Youtube Video - Anthropology of Youtube

We watched this in media and it really sparked my interest in digital anthropology, I've gone on to watch more videos by this American class that they;ve put onto youtube. I really enjoy learning about the growth of youtube and internet identity as a whole, some of the facts are unbelievable.




Notes I took whilst watching this video in class:

• The video focuses on Networks individualism - cultural inversion.
• Participant observation - the way we understand people's actions - Digital anthropology: focusing on how people identify themselves on the web.
• Medium of cummunity through webcams and computer screens - invisible audience - different contexts.
• Context collapse - videos may be remixed mitigating the collapse of the original context - copyright.
• Trying to form a mask of new identity - everyone is watching but nobody is there?
• Developed self hyper awareness of ourselves and seeing yourself in a video minues or even years later.
• Self reflective mood while filming yourself, showing the internet community a different side to you than you may show to everyone else in daily life.
• Allows you to watch people without them knowing - you aren't staring or making them feel uncomfortable whilst talking to them because what they have done or said on camera has already happened, you're watching people in the past.
• Cultural tension - connection without constraint, youtube offers this freedom.
• Youtube is a highly competitive website, people sometimes post videos just to recieve high ratings - celebrity system within this video postng network.
• Authenticity crisis - people can create fake videos or pretend to be someone else entirely.
• Lonleygirl15 - fake videos created by small time producers who wanted publicity, people responded by saying how disgusted they were that people do this on a website that is supposed to be about creative and human responses, not fakery. People have different ideas as to what youtube should be used for.
• Sexual thumbnails may be put on the picture of a video to recieve more ratings, because once you've clicked it counts as one more hit to that video - extra exposure for the maker.
• Much we do is illegal - copying, remixing, downloading - age of prohibitions, the small crimes everybody makes do not seem like they matter - a time of rebellion and not being aware enough to care about your small actions such as downloading a free MP3 instead of buying it from a legit store.
• Mad Rev - a man who started a craze flow of videos by asking other people to write a message of importance (what they personally thought what important) on their hand and posting their videos as a response to his video - this has become the largest viewed and responded video in the history of youtube.
• Cathartic release - personal videos people post as self expression - they are in control of letting people respond or if they just want people to listen thats what they can post the video as.