DIGC101 Reflective Essay

Sam Hardaker – St No#: 3410122

Looking at the role online videos and the shift of the audience to users, how
does web2.0 use video to communicate and construct identity?
Splitting the above hypothesis into two parts, the shift of the audience to user,
I will be looking at briefly how the internet was formed than evolved over the
years from being just an information source to being that plus more. The
second part, how online video is used to communicate and construct
identities, I will be looking into the history of YouTube how it has evolved, how
it is being used and what has come of it. I will also be looking at because of
the accessibility of certain technologies, anyone can create content and have
their fifteen minutes of fame.

As Picolsigns (2009) discusses the origins of the Internet can be traced as far
back as 1957. Due to computers becoming faster and bigger they needed to
be stored in specialised cool rooms in order to stop them from over heating,
This produced the issue of programming as it had to be performed remotely
and then taken to the computer. As a result a programming computer needed
to connected remotely and thus the foundation blocks for the Internet that we
know it as today was formed.
The Internet has also got traces from within the military as a form of defence
of important and confidential information that could be shared without the risk
of doubling up, which was used by the American government during the Cold
War.
Two other network concepts also had a helping hand in the formation of the
Internet; they were the scientific network, and the commercial network.
The Internet wasn’t made available to the general public until the late 1990’s.
Its main purpose was as a tool for accessing information that was created by
small numbers of people. Collaborating and creating content was limited to
small amounts of people, as it required specialised knowledge and software
that wasn’t accessible to the general population. (Warschauer & Grimes 2008)
There have two distinct stages within the life span of the Internet, Web 1.0
and Web 2.0. As Warschauer & Grimes (2008) note the key distinction
between the two terms is publication and participation. As I mentioned above
Web 1.0 was mainly focused around the distribution and consumption of
information, whereas Web 2.0 is focussed around creating, participating, and
networking through various tool such as blogs, wikis, social networking sites,
and multimedia sites such as YouTube. This is more evident with a YouTube
video posted by Wesch, an assistant professor of anthropology at Kansas
State University. Wesch (2007) notes the differences between writing and
communication in print. He explores the separation of online form and content
and the tools that enable blogging, and the distribution of multimodal content.
The video concluded that ‘while Web 1.0 linked information, Web 2.0 links
people, thus making us rethink, among other things, authorship, identity,
aesthetics, rhetorics, and ourselves’. (Warschauer & Grimes 2008, pp18)
Research conducted by Miniwatts Marketing Group (cited in Warschauer &
Grimes 2008, pp1) concluded that more than 50% of the population in 35
countries has access to the Internet. With that in mind, over half of all Internet
using teens are content creators. They create websites, blogs, share media
such as photos and videos and remix content into new creations. (Lenhart &
Madden 2005)
These stats are compounded by the fact that resources such as software and
sites are easily accessible for all types of users to interact and create
podcasts and videos on sites such as YouTube. (Warschauer & Grimes 2008)

Besides Social Networking Sites, video and multimedia sites such as

YouTube are fast becoming a popular medium for users to create and share
content as well as to create and interact within their social networks.
Various video sharing site include Google Video, BrightCove, PhotoBucket,
DailyMotion, iFilm and of course YouTube. (Video Sites Top 50, 2007)
Due to this growing popularity especially with YouTube, Social Networking
Sites such as Myspace and Facebook have since enabled video-sharing to try
and gain an advantage over one another. (Stefanone & Lackaff 2009)
In a list of the top 500 sites visited for 2009 on Alexa.com (2009), YouTube
sits within the top four of most visited. This is evident in the fact that Madden
(2007) found that the highest consumers of online videos are young adults,
with three-quarters being between the ages of 18-29 years.
Focusing more on the site YouTube, as this is a medium that I had used for
my web project in DIGC101. Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim
founded YouTube in February 2005. In November 2006 it was announced
YouTube had been purchased for a reported $1.65 billion and is now
operating as a subsidiary of Google. (hinderliter84 2007) YouTube allows
users to share and discuss video content that had been uploaded from
webcams, mobile devices plus other sources. (Stefanone & Lackaff 2009)
YouTube began as a video sharing platform, but now has a personal profile
feature, which is called the channel page, which enables friending, favouriting
and commenting. (Lange 2008) A feature for which was quite useful for my
online identity project, which I created a music review channel titled ‘Keeping
with the Beat!’
Lange (2008) puts forward the idea that there are two types of publicness in
video sharing ‘publicly private’ and privately public’.
Publicly private is classed where a video creator may share private
experiences through video but will do so in a very public way by revealing
personal identity information. Certain ways the creator can act on this by
giving the video cryptic tags or titles that only close friends and family may
know or simply selecting the friends-only feature within YouTube.
The other is privately public in which the creator will make connections with
many other people, all the while remain relatively private with sharing identity
information. This may include making their videos as accessible as possible to
the general population but may hold back on revealing their name (surname
or actual full name), their location, and appearance.
It is up to the YouTube participants themselves to put forward their own
definition of what they believe to be a public or private video. (Lange 2008)
Given YouTube’s growing popularity, ethical and legal issues are bound to
come to the fore. Tune & Degner (2009) provide such examples as YouTube
and Google currently in copyright infringement lawsuits with The Football
Association Premier League Ltd and Viacom International.
Google and YouTube’s defence claims that under the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act that allowing copyright holders to submit take down notices is
sufficient enough, as YouTube is so huge it is nearly impossible to check all
videos of copyright infringements when uploaded.

An Identity as described by Wood and Smith (2005) is a complex personal

and social construct, which consists of who we think ourselves to be, how we
wish to be perceived by others and how they actually perceive us. The
Internet is providing individuals the opportunities to create an alternate reality
or a different identity, one where the individual has a bit more of an input and
say. As Winder (2008) states, “thanks to the internet, it has never been so
easy to become the person of your wildest dreams.” This is exemplified in the
major project for DIGC101, in which we had to create an online identity. An
identity that you thought would never happen or one that you wanted for the
future.
As in my case, a 23-year-old first year university student with a physical
disability, I have become so desensitised to the fact that people will judge me
for what I am and not who I am, I slightly apprehensive about broadcasting
myself out into the world wide web through my YouTube channel.
Creating a social networking site profile, YouTube channel or blog are great
examples of creating an online identity, a much more intense example would
have to be Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing games (MMORPG)
such as World of Warcraft and Second Life.
Focusing more on YouTube and the fact that it has a tendency for creating
fifteen-minute celebrities. As Wood and Smith (2005) quoted Andy Warhol as
saying “In the future everyone will be world famous for fifteen minutes.” Which
is a sarcastic take on societies obsession with everything celebrity.
Wood and Smith (2005) provide an early example of this phenomenon, the
DotComGuy. In 2000 the DotComGuy formally Mitch Maddox (changed his
name legally) began a quest to live an entire year inside his home and online
buying everything he needed via the Internet. Like most Internet celebrity
sensations his fame didn’t last the expected year or beyond, it only took the
general public six months to move on. Now days people have taken to using
YouTube for its ease of use and cheapness, people are creating video blogs
(vblogs) such as Philip DeFranco a.k.a sxephil as well as producing low cost
shows such as Chad Vader – Day Shift Manager and Lonelygirl15. Others
include the Star Wars kid, the LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE! Guy.
With how the internet has evolved from being a tool for accessing information
to being tool to express, communicate and interact as Tune and Dagner
(2009) state “The Internet has opened new channels of communication and
self-expression . . . Countless individuals use message boards, date matching
sites, interactive social networks, blog hosting services and video sharing
Web sites to make themselves and their ideas visible to the world.”
The Internet and especially YouTube has given users the power to go from
being the audience to the user, and in extreme cases celebrities. It has also
empowered users to put them selves out there and enabled the creation of
identities that wouldn’t normally exist in reality.
References:
Alexa: The Web Information Company 2009, Alexa Top 500 Global Sites,
accessed 3/11/2009, http://www.alexa.com/topsites
Friday Traffic Report 2007, Video Sites Top 50, accessed 03/11/2009,
http://www.fridaytrafficreport.com/list-of-29-free-video-sharing-sites/#83322

Hinderliter84 2007, The History of YouTube, accessed 02/11/2009,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2NQiVcdZRY&feature=related
Lange, P 2007, Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on
Youtube, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, vol.13, no.1, pp361-
380
Lenhart, A & Madden, M 2005, Teen content creators and consumers,
accessed 02/11/2009,
http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/166/report_display.asp

Madden, M 2007 Online video: Pew Internet & American Life Project, Online
Video, accessed 4/11/2009,
http://pewinternet.org/PPF/r/219/report_display.asp
Minniwatts Marketing Group 2007, Top 35 countries with the highest Internet
penetration rate, Retrieved May 21, 2007, from
http://www.internetworldstats.com/top25.htm, cited in Warschaur, M &
Grimes, D 2008, ‘Audience, Authorship, and Artifact: The Emergent Semiotics
of Web 2.0’, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, vol. 27, pp1-23
Mwesch 2007, The Machine is Us/ing Us, accessed 02/11/2009,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g

Picolsigns 2009, History of the Internet, accessed 31/10/2009,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hIQjrMHTv4
Stefanone, M & Lackaff, D 2009, ‘Reality Television as Model for Online
Behavior: Blogging, Photo, and Video Sharing’, Journal of Computer-
Mediated Communication, vol. 14, no. 4, pp964-987
Tune, C & Degner, M 2009, Blogging and Social Networking: Current Legal
Issues’, The Computer & Internet Lawyer, vol.26, no. 11, pp1-10
Warschaur, M & Grimes, D 2008, ‘Audience, Authorship, and Artifact: The
Emergent Semiotics of Web 2.0’, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, vol.
27, pp1-23
Winder, D 2008, Being Virtual: Who You Really Are Online, John Wiley &
Sons Ltd, West Sussex, England
Wood, A & Smith, M 2005, Online Communication: Linking Technology,
Identity, & Culture, 2nd edn, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc, Mahwah, New
Jersey