How to Value Youtube. Uncovering the Myth of Freedom That Bolsters the Political, Social and Economic Uses of Youtube
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! Graduate School of Humanities MA Media Studies: Television and Cross-Media Culture Master Thesis How to value YouTube. Uncovering the myth of freedom that bolsters the political, social and economic uses of YouTube. Emma Duncombe 11311827 Date of completion: 27 June 2018 Word count: 19,460 Supervisor: dr. Joke Hermes Second reader: dr. Jaap Kooijman ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................................3 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................4 1) Guerrilla TV: The Historical and Political Roots of YouTube ..................................................8 Convergence Culture: The Fragmentation of Broadcast TV ...............................................9 The History of Traditional Broadcast Television ..............................................................10 The Rise of Online Platforms ............................................................................................10 The Disruption of Flow in Television ................................................................................11 Demographic Shifts: Audience Migration .........................................................................12 The Effects of Production Quality .....................................................................................14 Cybernetics: A New Vision of Interaction .........................................................................14 American Counterculture: How YouTube Could Have Come into Being .........................16 Historical Roots: How Should YouTube be Valued Politically? ........................................19 2) Creating YouTube Content: Pursuing Entertainment Value ...................................................23 Could YouTube have Become a Democratic Version of Broadcast Television? ................24 Intimacy and YouTube’s Aesthetics ...................................................................................26 Case Study Example: Neistat Creating Intimacy ...............................................................28 Vlogging vs Reality Television ..........................................................................................28 Given YouTube never became Citizen Journalism, Why Should it be Valued Socially? ..30 3) Platform Capitalism: Creating Economic Value .....................................................................32 The Power of Platforms .....................................................................................................34 Commercialisation of YouTube .........................................................................................36 How YouTube Produces Economic Value .........................................................................37 The “Gig” Economy ..........................................................................................................39 Values, Benefits and Success .............................................................................................41 Morals and Ethics ..............................................................................................................44 A Modern Media Landscape: Why should YouTube be Valued economically? ................46 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION .........................................................................................48 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................................51 Websites and News Articles ...............................................................................................54 User Generated Content .....................................................................................................55 2! ABSTRACT This thesis considers YouTube as a media platform and a space where content creators, advertisers, distributors and consumers of online video content all co-exist and interact. YouTube is generally considered to be a ‘free’ space. Access is open to all, there is little regulation, potentially it affords all the uses video-sharers would like to put it to. This view of YouTube obscures how Google, YouTube’s owner benefits economically; it obscures that some vloggers are paid, while others are not. It obscures that much of YouTube’s political potential is never realized. All in all there seems to be a myth of freedom that bolsters the political, social and economic uses of YouTube that needs to be uncovered. Therefore this thesis inquires into the ‘values’ (political, social and economic) of YouTube. It examines how the arrival of the Sony Portapak camera in the 1960s foreshadowed YouTube when it provided the enabling technology for “ordinary” people to express themselves free from the constraints of broadcast media. Potential parallels are drawn between the ambitions and values of the activists in the 60s and those of modern day content creators on YouTube. The gig economy and the new working relationships it has spawned raises new questions, most notably how the dramatic changes of the post-industrial era have created economic opportunities online, not only for businesses but equally for the individual vlogger on YouTube. Today’s YouTube represents an interesting mix of the idealist free maker space imagined in the mid noughties, and a platform capitalist arena where vloggers straddle both the embodiments of ‘idealists’ who vlog for fun and more serious “gig economy” workers. With this being said, the various freedoms that may exist in the YouTube ecosphere might well be ideological artefacts. Therefore the thesis will inquire into the values of YouTube in order to demythologise what passes for ‘freedom’ when we think of this online social network. 3! INTRODUCTION The original intent of this thesis was to explore and challenge the concept of video blogging or “vlogging” as it is more commonly known among consumers of online video content. Vloggers, the people who create these video blogs, occasionally do so for fun not expecting that what they produce for their YouTube channel would develop into anything more than a hobby. However, for some it can become a rewarding career, garnering significant audiences measured in terms of view- counts on their videos, reaching figures that are comparable to or often exceed those of certain traditional television programs. This new form of entertainment, if it can be described as such, invites questions in terms of how it should be defined and valued for the wide range of actors involved. This is particularly relevant today because it can be argued a form of symbiotic relationship has developed between content producers and YouTube as the online platform and distributor of their content. As will be discussed in more detail in the third chapter, over the last year, YouTube has changed its rules on advertising after the advertisements of a number of major brands found their way on to undesirable websites and inappropriate content. Whilst developing the original concept, I gained further interest in combining my media studies together with the Platform Capitalism studies I chose as an elective. Hence, the decision to reorientate the research object of this thesis was made in order to take a broader and more inclusive approach — to consider YouTube as a media platform and how it should be valued historically, socially and economically. What first sparked my interest in carrying out a historical-economical study of YouTube was the way in which the media industry of the American counterculture in the late 1960s and early 70s was brought under pressure from anti-establishment activists to achieve freedoms that are, at face value, parallel to those espoused by YouTube today. For instance, the counterculture video collective Top Value Television (TVTV) attempted to challenge broadcast media conventions in 1972 by taking their portable Portapak cameras into areas that would have been inaccessible even to experienced journalists (Joselit 99). In this way, TVTV fought to tell the world new stories that were not being told through broadcast television. The About section of YouTube states that they believe “everyone deserves to have a voice, and that the world is a better place when we listen, share and build community through our stories” (YouTube, 2017). YouTube was created as an idealist space for anyone with an internet connection to produce and share their stories. Something that was presumably dreamed of in the American counterculture era of classical broadcast television. Had they been provided with the internet technologies that are available — and perhaps taken for 4! granted — in the modern media landscape, I believe hippie culture would have developed a space like YouTube. While success for YouTube and those that produce content for it may appear self-evident, the value and benefits that accrue from this activity in a wider context are not. For the purpose of this thesis, value is considered in three forms, namely historical/political value, social value and economic value. Additionally, it will consider the question of value using elements from David Graeber’s “anthropological theories of value” in an attempt to clarify precisely what these are and how they relate to modern platform corporations. To do so, it will briefly consider his different (yet closely related) uses of the term value; which include: moral values, market values and value as a meaningful difference. According to YouTube’s