VIDEOBLOGGING BEFORE YOUTUBE TRINE BJØRKMANN BERRY A SERIES OF READERS PUBLISHED BY THE INSTITUTE OF NETWORK CULTURES ISSUE NO.: 27 VIDEOBLOGGING BEFORE YOUTUBE TRINE BJØRKMANN BERRY 2 THEORY ON DEMAND Theory on Demand #27 Videoblogging Before YouTube Trine Bjørkmann Berry Cover design: Katja van Stiphout Design and EPUB development: Rosie Underwood Published by the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2018 ISBN: 978-94-92302-22-9 Contact Institute of Network Cultures Phone: +3120 5951865 Email:
[email protected] Web: http://www.networkcultures.org This publication is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoD- erivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) This publication is available through various print on demand services and freely downloadable from http://networkcultures.org/publications VIDEOBLOGGING BEFORE YOUTUBE 3 Trine Bjørkman Berry has given us a rich and illuminating narrative of the communities, aes- thetics and technologies of videoblogging before YouTube - revealing it to be a site of mundane expression, cultural innovation and social hope. At a moment when the digital media imagi- nation seems to have been captured by corporate behemoths, we need more stories like this. Jean Burgess, Professor of Digital Media and Director of Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology, Australia Trine Bjørkmann Berry’s compellingly written and highly original study of the historically located and embodied, medium-specific and cultural-technical practices of the early-adopter vid- eo blogging community eloquently fills a significant gap in previous studies of online video. Through her painstaking ethnographic, historical, aesthetic and media-archeological research she successfully argues that, in order to maintain critical understandings of the media practic- es and theories we observe around us today, it is essential to remember and understand the media practices of the past, even or perhaps especially those that led to ‘dead-ends’ and ‘failed’ media forms.