A couple of us from ALA and Public Knowledge attended the “Anthropology of YouTube” event at the Library of Congress today. I didn’t realize beforehand who was presenting, but when we arrived, I found out that Michael Wesch was the slated speaker. Wesch is an Assistant Professor in Anthropology at Kansas State University, and the directors of the Digital Ethnography Work Group. You may have heard of this group before–Wesch created the video “Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us,” which has been viewed nearly 6 million times on YouTube (and has 7000 comments!), and has been discussed extensively in the blogosphere. Side note: I still don’t really get his students’ somewhat self-loathing reply “A Vision of Students Today“–it may be accurate, but it seems a little bleak.
Wesch says that participatory web 2.0 tools like YouTube can empower individuals and create new communities in a global network. Not too much new here, but Wesch is extremely interested in exploring the cultural and identity dynamics behind YouTube. At the center is not just content, he says, but the people that create it. He says we see media as mediating human relationships. Users come to see themselves as part of the YouTube community (5% of videos specifically address the community itself, aka users talking at the camera). Wesch describes that new users discover how to address an empty webcam and millions of viewers at the same time. This is meta- meta- meta-congnition, he says; users can develop a hyper self-awareness. He also claims that we’re seeing that multi-facted identities can be an accepted and healthy online behavior.
Wesch speaks of Robert Putnam, exploring how he wrote in the mid 90s that “meeting in an electronic forum is not the same as meeting in a bowling alley.” While this is true, we see some extremely strong bonds being formed and strengthened on social networking sites like YouTube. Wesch also discusses the authenticity crisis that has plagued places like YouTube, with creative, staged dramas like lonelygirl15 creating a huge stir of controversy. He briefly touched on the fact that while fair use protects some of the heavy remixing that goes on in YouTube, much of the reuse of materials is probably illegal. While the Center for Social Media and others have done some great work on the expanded potential for fair use (see Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video), perhaps we’ve entered a new era of “tolerated use.”
With all the talk about youth participating in participatory technologies, it seems that we need to continue to support the kind of eye-opening research done by Wesch and his team. However, here in Washington, continued talk of “protecting our children” dominates legislative rhetoric surrounding web 2.0 products and services. We all love the kids, but the misleading talk of social networking sites and participatory media tools as dangerous and teeming with online predators really ovepowers the national discussion. It’s a shame. If we really want our kids to be engaged, learn in new ways, become politically motivated, and reach out to diverse communities, we need to hear about and then support the positive ways new technologies can shape their lives.
