How YouTube is Changing The World
by
Adrian Aujero
Introduction
The topic of the wiki research project is YouTube and how it has changed the world. It will discuss the phenomenon of instant video access, how it has changed the entertainment industry, how we access information and the societal impacts the website has left in its wake since its inception.
What is YouTube?
YouTube is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005. [3] The variety of videos on YouTube is infinite. You can look up videos from people doing ridiculous things for pure entertainment to videos of educational purposes such as tutorials or news clips. You can upload your own videos to the site instantly and within seconds, the whole world can view your recording.
The Phenomenon
Before YouTube, the only way we could watch video clips was through the old-fashioned tube, television. With YouTube, we can search and view almost any clip we want to look up at any time we want. What takes the website to the next level of brilliance is relevance. There are millions of videos uploaded to the site by ordinary people and that makes the site more likeable. “We take advantage of the fact that we know where users are coming from and provide relevant content,” said Steve Grove, Youtube’s head of news and politics. Pg. 46 (2010) [5] Through the site, we can now see windows into peoples’ lives instantly. YouTube has given us the power to travel the world with a single click. [1]
Jarrett sites Burgess and Green’s book, YouTube: Online video and participatory culture, “as a site, it also defies easy categorization. YouTube is simultaneously ‘a high-volume website, a broadcast platform, a media archive, and a social network.” Pg. 327 (2010) [6]
Entertainment
Regular television just isn’t enough anymore. We don’t need to be slaves to programmed television. With YouTube, the user is in control with what he or she wants to watch. As O’neill states, “We used to watch television, go to the movies, read books. Today we can spend hours on YouTube, watching video after video. YouTube has shows, movies, home movies, animated shorts, web series and more and we can watch it all from home for free.” (2010) [1]
-Music
YouTube works great as an on-demand music service, and even allows users to create and share playlists. [7] As opposed to iTunes, YouTube does not have a song library, users simply can upload a song as audio for a video and upload the file as a video on YouTube. This has become a new revolution for searching for music. Clearly, YouTube does a lot for the music business, fans and artists. Music videos consistently rank among the most popular on the site. Even better, YouTube’s audio-fingerprinting technology, Content ID, ensures that people can upload videos that would normally have to be deleted for copyright reasons, with associated royalties going to musicians and other copyright holders as part of YouTube’s Partner Program. But on a structural level, the site’s success with music could have a big, negative side effect. YouTube’s strength as a free music source might be hurting music subscriptions and, by extension, artists by offering users a free place to hear just about any song they want. [7]
Rebecca Black became a "viral star" after her notorious hit "Friday"
Community
The users of YouTube have formed somewhat of an online community. People have the ability for comment on (both positively and negatively) and like other videos and through other social networking sites like Facebook, share and post videos for people to see. This social networking has become so tightly knit that a video has the potential to receive millions of views in a matter of days. As an unknown singer, Justin Bieber caught the attention of millions just by simply posting videos of himself singing. Without a video-broadcasting site, Justin Bieber may have never been discovered.
According to Wesch, creator of the world-famous YouTube video, ‘The Machineis Us/ing Us,’ at least 10,000 videos a day are addressed to the "YouTube community," many users report "profound experiences" on YouTube, and most significantly a sense of shared values is emerging from the community. At the same time video-sharers and vloggers are growing as a community, they are becoming more aware of themselves through the YouTube community and through the bridging of public (internet) and private (home/bedroom) spaces. (2008) [11]
As Burgess and Green note in this book, YouTube is simultaneously ‘a high-volume website, a broadcast platform, a media archive, and a social network’ pg. 327 (2009) [6]
Information
As opposed to searching for pure entertainment, YouTube is also a great source for finding useful information such as tutorials for playing music, news clips and for other forms of resources. What makes news clips more unique on YouTube is the lack of strict censorship. News programs on broadcast television tend to skew the truth and give false stories. The Internet has shown us that video is also good for mass-distributed conversation. [10] Millions of people post first-hand videos of incredible events such as the riots in Cairo, the Oscar Grant shooting and the tsunami in Japan.
[9]
YouTube has given people around the globe a platform through which they can post videos to show the world, first-hand, what is going on in their countries; to show the world the reality of situations that may not be being broadcast on the news or may be hidden by the government; and to let people know about different issues that they may not have heard about and getting viewers to take action. [1]
In a study by Alan McKee comparing the resourcefulness of the National Film and Sound Archive and YouTube, the author found YouTube to be more user-friendly and intuitive. In addition to a difference across genres, I found that YouTube was stronger than the NFSA in particular kinds of human interest—in particular, episodes of soap operas dealing with births, deaths, and marriages Pg. 162. The NFSA and YouTube each has strengths and weaknesses for a historian of Australian television. In terms of online accessibility, YouTube is massively more accessible than the NFSA. Pg 171 [4]
Social Impact
As O’neill states, “For me, one of the most amazing things about YouTube is its ability to make the world smaller.” [1] YouTube has made it easier for people around the world to connect with each other through video. Online video is an explosive new medium, and YouTube has proven to be dominant in this arena. And while for some the site provides mere entertainment, for others, YouTube is proving to be a valuable research tool, as well as a medium for expression or documentation of aberrant behavior. [2] YouTube is creating fame. Never has it been easier to advertise yourself to millions of people. Even the strangest of talents can receive a thousand hits. As O’neill states, “In recent years, YouTube has opened new doors for talent discovery. Never before has it been so easy for talented singers, dancers, actors and artists to achieve instant fame. Today, a person can upload a video of himself singing to YouTube and, if it gets seen by the right person, he could receive millions of views, get a record deal and begin a whole new life overnight.” [1]
Conclusion
The future of YouTube seems to be stable. As diverse as the website is, its demise doesn’t seem to be coming up any time soon. YouTube has brought many great things to the millions of people who use it for countless reasons and it also has brought unsettling controversy, particularly privacy. What I’ve learned from online video is that each video is a new and different perspective of the world. Without having to move an inch, we can view the world through countless windows that the community of YouTube has provided for us. The opportunity of visual cyber travelling is what makes YouTube great. A picture says a thousand words. So in a sense, videos have the ability to tell us stories.
YouTube Star?
References:
[1] O'neill, M. (2010, November 8). 5 ways youtube has changed the world forever. Retrieved from http://socialtimes.com/youtube-changed-the-world_b26201
[2] Margolis, D. (2008, July). Analyzing the societal effects of youtube. Retrieved from http://www.certmag.com/read.php?in=3525
[3] YouTube (2011, April 28). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youtube
[4] *McKee, A. (2011) YouTube versus the national film and sound archive: Which is the more useful resource for historians and Australian television. Television and new media 12, 154-173.
[5] *Potter, D. (2010) The youtube factor. American journalism review. 32, 46-46.
[6] *Jarrett, K. (2010) YouTube: online video and participatory culture. Continuum: journal of media & cultural studies. 24, 327-330.
[7] Buskirk, E. (2011) Is YouTube bad for music. Wired. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/01/is-youtube-bad-for-music/
[8] Fitzpatrick, L. (2010) Brief history YouTube. Time. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1990787,00.html
[9] Kenner, D. (2011) The youtube revolutions. Foreign Policy. Retrieved from http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/03/30/the_youtube_revolutions?page=0,1
[10] Thompson, C. (2008) Clive Thompson on how youtube changes the way we think. Wired. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-01/st_thompson
[11] Jones, S. (2008) Anthropology of YouTube. Pew Internet and American Life. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/Commentary/2008/June/Anthropology-of-YouTube.aspx
[12] *Peer, L., Ksiazek, T.B. (2011) YouTube and the challenge to journalism. Journalism Studies 12, 45-63.