An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube
Michael Wesch,
YouTube,
Aug 05, 2008
I finally found 55 minutes to watch Michael Wesch's anthropological introduction to YouTube. Media, says Wesch, isn't about communication or content. It's a way to mediate relationships between people. Which means that when the media changes, so do the relationships. What's happening is that we are becoming increasingly individualized, connected only by roadways and TV, and we long for community. And culture is increasingly commercialized, and we long for authenticity. Barry Wellman: Networked Individualism. And YouTube gets in the middle of all this. His study of YouTube - Participant Observation - you don't just observe the thing being studied, you participate in the thing beings studied. It was interesting to hear the remarks about being able to just watch people - it's the same sort of feeling I got when I was just surfing random websites. Look at this set of random LiveJournal posts, and compare it to what people are seeing on YouTube. For more from Wesch and his group, see Mediated Cultures.
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