On the User's Side: Youtube and Distant Witnessing in The

Article

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into On the user’s side: YouTube New Media Technologies 2018, Vol. 24(1) 33–49 ª The Author(s) 2017 and distant witnessing in the Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav age of technology-enhanced DOI: 10.1177/1354856517736980 mediability journals.sagepub.com/home/con

Michele Martini University of Haifa, Israel

Abstract The rise of YouTube as a means of social struggle is progressively reshaping the relationship between macro-level international organizations and local actors who adopt media-based resistance strategies. Accordingly, this article addresses the following issue: how has the evolution and expansion of YouTube redefined the political relevance of viewership? To answer this question, the transforming role of the viewer will be examined through the comparison of diverse human rights videos which sparked national and international outrage. This comparison will shed light on how the development and transnational diffusion of new forms of online video-mediated communication have changed the social perception of everyday media practices and experiences. Ultimately, the recent use of camera-drones and live-streaming technologies will be discussed in relation to pioneering forms of collective digital witnessing and their implications in the contemporary political landscape.

Keywords Camera drone, human rights videos, live streaming, mediability, social movement, viewership, witnessing

Introduction In the study of online video-mediated communication, the role of users has often been described in relation to their usage of social tools. The various levels of engagement allowed by the digital architectures of video-sharing websites delineate and construct diverse forms of public, which are usually differentiated on the basis of the interactions users have with online content. Common concepts utilized to describe online videos’ outreach are popularity (i.e. view-count), audience

Corresponding author: Michele Martini, Department of Education, University of Haifa, Aba Khuoshy Av. 199, Haifa 3498838, Israel. Email: [email protected] 34 Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 24(1)

(i.e. statistics) and community activity (i.e. comments and likes/dislikes). However, rather than accounting for the various modes of audiovisual communication enabled by YouTube, these different definitions focus on users’ activity, that is, they label and categorize YouTube users in relation to their social behaviour (e.g. commenting or trolling). Diverging from this ‘social’ approach, this article describes YouTube users as occupants of viewer positions. Viewer positions are conceived as specific ‘points of view’ constructed by audiovisual texts or, in other words, by the different forms of audiovisual communication enabled by YouTube (e.g. online video and live streaming). The viewer position constructed by a video, even if occupied by an unpredictable variety of users, remains constant and potentially defines users’ perspective on a certain event. Even more than this, it expresses the relationship linking filming-users to watching users through the recorded occurrence. Starting from this point, the present study discusses the transformation of the viewer position in relation to the new forms of video-mediated communication enabled by YouTube. Shedding light on these changes will allow a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities posed by emerging forms of collective distant witnessing on video-sharing platforms. Accordingly, this study asks: how has the evolution and expansion of YouTube redefined the political relevance of the viewer position? To answer this question, this study will investigate the use of YouTube by disadvantaged communities and specifically examine the various relationships ordinary citizens establish with a perceived global viewership. Indeed, the rise of online video as a means of social struggle is progressively reshaping the relationship between macro-level international organizations, such as the United Nations, and local actors who adopt media-based resistance strategies. From human rights campaigns to oral history projects, disadvantaged minorities around the world are more and more frequently turning to online video as a medium through which they record, expose and archive violations of human rights (e.g. Witness, B’Tselem and Film the Police). Bypassing state institutions, the local production and global circulation of video evidence has strongly supported the development of transnational human rights movements (e.g. Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions and Black Lives Matter) and paved the way to the emergence of new forms of bottom-up counter-surveillance practices. The political relevance of online video-mediated communication will be approached as a multi-faceted social construct which results from the interaction between the actors taking part in the communication process. Accordingly, it will be assessed and discussed through the analysis of the interplay between three main agents: users (producers/consumers), national governments and YouTube. In the first section (YouTube–government interaction), the political relevance of online videos will be discussed through data provided by Google Transparency Report. The number and nature of official content-removal requests received by YouTube every year will shed light on both the relevance of online videos for state actors and the arbitrating role played by the website in eval- uating, refusing or accepting such requests. The second section (government–users interaction) will address the potential of YouTube videos to interfere with institutionally defined regimes of visibility. This facet of the communication process will be investigated through the comparison of diverse human rights videos which sparked national and international outrage. In the third section (YouTube–users interaction), the transforming role of users will be examined in order to highlight how the development and transnational diffusion of new forms of online video-mediated communication have changed the social perception of everyday practices and experience, resulting eventually in an enhanced ‘mediability of reality’. Ultimately, the final section (user–user interaction) will explore the progressive blurring of the distinction between filming-users and watching Martini 35 users in the emerging forms of participatory visual experience. To this aim, the recent use of camera-drones and live-streaming technologies by NO Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) protesters will be discussed to shed light on the latest pioneering forms of collective digital witnessing and their impact on video/user interaction in the contemporary political landscape.

YouTube and governmental agencies: Dealing with content-removal requests The history of YouTube could be seen, from a certain perspective, as the global emergence of online video-mediated communication; the popularization, on a global scale, of new forms of interaction between filming-users and watching users. In recent years, the blurred boundary between producer and consumer in the digital era (Delwiche and Henderson, 2012; Jenkins et al., 2009; Ritzer and Jurgenson, 2010) and the political potential of the popularization of the digital means of networked production (Benkler, 2006; Ithiel de Sola, 1983; Martini, 2017) have been an object of academic study. In the case of YouTube, the unprecedented possibility for users to disclose themselves in deeds and words (Arendt, 1958) to a potentially global public, that is, to independently create direct visual linkages between local dimensions on an international scale, immediately attracted the attention of governments. On the one hand, the communicative power of YouTube has been exploited by established political actors both to enhance the outreach of their public performances (English et al., 2011; Towner and Dulio, 2011) and to interfere with demo- cratic processes (Kellner, 2015), as, for example, has emerged from the intelligence report on the 2016 US elections (Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 2017: 10–11). On the other hand, however, data provided by Alphabet Inc., the conglomerate which owns Google and several Google subsidiaries such as YouTube, indicate the controversial and in some cases even antagonistic relationship national states have with YouTube. According to Google Transparency Report, in 2015, the Russian government demanded the removal of 1466 videos (326 for Drug Abuse, 370 for National Security, 184 for Government Criticism), the Turkish government demanded the removal of 1258 videos (487 for National Security, 357 for Privacy and Security, 304 for Defa- mation) and the government of Thailand demanded the removal of 1477 videos, all of them for Government Criticism. Obviously, this scant data are incomplete and merely illustrative. None- theless, it underscores the existence of diverse governmental policies concerning the circulation of YouTube videos as well as the key role played by Google Inc. in regulating governmental censorship. Since 2009, YouTube has been without interruption the Google product which received the highest number of content-removal requests per year. Moreover, since 2015, the gap between the volume of content-removal requests received by the video-sharing platform (1885) and that of the two closest competitors, Google Search Engine (1476) and Blogger (703), has become more and more significant. As a general trend, in the last 7 years, the number of removal requests submitted by governmental organizations (i.e. Court of Justice and Police) to Google has been constantly increasing, passing from 1062 in 2009 to 4931 in 2015. However, in this tendency, the growing gap between the number of requests targeting YouTube videos and those directed against other Google products (more traditionally used by social movements, such as web-log and online forums) indicates a transformation in the governmental perception of the website, especially if we take into consideration that the most common motivations supporting removal requests from law enforcement are for ‘Defamation’ (1397), ‘Privacy and Security’ (854) and ‘National Security’ (719). 36 Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 24(1)

Under certain circumstances, the Google Team accepts requests for content removal (e.g. court orders, written requests from government agencies and law enforcement professionals). Never- theless, Google also recognizes that ‘government requests often target political content and government criticism’ and that ‘in attempts to remove political speech from our services, officials cite defamation, privacy, and even copyright laws’ (Google Transparency Report, 2016). Thanks to growing pressure from human rights organizations, in recent times, YouTube has partially acknowledged and embraced the delicate role it plays in social struggle. The website has in fact incorporated in its structure some functionalities specifically designed for video-activism, such as the new Custom Blurring Tool. In launching this new feature, which allows users to automatically blur faces or any other sensitive data present in their videos, the YouTube Team states that ‘YouTube is proud to be a platform where people around the world come to share their stories, whether it’s the first time a loved one learned how to ride a bike, or a first-hand recording of an important human rights issue’ (Conway, 2016). The increasing attention to dealing with human rights videos is variously reflected also in the rationale behind the choice of abiding (or not) by an official content-removal request. From this perspective, Google Inc. appears to accept its role as arbitrator between governments and users assessing that ‘there are many reasons why we might not remove content in response to a request’. The company’s policy is often expressed in the unilateral refusal to remove the disputed content, for example:

Request: We received a request from the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (Saudi Arabia) to remove one YouTube video. The video contains footage of a member of the royal family torturing Sudanese workers on his farm. Outcome: We did not remove the YouTube video for public interest purposes. Request: We received a copyright takedown notice from the Greensboro Police Department (USA) to remove a YouTube video criticizing police brutality. The video briefly displays the department’s logo. Outcome: We asked the claimant to consider whether the video is protected by fair use and never heard back. We did not remove the video from YouTube. (Google Transparency Report, 2016)

As can be noted in these reports, Google’s policy on freedom of expression maintains a strongly informal and arbitrary character. It is the Google Team ‘We’ that decides whether to reject the requests or not, for which reason (for public interest purposes), and whether it is necessary to obtain more information about the disputed content (whether the video is protected by fair use). This attitude reflects the platform’s need to protect and expand its market by simultaneously ensuring the website’s availability on a global scale (Crampton, 2007; Helft, 2009) and maintain- ing a horizontal or even ‘personal’ relation with that galaxy of users and groups whose activities constitute the company’s core business (Burgess and Green, 2013). Indeed, the issue of YouTube censorship (Zeller, 2006) is part of that constant tension between institutional control and users’ freedom which has characterized the life of the website since its birth (Burgess and Green, 2008; Jarrett, 2008). Actions undertaken by governments are usually aimed at limiting the exposure of national public opinion to audiovisual materials which do not fit the institutionally constructed imagined community and to prevent users from occupying the new viewer positions made available by other filming-users. These actions, with motivations that span from national security to religious offence, are intended to restrict the visual field of an entire social group. To protect, in Martini 37

Figure 1. Female Israeli settler insults young Palestinian Camera Activist through a metal cage. Screenshot of the YouTube video ‘Sharmuta Video – Settler harassment of Palestinians in Hebron’, B’Tselem YouTube Channel, 0:28, (2007). other words, the consistency of the national self: ‘the scarcely-seen periphery of its vision as opposed to centre-field objects of its admiration or disgust’ (Anderson, 2006: 65).

Politically correct modes of seeing: State control and global publics In June 2007, a piece of footage shot in Al Khalil (Hebron – Occupied Palestinian Territories) circulated online. This short video (1:03 min) was recorded by Fida ‘Abu’ Ayesha, a 14-year-old Palestinian girl, and shows her being assaulted by Yifat Alkoby, a middle-aged woman from the Jewish settlement of Tel Rumeida (B’Tselem, 2007). The female settler first tries to steal the camera and then, having failed in stopping the girl from videotaping, violently insults her through the metal cage the Ayesha family built to protect their house against the frequent attacks (see Figure 1). Uploaded online, this video went quickly viral sparking public outrage both inside and outside Israel. Its unprecedented impact forced the Israeli government to establish a cabinet sub-committee on settler violence. This video marked a change in Israeli public opinion. The situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories was not portrayed by official reportage showing burning tyres and Palestinian youth wrapped in a kufiya but by a homemade video representing an almost insignificant event. No weapons, no casualties, no fire: just a piece of everyday life under occupation, just a female Israeli settler shouting ‘sharmoota’ (‘whore’ in Arabic) to a 14-year-old girl through the metal cage protecting her house. The exceptional impact this short piece of footage had on Israeli and international public opinion raises the question of how this form of communication became such a powerful political tool. As previously stated, the event was not particularly relevant in legal terms. 38 Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 24(1)

Settlers’ aggression against Palestinians was an already known phenomenon at the time, and this specific occurrence did not represent a particularly violent episode. However, what constituted the novelty of this online video was the unusual viewer position it made available to YouTube users. For the entire duration of the video, users are placed in a position of the point of view of the Palestinian girl under attack. While the irregular camera movements express the confusion and fear provoked by the assault, the metal cage visually divides the space into two different areas: the one occupied by the assailant and the one occupied by the assaulted. Within this spatial subdivision, the viewer position users are invited to occupy is not neutral but clearly and consistently located on the victim’s side. In watching the video, users see the settler’s hands springing towards them in an attempt to grasp the camera, they face the settler on the other side of the metal cage and they get insulted by her. They are temporarily placed in the position of a specific standpoint within the filmed event. As Fontanille (1995) states, visual communication relies on a structural overlapping: filming- users and watching users share the same perspective on the event. The efficacy of this form of online communication depends, in other words, on the establishment of a strong relationship of visual intimacy between individuals. Due to its communicative power, the legitimacy of this visual ‘place swap’ is a matter of constant renegotiation among users. On the one hand, through their posting of videos on YouTube filming-users create the structural space for this intimacy to exist. On the other hand, different watching users will variously interact with the available viewer positions and might even question the legitimacy of the existence of such positions. Indeed, the decision to engage in a relationship of visual intimacy implies a process of temporary identification which challenges users’ cultural and political identities. For example, while human rights videos usually invite the user to assume the morally acceptable perspective of a victim or an activist, visual intimacy can also create an effect of dissonance. In the years following the invasion of Iraq in 2003, for example, several videos showing US and UK soldiers abusing prisoners and civilians had been uploaded on YouTube. Like the famous pictures of Abu Ghraib torture (Ande´n- Papadopoulos, 2008; Feldman, 2005), the vast majority of these videos were filmed by coalition privates (Kuntsman and Stein, 2015). In discussing some of the most controversial content, such as British Troops Beating Young Iraqis on Camera (Shmargin, 2006) and US Marines Shoot Unarmed Civilians (Justhuman99, 2007), Christensen (2008: 168) states that ‘what makes the clip particularly disturbing is the fact that the person who shot the film ...can be heard laughing violently and encouraging his fellow troops as the beatings take place’. In the same way, the video created by the young Palestinian puts users in the victim position, footage shot by abusers invite users to look at the event through abusers’ eyes. The shocking power of these videos is only partially related to the content: what is controversial is accepting the assumption of the perpe- trator’s perspective. Depending on political and cultural settings, the sudden intimacy with torturers or victims is perceived by users in very diverse ways (Chouliaraki, 2013; Ong, 2014; Scott, 2014). The com- ment section of a YouTube video is usually the place where the legitimacy of the constructed viewer position is problematized and collectively renegotiated. Interestingly enough, this process of renegotiation does not usually focus on the actual content of the video but primarily questions the right of filming-users to propose such a point of view. In other words, it is the legitimate existence of the viewer position which is called into question (see the following section). As previously discussed, the construction of a ‘correct’ point of view on events is traditionally the responsibility of institutional mass media. Through their production, they constantly reiterate and therefore reinforce a stable and socially acceptable viewer position for the public. The Martini 39 characteristics of such a position express the point of view of a certain imagined community on the world, with its scarcely seen peripheries and centre-field foci, and work as an agent of homo- genization (No¨th, 2015). On the contrary, the technology-enhanced visibility allowed by YouTube tends to disrupt such continuity. By allowing users from different communities to assume each other’s perspectives, to disclose personal spaces and collectively negotiate new modes of seeing, YouTube undermines the homogeneity of imagined communities. This form of communication, which directly challenges the cultural perspective of each user, might meet strong resistance but also paves the way to the development of communities of practice characterized by specific forms of video-mediated intimacy. While YouTube filtering systems (e.g. language, profiling and location) partially recreate around each single user the homogeneity of content and stability of perspective which also characterizes national imagined communities (Bozdag and van den Hoven, 2015; Pariser, 2011), the grassroots circulation of videos opens the possibility of encountering ‘untamed’ or ‘alien’ materials (Rymes, 2012). The particular status of this content, such as the videos discussed above, is defined in relation to the modes of seeing of a certain imagined community, that is, its regime of visibility. Conceived as a development of the concept of ‘scopic regimes’(Feldman, 1997), regimes of visibility are described as socially situated sets of visual relationships generated by factors of different natures (architectural, media and cultural). In more simple terms, regimes of visibility define what is visible, and how, to a certain social group. They are socially enforced yet not necessarily codified modes of seeing which reflect, and thus bring into focus, specific config- urations of political and cultural power. As Feldman (1997) states, they are ‘politically correct modes of seeing’. Within institutional (or even enforced) regimes of visibility, the possibility for everyone to expand the boundaries of the ‘visible’, of what legitimately exists as part of the political and cultural landscape (Brighenti, 2007), has already been proved to be destabilizing for those powers which constantly seek to monopolize the terms of reality (Butler, 2011). Indeed, YouTube has not only enabled the spread of online video-mediated communication on a global scale but, even more importantly, has allowed many different cultural and social assemblages to converge, grow and express themselves within it. By developing particular audiovisual languages, these communities establish their own point of view on what is relevant for them, thus defining limits and structures to their cultural universe.

Being a YouTube user: Technology-enhanced mediability and the transformation of viewership The role YouTube plays today in exposing human rights violations and enhancing police accountability represents, in a way, the most recent outcome of a process started in the aftermath of WWI: the use of visual communication for anti-establishment purposes (Friedrich, 1924). While the perceived role played by photographic means of communication in exposing ‘the truth’ has been a recurrent matter of discussion throughout the entire 20th century (Barthes, 1981; Benjamin, 1936; Sontag, 1977), the massive attention received by some recent YouTube videos, such as in the United States, the arrests leading to the deaths of Eric Garner in Staten Island in 2014 and Freddie Gray in Baltimore in 2015, indicates a radical change in the forms of viewership. YouTube enables each user to assume the viewer position, to metaphorically enter the surveillance tower of a participatory Panopticon (Foucault, 1979). However, a question arises: once the vast majority of a certain social group is able and willing to establish a private visual relationship with distant events 40 Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 24(1) or, in other words, to dynamically shift within a diverse array of points of view on reality, how does that society change? The production, circulation and consumption of videos on YouTube relies mostly on a collective effort. The participatory nature of video-sharing websites, and more generally of all those digital platforms which facilitate the sharing of user-generated content, has been addressed by several scholars in the last decade (Delwiche and Henderson, 2012; Jenkins et al., 2009; Snickars and Vonderau, 2009). The online rise of prosumer-based markets (Toffler and Alvin, 1981) has become an icon of the hyperbolic proliferation of digital participatory cultures (Ritzer and Jur- genson, 2010). The functioning of YouTube as a seeing machine relies on the same logic but expands its implications to the visual realm. Once the production–consumption mechanisms which characterize online participatory communities are applied to video-mediated communication, not only the distinction between producer and consumer becomes blurred, but the same can be said for the traditional difference between filming-users and watching users. Any user, in other words, becomes a sleeper producer, a producer-in-potentia, who can be triggered into action under certain circumstances. This shift in the definition of users is relevant for two main reasons. First of all, the visual competency and literacy of users is enhanced by the possibility of learning from peers, to potentially imitate their filming techniques and strategies. Being able to learn and utilize the ‘visual grammar’ of a certain YouTube community (e.g. gameplay or how-to videos) is a condition for effectively interacting with its members. Different forms of audiovisual communication express, and at the same time embody, different systems of shared values. Content which is perceived as valuable by a certain community, for example, the Call of Duty gaming community, can be absolutely meaningless for others. Creating communal visual languages and constantly renegotiating the value and effectiveness of the produced cultural artefacts is what allows You- Tube communities to generate particular semiotic universes characterized by different degrees of permeability and complexity. The second transformation related to this new mode of watching is the fact that users start perceiving their own private spaces, their everyday activities and their interactions, as potentially filmable and shareable. Such a change in the perception of reality represents, in a way, the other side of the so-called YouTube phenomenon: reality constantly appears in the eye of the beholder as a potential object of mediation. I use the term ‘technology- enhanced mediability’ to define this widespread transnational change in the social perception of video-mediation which redefine both watching users and filming-users. Since the birth of You- Tube, community-based activist groups (e.g. Cop Block and Film the Police) saw this platform as a way to publicly expose police brutality and to oppose a global viewership to mass video- surveillance (CCTVs). Within a few years, the capillary diffusion of smartphones further changed the media landscape and today human rights videos are often shot by ordinary people who become activists by recording an event without any preparation or training: they just do it. ‘A camera – or cellphone – plus YouTube are now basic tools in nearly every social struggle on earth’ states B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Terri- tories, on its website (B’Tselem.org, 2017). The B’Tselem camera-distribution project, launched in 2007, was one of the first attempts to organize a community-based system of video-monitoring on human rights violations. The project, still active, consists in providing Palestinian volunteers living in high-conflict areas (West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip) with cameras, training video workshops and legal support. The produced footage is circulated through a dedicated YouTube Channel which received, in 2015, more than two million views (B’Tselem Activity Report 2015). As previously suggested, while, on the one hand, the YouTube circulation of videos enables Martini 41

Palestinians’ everyday life under military occupation to become part of different public spheres, on the other hand, it changes the reality on the ground. The B’Tselem Camera Project not only spearheaded community-based video monitoring but, over the course of time, also provoked a change in the social perception of YouTube and video making which pushed other people to independently take action. This process resulted in an increased ‘mediability’ of the environment or, in other words, in the widespread perceived possibility of opening the space to the gaze of online users. The impact of such a transformation is expressed, in military terms, by an Israeli soldier: ‘a commander or an officer sees a camera and becomes a diplomat, calculating every rubber bullet, every step. It’s intolerable, we’re left utterly exposed. The cameras are our kryp- tonite’ (Fleishman, 2012). The massive production, circulation and consumption of online videos redefines the relationship connecting watching users, filming-users and events. The element which connects them remains the YouTube video, but their interactions seem to exceed the digital space of the website: users are somehow ‘already there’ as the video is shot. YouTube, in other words, has changed the meaning of the act of filming. As Ramsey Orta, the bystander who recorded the murder of Eric Garner, states it simply in a YouTube interview: ‘I am dealing with the police myself ...so I already knew, for my safety, just to pull out the camera’ (Ask Nathaniel, 2014). The potential for human rights videos to interfere on the ground with different power systems, or even to prevent the violation of human rights, is strongly connected to the evoked presence of users, users who are not perceived anymore as a passive consuming mass, but rather as an assemblage of connected subjects that to various degrees embrace the power of viewership (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012). Over time camera activists have learnt to exploit the virtual presence of users to exercise pressure on per- petrators. When they conduct their monitoring operations, the existence of users is not only implied by the act of filming but also brought into presence by the filming performance: while they record the event, they describe the kind of violation that is being committed and they talk to the users as if they were physically present. The new relationship occurring between users and video makers, incarnated and expressed by YouTube videos, eventually redefines the situation on the ground. As B’Tselem states, ‘the presence of cameras in the field is now an accepted and established fact, serving to deter human rights violators and provide Palestinian communities with means of defence and a sense of agency’(B’Tselem activity report 2011). A similar sense of agency, however, is found among watching users. Indeed, the increased mediability of everyday life is a consequence of the widespread grassroots dissemination of videos allowed by video-sharing platforms which work as ubiquitous organizational structures (Diani, 2015). The impact of any content depends largely on users’ initiative: while the digital architecture of websites empowers users by enabling them to circulate (or not) certain content, videos work as a call for action (Berger and Milkman, 2012; Ho and Dempsey, 2010). Filming-users create the preconditions for watching users’ actions by shooting the video and uploading it on YouTube. However, it is only the capacity of the video to activate watching users which will grant it a social and political relevance. The circulation of a video within the social fabric depends on its possibility of being perceived as valuable, that is worthy of being shared, by as many users as possible. As previously stated, the range of values users can bestow on a single video is a matter of constant renegotiation and does not necessarily coincide with the producer’s intention. For example, videos exposing human rights violations activate different kinds of users. If distant witnessing is regarded as a moral imperative by some users (Ande´n-Papadopoulos, 2013; Mortensen, 2014), it also often sparks antagonistic political discussions centred on issues of legitimacy, authenticity and, according to Google’s Transparency Report, even national security. An example of this dynamic is 42 Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 24(1) the emergence of the word ‘Pallywood’ in the Israeli digital discourse. This term, created by merging ‘Palestinian’ and ‘Hollywood’, is used by right-wing groups to redefine human rights videos as ‘productions staged by the Palestinians, in front of (and often with cooperation from) Western camera crews, for the purpose of promoting anti-Israel propaganda by disguising it as news’ (Leibowitz, 2008) an example of what has popularly come to be known as ‘fake news’. There is, however, another level of engagement of users which does not rely on the potential of YouTube videos to go viral but rather on their durability: their archival value. As Kirshenblatt- Gimblett (2003) states, ‘documentation anticipates a future looking back’. From this perspective, YouTube videos can be conceived not only as calls-for-action targeting contemporary users, but also as calls-for-memory directed towards unknown future users. The creation of independent video archives (e.g. Breaking the Silence, Witness to Guantanamo and Palestine Remembered) is unavoidably a politically charged endeavour (Jimerson, 2007). The ubiquitous open access dimension of YouTube expands the potential outreach of video archives in both spatial and temporal terms. YouTube video collections are ‘archives of unpredictability’ (Hoskins and O’Loughlin, 2010), assemblages of audiovisual materials which potentially impact future contexts of which little or nothing is known at the moment of production. Community-based archives serve often as an alternative venue for minorities to elaborate their own cultural narrative and its inner conflicts while, at the same time, renegotiating their political and social status with established authorities. If, on the one hand, these archives are conceived as the expression of a collective identity, on the other hand, they generate space for disagreement and debate as well as for the development of new forms of transnational solidarity. As will be discussed in the following section, in cases of forced eviction, the creation of grassroots video archives by displaced communities is not only a way to preserve the past but also a way to prevent the dissolution of the community and reaffirm its cultural identity, to envision a new future, a vision shared with present and future YouTube users (Caswell, 2014; Martini, 2015).

Native media drones: The rise of collective live witnessing The DAPL is a 1172-mile long oil pipeline project which, once realized, would transport 470,000 barrels of crude oil a day across four states, from North Dakota to Southern Illinois in the United States. Since its approval in June 2014, the plan has been strongly opposed by various environ- mental groups, most notably by the Native Americans of Standing Rock Reservation (Sioux). They contend that the pipeline should be rerouted because its construction would both represent a serious danger for water supply in the area (Missouri River) and violate lands that Native Americans hold sacred. Starting from April 2016, the Sioux tribes of Standing Rock Reservation established a permanent presence at the Sacred Stone Camp and invited activists to join them and oppose the construction works. The number of protesters converging on the camp grew exponentially during summer 2016, including other Native American tribes and US Veterans, eventually pushing the Army Corp of Engineers to suspend the construction and announce the rerouting of the pipeline (Jason et al., 2016). On 24 January 2017, this decision was suddenly overturned by an executive order signed by the newly elected President Donald Trump, leading to the forced eva- cuation of the native camps. Since then, the movement has continued its activity through meetings and actions in various locations of the United States. The NO DAPL movement is characterized by a strategic and prolific use of internet communication technologies. From the beginning of the movement, each of the three main activist camps (Oceti Sakowin Camp, Sacred Stone Camp and Red Warrior Camp) opened dedicated Martini 43

Figure 2. Police forces protecting the Dakota Access Pipeline construction site attempting to shoot down a camera-drone used by Native American protesters. Screenshot of the YouTube video ‘DRONE2BWILD VS. DAPL SECURITY’, Drone2bwild YouTube Channel, 1:28 (2016). accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram which remained active throughout the course of the protests and beyond. Alongside mainstream social networks, community-based news websites created by Native Americans (e.g. Indigenous Rising Media, 2017 and Indian Country Media Network, 2017) actively contributed to the growth of the NO DAPL movement by providing users with continuous coverage of the events. Alongside this intense media activity, what represented an innovation in citizen journalism was the combined use of camera-drones and live- streaming. Pioneered by two Native Americans, Dean Deadman and Myron Dewey, the self- proclaimed Indigenous Independent Drone Team has been joined by several other drone pilots during summer 2016. The popularity of what Myron Dewey (founder of Digital Smoke Signal) defined as Nonviolent Direct Drone Action grew quickly after police forces protecting the construction site attempted for the first time to shoot down a camera drone (Drone2bwild, 2016 – seeFigure2). After the video of the shooting went viral, the drone pilot Dean Deadman commented on the event:

I am pretty much aware that they will shoot ...but it is all about getting that recorded, you know. This is a time when people of America, people of the world, really need to see the visual image of this destruction of the land. And the only way to capture that is to use a drone. That’s why this drone technology has brought this movement and allowed this movement to keep fighting along with prayer, and singing and all these people gathering together. The drone footages are also why these people came: because of the drone. Because they have seen the power of the movement in one fly-over. They talked to me about it. That just gave them the sense that they have to come: they are called. Dean Deadman (TYT Politics, 2016, 2:20) 44 Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 24(1)

Figure 3. Native American drone pilots of NO DAPL movement blessing a camera-drone. Screenshot of the YouTube video ‘Dakota Access Goons Shoot Down Water Protector Drone’, The Young Turks YouTube Channel, 1:33, (2016).

In this quote, the drone pilot clearly stresses the unprecedented strength of the relationship drone footage is able to establish between users and events. Once the risk implied by this form of media activism is recognized (aware that they will shoot), he then states that exposing the damage created by the construction of the pipeline is far more important (people of the world need to see). In virtue of their power of mediation, drones are then defined as one of the tools which, along with ritual practices (prayer and singing), allows the movement to continue its struggle. Eventually, the particular visual experience allowed by drones (one fly-over) is indicated as being the reason many users decided to join the protest: that vision worked as a call for action. The majority of monitoring missions conducted by native drone pilots were broadcast live. The combination of these two elements, the non-human perspective offered by camera-drones and streaming videos in real time, indicates the beginning of a new phase in the mediability of reality. First of all, in a drone video, the point of view of the filming user and that of the watching user overlap in a third position which does not belong to either of them. What they both assume is a strictly non-human perspective, the perspective of a camera separated from the body of the camera operator. Drones operate on a delicate balance between ‘physical distance and ocular proximity’ which regulate the intensity of the bond of intimacy linking events, filming-users and watching users (Chamayou, 2015: 117). As Col. Chris Chambliss (US Military Drones Wing) states, the emergence of such a bond of intimacy might be problematic for drone pilots:

You do stick around and see the aftermath of what you did, and that does personalize the fight [ ...] The images can be pretty graphic, pretty vivid, and those are the things we try to offset. We know that some folks have, in some cases, problems. (Scott Lindlaw, 2008) Martini 45

Both in the case of military drones and that of NO DAPL, drone videos seem to overcome their informational value and acquire an experiential and transformational one (Kyriakidou, 2015). By representing themselves on YouTube, for example, Native American protesters incorporate the medium in their cultural universe:

when I go up ...we don’t call it ‘flying over there’ or ‘mission’. We call it ‘the journey’, ‘vision’ or ‘dream’. So, when I talk about the drones, I talk in a spiritual sense, in the way my ancestors talked about stories. (DRONEGEAR, 2016 – see Figure 3) The increased mediability of reality is, in other words, a process of mutual redefinition of all actors involved in the communication. While drone technology increases the visual proximity to events, YouTube live streaming allows all users to live a real-time experience: events, filming-users and watching users share the same temporal coordinates. With the advent of television, the act of witnessing an event live had already become a domestic practice (Ellis, 2000). However, the possibility of personally relating to filming-users in real time, to their communicative performance in those circumstances, represents a further expansion of the idea of ‘mediability’ defined above. Interestingly, YouTube presents the introduction of the YouTube Mobile Live Streaming App in terms of empowerment: ‘today, we are announcing a new chapter in bringing the power of live video to creators everywhere. Soon, we’ll be putting the power of YouTube live streaming in the palm of your hands’ (Wilms, 2016). As Peters (2009) states, ‘liveness matters for the living’ and the rapid diffusion of live- streaming apps (e.g. Meerkat, Periscope and Facebook Live) reconfirms the socially perceived value of live communication. Online real-time witnessing pushes users to demand agency. While experiencing events through online videos might be considered as a form of constant re-enactment which places users in a detached spatial–temporal bubble, live streaming allows them to experience the contemporaneity of the event. The perceived gap live streaming creates between visual proximity and human agency indicates not only, on the one hand, the limits of video-mediated experiences but, on the other hand, also the incentive towards action this form of communication engenders in the public. Through various means, from live chat to crowdfunding initiatives, users of the Standing Rock live streaming found a way to reach back to the drone pilots. In Deadman’s words:

they might have shot drones, but when you shoot down one drone, five more get resurrected. And this is the power of the world, the power of the people who support me and other drone pilots here. They believe in what we do and they will 110% do anything for you. To keep our vision, our dreams, our journey of exposing the truth. (DRONEGEAR, 2016, 5:15)

Conclusion In this article, I argued that the sociopolitical role of YouTube users is progressively changing in relation to the adoption of different video communication strategies and technologies. This article approached YouTube users as occupants of viewer positions, points of view constructed by different forms of online audiovisual communication. Accordingly, online videos have been analysed as visual texts which construct specific viewer positions linking filming-users to watching users through the recorded events. As discussed in the first section, the number of content-removal requests submitted by governmental agencies has been constantly increasing since 2009, thus highlighting growing 46 Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 24(1) governmental scrutiny of online video-sharing platforms. YouTube is, at present, the Google product which receives the highest number of removal requests by state institutions on a global scale. Indeed, more and more communities are progressively incorporating the production and consumption of online videos in their everyday routine, thus transforming the relationship between local actors and macro-level organizations. Escaping the control of state institutions, the global circulation of videos potentially undermines what I defined as regimes of visibility, the legitimate possibilities of vision implied by national imagined communities. Through the comparison of two first-hand videos, I argued that what interferes with the traditional functioning of imagined communities is not only the recorded occurrence but also the new viewer position users are invited to occupy in relation to the event. While institutional mass media cooperate in constructing an acceptable and shared point of view for the whole national community, the expansion of YouTube has radically reshaped the set of interactions occurring between users and viewer positions. The popularization of smart technologies has enabled YouTube communities to develop new forms of video-mediated intimacy which make of each user a perpetual producer-in-potentia. The consequently increased ‘mediability’ of reality, that is, the widespread and constant perception of everyday experiences as potentially filmable and sharable, variously affects both political power systems and cultural communities. From prevention of police brutality to grassroots circulation of first-hand testimonies, the political existence of users is changing: far from being a passive mass of final consumers, they are socially perceived as an assemblage of connected subjects that to various degrees embrace and utilize the power of their viewership. The use of drone technology and video live streaming by the NO DAPL protesters represents a further and perhaps pioneering stage in the evolution of viewership. Not only do the points of view of filming-users and watching users overlap on a third non-human position, but the possibility of witnessing in real-time distant events potentially engenders a strong sense of proximity with what happens on the ground, the action of the filming-users and the media-presence of other watching users. Employing the tools offered by video-sharing platforms, users seek a way to take immediate action: they break the isolation of filming-users and follow them on the ground. Future studies in this area should explore this emergent connection between events and users, particularly through the analysis of the comments the latter send during live streaming and that drone pilots receive in real time on their monitors. An in-depth textual analysis of comments would enable better understanding of how the viewer positions constructed by filming-users are renegotiated live by watching users actively engaging in collective witnessing.

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Author biography Michele Martini is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Haifa (Technologies in Education Program) and member of the Learning in a NetworKed Society initiative. His current research investigates the construction of authenticity through online video and live streaming technologies, the co-creation of knowl- edge in technology-enhanced communities and the related emergence of new forms of leadership and authority in the digital age.