment on the structure of the article and the relevance of information. Here is my response:
The first thing I notice about this Wikipedia article is the structure. At the top of the page you can view the article (as normal), can edit the article if you are a registered Wikipedia user, and view the history of changes which contributors have made. I was curious to see what was edited and by whom so I looked at the 'View History' tab.
A list of all changes to the article appears with the name of the contributor who made those edits. There were many changes to the article made a many contributors. I chose a contributor at random and it appeared to be a bot which picks up errors. See attached screenshot.
Another user I chose at random was by the name of Bellagio99. He/She states on their profile page: "Where Google supplies an unorganised list, Wikipedia tries to organise information chaos into comprehensible bytes". I thought that was an interesting statement...considering Google is quite organised in my opinion. His profile can be viewed here.
Once I began reading the article on virtual communities I noticed that under the heading 'Online Chatrooms' the article states: "The original development by CompuServe CB hosted forty channels in which users could talk to one another in real time. The idea of forty different channels led to the idea of chat rooms that were specific to different topics." This made me think about CB radios and the community of CB radio users. I remember using a CB of a relative when I was a kid and I recall hearing very inappropriate conversations.
I wondered if CB radio users were one of the first virtual communities? I did some reading on CB radio use and discovered that during the 1970s CB radio use became so popular that the licencing board couldn't keep up with licence applications so dropped the requirement. This mean anybody could use a CB radio. Because the laws were lax and there were no regulations the CB community became quite vulgar and full of racism and sexual discussions (Tynan, 1978).
Other things I noticed about the article on virtual communities (and Wikipedia in general) is we don't know how accurate the information is that we are reading, often statements are not backed up with evidence, the contributors are not necessarily academics or experts in the topic, articles give a brief overview rather than a thorough understanding. Wikipedia may be perfect for children who want a quick explanation or definition, but it isn't suitable for academic papers.
References
Bellagio99 (n.d.) Profile Page. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bellagio99
Tynan, K (1978). The New Yorker Profiler: Fifteen years of the Salto Mortale Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1978/02/20/1978_02_20_047_TNY_CARDS_000326477?printable=true
Wesch, M. (2008). An Anthropological Guide to YouTube. Retrieved January 2, 2011, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU&feature=channel.
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