User:Notes on "Fandom of Labor"/notes youtube 1
Youtube reader pg 89
The entrepeneurial flogger: participatory culture beyond the proffesional Amateur divide.
Ordinary citizens are grabbing the reins of the global media founding and framing the new digital democracy working for nothing and beatin the pros at their own game. Youtube is a place where the discourses of participatory culture and the emergence of the creative, empowered consumer have been played out. Youtube has been in the firing line of media companies. Claiming that the site supports copyright infringement. Including the entry of commercial media players into youtube as a corporate take over. Always been a commercial entreprise although without a clear business model. Proffessionally produced videos. The “real youtube was driven by purely social non-market motivations. The ideal participant: an ordinary, amateur individual, motivated by the desire for personal expression or community whose original content expresses the mundane or everyday or demonstrates a high level of creativity and playfullness through the prodiction of fan videos and mashups. The article states that some of youtube's most significant cultural and economic implications lie elsewhere. Youtube is an example of co-creative culture. It is produced dynamically as a result of interconnected instances of participation by many different people.
Making sense of youtube Study towards developing an understanding of the forms and practices associated with the dominant most popular uses of youtube “common culture”. Not based upon exploring the the practices and cultural participation of a particular group. Two primary categories; 1 Apparant (industrial) origin 2 apparant identity of uploader
Half was traditional media content and half was user created content. On a closer look it can be categorized into proffesional – semi-proffesional amateur and pro-amateur.
Three immediatly identifiable groups of participants: Big media companies: established players within mainstream broadcast second: Web Tv companies. Ape traditional television producers but make use of the internet to distribute niche programming or specialized content without needing to negotiate cable or television distribution deals. Third: ordinary user, at first glance appear indidual amateur participant who are not obiously representatives of mainstream media companies or other large institutions. This category can be split up in: Ordinary and casual user – former part– casual user – active participant – 'tubers' – youtube celebs. Within this group that assumed divisions between amateur and prof market + non market and this group os most activelyand refelexively engaged in experimenting with negotiting the specifities of youtube's culture. Youtube video blog and the emergence of building audiences and brands.
Youtube ness of vlogs A dominant form of user created content and fundamental to yt sense of community.monologue directed at camera. Vlog is easy to produce generally requiring little more than a webcam and basic editing skills. Also it inherently invites feedback. Some of the most effective entrepeneural uses of youtube have been built around around vlogging. Vlogging is a prototypical example of situated creativity (vreativity as a social process rather than a indivdual static attribute embedded and co-evolving with you-tube as a dynamic cultural environment. Manufactured vlogger. Possibilties of inauthetic authenticity are now a part of cultural repertoire of youtube. Subsequent vloggers have built identities around a similar ambiguity about their autheticity.And tryig to figure out how much of an act is real.
Entrepeneural vloggers Not all vlog is purely amateur production for the purpose of self – expression. Orlova a video vlogger on language Partly due to her visual appeal. Navigates through youtube attention economy through regula engagemnet with her viewers and commenters. Collaborated with prominent and less prominent youtubers. Increase visablitiy and constitue shout outs to the youtube community. Mentioning of users who provide her music a list of collaborations on her website. Some users come under attention of media industry outside of youtube Succes stems in part from engagement in youtube community. A youtube live event at its peak had 700.000 viewers. Because of it's liveness in the mainstream press the event inevitably drew comparisons with broadcast television. The extensive spreadability of styles and materials associated with youtube homegrown stas that make them important within the youtube ecology. The youtube star is not only moderatly succesfull cultural entrepeneur and performer but also sared cuktural resource for other youtube participants. This is why numbers of subscribers and video responses are so important in understanding how popularity works in youtube. Stars provide markers for a sense of youtubeness through participation and ways in which other youtubers engage with them.
Oprah comes to youtube A stark example of the potential misfit between corporate promotional strategies and organic participatiion in youtube. A point made by several youtube commentators was that oprah was importing the convergence of celebrity and control associated with big media into the social media space and therefore ignoring the cultural norms that have developed over the life of the network. Oprah had a one-way conversation approach and concerns that the incursions of the mainstream media into youtube meant an inevitable and ongoing process of corporate colonizing makiing authentic participation less visible and less valued. Because there was no participatory conversatinal mode in her platform it caused that she was less popular then other youtube users. Youtube was in her case not treated as a participatory space but as a brand extension platform.
Conclusion Entrepeneural vloggers can teach us not how to make money but how to build a meaningfull presence and an engaged audience in the participatory media space.