Books by Rainer Hillrichs
Is today’s professional and commercial YouTube culture the downfall of a ‘participatory culture’ ... more Is today’s professional and commercial YouTube culture the downfall of a ‘participatory culture’ in which there were no lines between producers and consumers and the approval of the ‘YouTube community’ was revenue enough? This study argues otherwise and challenges the participatory culture and social media paradigms which have been predominant in the research thus far. It offers an analysis of the most subscribed YouTube channels of the first two years of the platform's operation (2005 and 2006). The aspects in focus are users’ backgrounds and motivations for using YouTube, video production, settings, modes of performance, cinematography, editing, the overall form of videos, and the activities of the contributing users and of others with regards to the videos once uploaded to YouTube. It shows that dedicated video production mattered already in the early years of the platform. It shows how YouTube users employed their performing bodies and audiovisual techniques in creative ways to produce their videos – and how they made their videos successful and generate revenues on and off YouTube. How is YouTube an extension, transformation, or break from media like film and television? How can YouTube videomaking be situated with regards to other cultural practices? This study offers novel insights.
The website: http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2016/4407/4407.htm
The full pdf: http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2016/4407/4407.pdf
In my M.A. thesis of 2007 I analyze Andy Warhol's Lonesome Cowboys and Ang Lee's Brokeback Mounta... more In my M.A. thesis of 2007 I analyze Andy Warhol's Lonesome Cowboys and Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain as queer appropriations of the classic western. Both movies subvert the archetypical heterosexuality of the cowboy figure by depicting sexual relations between their male heroes. In doing so, they exploit the fact that in classic westerns men prefer the company of other men to the company of women. A premise of the Myth of the Frontier is that new frontiers are necessary for the further development of the American nation. Both movies catch onto the Myth of the Frontier and envision a better America for same-sex desire. Their respective queer frontiers are in dialogue with the sexual politics of their time: Gay Liberation and the "sexual revolution" in 1968 and lobbying for equal rights - same-sex marriage in particular - in 2005. Nevertheless Lonesome Cowboys and Brokeback Mountain reproduce, each in its own way, the ethnic and sexual universalism of the classic western that masks various expressions of queer difference. Like the classic western, these queer westerns work best for white men. My thesis traces the subversion of the classic western, its creative employment, and the reproduction of its universalism in each of these movies.
Papers by Rainer Hillrichs
In der Geschichtswissenschaft bezeichnet der Begriff Anachronismus den Import von Begriffen aus d... more In der Geschichtswissenschaft bezeichnet der Begriff Anachronismus den Import von Begriffen aus der Gegenwart für die Untersuchung der Vergangenheit. Anachronismus bezeichnet üblicherweise ein Problem, denn die importierten Begriffe stehen im Verruf, die Vergangenheit mit gegenwärtigen Zuschreibungen zu versehen und somit nicht zu einem besseren Verständnis der Vergangenheit beizutragen. Als Gegenposition wurde von Nicole Loraux und Anderen das Konzept des kontrollierten Anachronismus entwickelt. Dieses bezeichnet ein Verfahren, bei dem gegenwärtige Begriffe und Fragen in reflektierter Weise zur Erschließung der Vergangenheit verwendet werden – und vergangene Konstellationen im Rückschritt zur Erschließung der Gegenwart (Loraux, 2005, 131-134). Die vorliegende Arbeit stellt die etablierte Kritik an Anachronismen vor, zeigt die Schwächen dieser Kritik auf, stellt Theorie und Methodik des kontrollierten Anachronismus vor und untersucht schließlich exemplarisch die Anwendung des Konzeptes in Frank Rexroths Fröhliche Scholastik: Die Wissenschaftsrevolution des Mittelalters (2018). Im Ergebnis deuten sich Grenzen des kontrollierten Anachronismus an. Diese liegen in der Vagheit des Konzeptes bei der Konzeptualisierung des Verhältnisses von Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. Es erscheint zudem schwierig, die Erschließungskraft des importierten Begriffes für die Vergangenheit tatsächlich in Quellen nachzuweisen, die diesen Begriff ja nicht verwenden. Das Spannungsverhältnis vom kontrollierten Anachronismus zur quellenorientierten geschichtswissenschaftlichen Arbeit scheint also nicht leicht aufzulösen zu sein.
Because shortened nonfiction texts are common in textbooks for the Gymnasiale Oberstufe in German... more Because shortened nonfiction texts are common in textbooks for the Gymnasiale Oberstufe in Germany, and because shortening texts is a little researched topic in TEFL, there is a need for research at this intersection, such as the research presented in this paper. Three texts from current textbooks for the Gymnasiale Oberstufe will be analyzed and assessed (Green Line 2015, Context 2015, and Camden Town 2019). Overall the results show that authors and editors were only partially guided by their teaching goals when reducing the length of the texts (i.e. by didaktische Reduktion). The makers of Green Line and Context cut significant amounts of material that would have been relevant with reference to their goals and important for students’ completion of assignments.The most-evident standard practiced among textbook makers originated from production concerns: Textbook sections begin and end at page breaks and completely cover a certain number of pages, ideally a spread. The way this standard was implemented by the makers of Camden Town and Context – cutting the end of a text irrespective of its content and structure – is highly dubious. In the latter case the results were the destruction of the coherence of the text and likely difficulties for students when working on assignments. In none of the texts all deletions were marked as such. Textbook makers made changes to the titles of two of the texts without giving an indication of these changes.
Hochschulen haben ein Interesse daran, dass Studienanfänger*nnen die für ein Studium nötigen Kenn... more Hochschulen haben ein Interesse daran, dass Studienanfänger*nnen die für ein Studium nötigen Kenntnisse, Fähigkeiten und Fertigkeiten mitbringen. In Deutschland ist das Abitur als allgemeine Hochschulreife konzipiert. Haben individuelle Hochschullehrer*innen oder ihre Verbände den Eindruck, dass Studienanfänger*innen diese Anforderungen nicht oder nicht mehr mitbringen, sind Schulen und die die Oberstufe und das Abitur regulierenden Behörden Adressaten ihrer öffentlichen Klage über eine mangelnde „Studierfähigkeit“ (z.B. Ladenthin 2018 und Alt 2019). In der ebenfalls öffentlichen Gegenrede wird unter anderem auf die lange Tradition dieser Klage und auf die daraus folgenden Plausibilitätsprobleme verwiesen (z.B. Himmelrath 2016 und Frings 2019). Aus bildungshistorischer Perspektive stellt sich die Frage nach Kontinuitäten und Veränderungen der Klage im Laufe der Zeit. Dieser Frage wird in der vorliegenden Arbeit nachgegangen. Es werden die Ergebnisse zweier größerer Befragungen von Lehrenden (vornehmlich) an wissenschaftlichen Hochschulen verglichen (Heldmann 1984 und Kittmann 2014): Welche Auffassung von Studierfähigkeit haben die Befragten der Heldmann-Studie, welche die der Kittmann-Studie? Wie lassen sich die unterschiedlichen Auffassungen erklären und deuten? Im Ergebnis lässt sich der Wandel des Verständnisses von Studierfähigkeit im Laufe der 30 Jahre zwischen den Studien allgemein durch den Wandel von einer Leistungs- zu einer Kompetenzorientierung einordnen. Zudem zeugt sowohl das Verständnis von Studierfähigkeit Anfang der 1980er als auch jenes Anfang der 2010er vom Einfluss des gesellschaftlichen Subsystems Wirtschaft auf das Subsystem Bildung. McClellands Ideal einer prosperierenden Leistungsgesellschaft findet Echos in den „Leistungskriterien“ der Heldmann-Studie, insbesondere in der am höchsten bewerteten „Lern- und Leistungsbereitschaft“. Die Kriterien der Kittmann-Studie weisen z.B. große Übereinstimmungen mit dem „KompetenzAtlas“ von Heyse und Erpenbeck auf; einem Instrument des Personalmanagements, bei dem es darum geht, die Ressource Mensch zu optimieren und mit dem größten finanziellen Nutzen einzusetzen.
Representing Poverty in the Anglophone Postcolonial World, 2021
This article analyses the representation of the Kenyan slum Kibera in Soul Boy (Hawa Essuman, 201... more This article analyses the representation of the Kenyan slum Kibera in Soul Boy (Hawa Essuman, 2010) and compares it to the representation of Kibera and other slums in films such as The Constant Gardener, Kibera Kid, and Slumdog Millionaire. The analysis focuses on the agency over representation, the nature of Kibera and of life in Kibera in the film, the cinematic mode of Kibera’s representation, and the politics of the film with regards to poverty and social stratification. As it turns out, in Soul Boy, unlike in other films, ‘slum’ does not epitomize poverty and other economic and social problems. In contrast with the reformist and voyeurist modes that predominate elsewhere, an affirmative mode and an affirmative slum politics characterize Soul Boy.
NECSUS, 2016
THE FULL PAPER IS OPEN ACCESS ON THE JOURNAL'S WEBSITE
This article revisits the settings of ear... more THE FULL PAPER IS OPEN ACCESS ON THE JOURNAL'S WEBSITE
This article revisits the settings of early video blogs on YouTube and the arguments made about these settings and their cultural meanings thus far. Video bloggers’ use of domestic and other settings is a far more complex issue than it may initially appear. Convenience, creative ambitions, viewers’ expectations, and emerging conventions intersected in this dimension of video blogging. In contrast with the notion of ‘private spaces’ that were ‘simply’ shown ‘as ‘they are’, I suggest that bedrooms were locations which were willingly, consciously, and performatively put into the scene on video blogs. These locations offered their own materiality and meanings for adoption or manipulation. For these reasons, and because videos were typically produced to be publicly shown on YouTube, I challenge the notion of a genealogical relation of video blogs with home movies and home videos. Instead, video blogs should be historicised and contextualised with other public audiovisual practices. In order to create variety or because specific video projects required different settings, vloggers also began using settings beyond the bedroom. Over the course of time settings appear to follow an expansive outward movement from bedrooms to other settings in the home, to local and regional settings. From mid-2006 on several vloggers got involved with established media industries and shot videos with Los Angeles as a setting. At the same time, people at the margins of the industries who were already living in LA started YouTube projects. Accordingly, the expansive movement appears to culminate in LA, signalling the fast integration of YouTube culture into popular culture at large.
While the impact of digital technology on the medium photography has been a matter of theoretical... more While the impact of digital technology on the medium photography has been a matter of theoretical debate since the 1990s, the study of digital photographic practices is far less advanced. Because of the special relation¬ship between New York and urban photography, there are good reasons for studying practices of digital photography in and of New York. One such practice are daily photo blogs – a genre of weblogs whose main characteristic is that a photograph taken by the blogger in the town or city he or she lives in is the focus of each blog post. New York City, as it turns out, is one of the most frequently represented places in daily photo blogging. In this essay I approach the New York blogosphere of 2010 with a focus on the forms and functions of photographs and blogs, closely examining the different aims pursued by daily photo bloggers. An overall goal will be to make sense of the newness of this cultural practice andthe ways in which it reme¬diates other cultural practices of producing and circulating photographs of New York City. In: New York, New York! Urban Spaces, Dreamscapes, Contested Territories. Eds. Sabine Sielke in collaboration with Björn Bosserhoff. Frankfurt: Lang, 2016. 175-190.
Mashups - Neue Praktiken und Ästhetiken in populären Medienkulturen, 2014
Die Videos der Zwickauer Terrorzelle wurden vor allem als „Bekenner“- und „Propagandavideos“ disk... more Die Videos der Zwickauer Terrorzelle wurden vor allem als „Bekenner“- und „Propagandavideos“ diskutiert. Dieser Beitrag postuliert, dass ihre Betrachtung als Mashups wesentlich für ein Verstehen durch Ermittlungsbehörden und Presse gewesen wäre. Die Aneignung und Rekontextualisierung von popularkulturellem und Nachrichten-Material war konstitutiv bei der Entstehung der Videos, für ihre Ansprache eines impliziten Publikums, ihre Funktion für Täter und Unterstützer und ihr Wirkpotenzial in der Öffentlichkeit. Es soll mit Überlegungen über die Relevanz der Videos für die Theoretisierung von Mashups in der Medienwissenschaft geschlossen werden.
Neue Gesellschaft/Frankfurter Hefte, 2012
Book Reviews by Rainer Hillrichs
Volle Rezension über Link (oben) zu erreichen bzw. über Web-Suche.
NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies, 2014
Conference Presentations by Rainer Hillrichs
Kritik an digitalen fotografischen Selbstaufnahmen, die auf Internet-Plattformen wie Instagram ge... more Kritik an digitalen fotografischen Selbstaufnahmen, die auf Internet-Plattformen wie Instagram gezeigt werden, findet keineswegs nur im Feuilleton und bei Elternabenden sondern auch auf den Plattformen selbst statt. Hiervon zeugen Hashtags wie #antiselfie und #fuckselfie. Der Beitrag untersucht Ziele, Formen und Funktionen selfie-kritischer Selfies auf Instagram. Ziele der Kritik können der Selfie-Dispositif an sich oder als hegemonial wahrgenommene Darstellungsnormen sein. Der Beitrag verortet zudem die Bilder und Bild-Text-Kombinationen in Bezug auf historische selbstkritische fotografische Praktiken. Selfies, die Selfies kritisieren, stehen im Verdacht einer Paradoxie. Außerdem bewegen sie sich in der gleichen durch Darstellungszwang, Aufmerksamkeitsökonomie und Wettbewerbslogik gekennzeichneten Umwelt, wie andere Selfies. Deswegen stellt sich auch die Frage nach der Plausibilität und Effektivität ihrer Kritik.
Commonly, early YouTube culture is conceptualized as a culture for which terms like “media produc... more Commonly, early YouTube culture is conceptualized as a culture for which terms like “media production, distribution, and consumption” do not apply, but in which there was a “community” of “participants” who were situated on a “continuum of cultural participation” (Burgess and Green, 2009, 56-57; also Lange, 2008, 98). According to José van Dijck, only in later years a small number of producers and uploaders began facing a large majority of “viewers who never uploaded a single video” or “commented on a posted video” (2013, 115-116). My paper condenses results of my recently-completed PhD project about early YouTube culture and refutes the ideas of a participatory culture and community of users. Already during the first two years of YouTube (2005 and 2006) users fell into the camps of those who primarily created and uploaded videos and those who primarily watched. Videomakers addressed a viewership, subscribers, or fans – and not members of a community. The extent of reciprocal activity, arguably an index of blurred boundaries between producers and consumers (Burgess and Green 54), was small. The social formation of early YouTube was not a community but a hierarchical structure characterized by individuation and competition. Early YouTube culture had stronger continuities with the cultures of film and television than previously assumed.
Note: If you want to know more, check out chapter 7 of my open access ebook Poetics of Early YouTube: Production, Performance, Success. Bonn: ULB 2016. http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2016/4407/4407.pdf
Video blogging on YouTube became a news topic in September 2006 in various newspapers and televis... more Video blogging on YouTube became a news topic in September 2006 in various newspapers and television networks. However, not a regular video blog, but a video blog with a difference was discussed in these pieces. On LONELYGIRL15 a young woman named Bree appeared to be talking about everyday topics, like parents, friends and school assignments. The news pieces reported that Bree was a fictional character played by an actress, and that the vlog was the project of three men in their twenties.
Typically, examples of regular video blogs were not mentioned. Nevertheless, negatively, the coverage gave the impression that video blogging was a confessional diarist practice of self performances about everyday topics (e.g. Rushfield and Hoffman; Glaister).
To a certain extent this notion is echoed in the YouTube research, for example when Markus Kuhn speaks of the conventions of video blogs which indicated authenticity and a non-commercial origin (“Authentizität und Nicht-Kommerzialität”), that were functionalized in seemingly ‘authentic’ vlogs like LONELYGIRL15 (“Medienreflexives filmisches Erzählen im Internet” 30).
In this presentation I provide a taxonomy of performance in video blogs on YouTube in 2005 and 2006, that is during the first two years of the platform’s operation. I want to complicate the impression of a dominance of sincere self performances on early video blogs. I want to illustrate that video blogging was not a uniformly documentary practice that has been fictionalized in so-called ‘fakes’.
Note: If you want to know more, check out chapter 4 of my open access ebook Poetics of Early YouTube: Production, Performance, Success. Bonn: ULB 2016. http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2016/4407/4407.pdf
This paper discusses recent policy and interface changes on YouTube and the ways in which they re... more This paper discusses recent policy and interface changes on YouTube and the ways in which they require shifts of terms or new terms for our understanding of YouTube as a media industries phenomenon in 2014.
Opening production facilities in various cities, online and offline support for video producers, and all-star videos may require ‘new’ understandings from an ‘old’ media world that YouTube appeared to have left behind.
In its efforts to improve profitability, YouTube has expanded advertising revenue sharing opportunities to the masses of little popular users. Benefiting from revenue sharing is not a privilege anymore: In 2014 YouTube is monetizing the big head and the long tail.
All popularity rankings were discontinued between 2012 and 2014. While representation of contents in terms of popularity and promotion held a balance for a long time, a shift towards personalized and promoted contents asks us if YouTube is becoming less of a platform and more of a personalized broadcaster.
While an overall finding of YouTube research is that YouTube is different things to different peo... more While an overall finding of YouTube research is that YouTube is different things to different people, significant emphasis is put on communication and community: YouTube is presented as a social networking site, videos as acts of communication, and YouTubers as a community. In my paper I outline this perspective and point to theoretical weaknesses. I also suggest that it may not adequately make sense of the way YouTube works and of users’ activities. Inadvertently, the paradigm follows statements by the company YouTube and by YouTubers of refering to the site as a community. The function of the term community in statements from the company and from YouTubers will be addressed. Interestingly, those critical scholars who point out that YouTube is not a social or community medium are also convinced that it really should be or that there should be alternatives which are. I suggest that a major paradigm of YouTube research – and to some extent also of online media research in general – is that ‘good’ new media are social and community media. This ideal is hardly ever questioned. Nor are underlying notions of community discussed or challenged. Following conflicting agendas, YouTube Inc., YouTubers, and scholars could all employ the same term: community – whose positive value was never questioned.
Note: If you want to know more, check out chapter 7 of my open access ebook Poetics of Early YouTube: Production, Performance, Success. Bonn: ULB 2016. http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2016/4407/4407.pdf
Die Videos der Zwickauer Terrorzelle wurden vor allem als „Bekenner“- und „Propagandavideos“ disk... more Die Videos der Zwickauer Terrorzelle wurden vor allem als „Bekenner“- und „Propagandavideos“ diskutiert. Der Vortrag postuliert, dass ihre Betrachtung als Mashups wesentlich für ein Verstehen durch Ermittlungsbehörden und Presse gewesen wäre. Die Aneignung und Rekontextualisierung von popularkulturellem und Nachrichten-Material war konstitutiv bei der Entstehung der Videos, für ihre Ansprache eines impliziten Publikums, ihre Funktion für Täter und Unterstützer und ihr Wirkpotenzial in der Öffentlichkeit. Es wird mit Überlegungen über die Relevanz der Videos für die Theoretisierung von Mashups in der Medienwissenschaft geschlossen werden.
Als 2005 und 2006 vor allem Teenager die damals neue Video-Plattform YouTube entdeckten, bot sich... more Als 2005 und 2006 vor allem Teenager die damals neue Video-Plattform YouTube entdeckten, bot sich ihnen die kostenlose und globale Distributionsmöglichkeit für Videoclips mit wenigen inhaltlichen und formalen Einschränkungen. Davon abgesehen waren ihre Ausgangsbedingungen jedoch schlecht. So hatten sie nur wenig Erfahrung als Performer und Filmemacher, waren nur mit simplen Kameras und vorinstallierter Software ausgestattet und wurden von YouTube nicht entlohnt. Der Vortrag möchte zeigen, wie die erste Generation der Videoblogger Unzulänglichkeiten reflektierte, ignorierte, akzeptierte oder überwand. Videoblogger entwickelten zum Beispiel unterschiedliche Strategien im Umgang mit Versprechern während der Performance. Diese Strategien wurden zu Konventionen und von fiktionalen Videoblogs (z. B. lonelygirl15) übernommen und weiterentwickelt. Abschließend sollen Überlegungen über die kulturelle Funktion der Dysfunktion in Videoblogs 2005 und 2006 angestellt werden. Der Vortrag steht im Kontext des Dissertationsprojektes Poetics and Politics of Video Blogging.
Note: If you want to know more, check out pp. 88-99 of my open access ebook Poetics of Early YouTube: Production, Performance, Success. Bonn: ULB 2016. http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2016/4407/4407.pdf
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Books by Rainer Hillrichs
The website: http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2016/4407/4407.htm
The full pdf: http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2016/4407/4407.pdf
Papers by Rainer Hillrichs
This article revisits the settings of early video blogs on YouTube and the arguments made about these settings and their cultural meanings thus far. Video bloggers’ use of domestic and other settings is a far more complex issue than it may initially appear. Convenience, creative ambitions, viewers’ expectations, and emerging conventions intersected in this dimension of video blogging. In contrast with the notion of ‘private spaces’ that were ‘simply’ shown ‘as ‘they are’, I suggest that bedrooms were locations which were willingly, consciously, and performatively put into the scene on video blogs. These locations offered their own materiality and meanings for adoption or manipulation. For these reasons, and because videos were typically produced to be publicly shown on YouTube, I challenge the notion of a genealogical relation of video blogs with home movies and home videos. Instead, video blogs should be historicised and contextualised with other public audiovisual practices. In order to create variety or because specific video projects required different settings, vloggers also began using settings beyond the bedroom. Over the course of time settings appear to follow an expansive outward movement from bedrooms to other settings in the home, to local and regional settings. From mid-2006 on several vloggers got involved with established media industries and shot videos with Los Angeles as a setting. At the same time, people at the margins of the industries who were already living in LA started YouTube projects. Accordingly, the expansive movement appears to culminate in LA, signalling the fast integration of YouTube culture into popular culture at large.
Book Reviews by Rainer Hillrichs
Conference Presentations by Rainer Hillrichs
Note: If you want to know more, check out chapter 7 of my open access ebook Poetics of Early YouTube: Production, Performance, Success. Bonn: ULB 2016. http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2016/4407/4407.pdf
Typically, examples of regular video blogs were not mentioned. Nevertheless, negatively, the coverage gave the impression that video blogging was a confessional diarist practice of self performances about everyday topics (e.g. Rushfield and Hoffman; Glaister).
To a certain extent this notion is echoed in the YouTube research, for example when Markus Kuhn speaks of the conventions of video blogs which indicated authenticity and a non-commercial origin (“Authentizität und Nicht-Kommerzialität”), that were functionalized in seemingly ‘authentic’ vlogs like LONELYGIRL15 (“Medienreflexives filmisches Erzählen im Internet” 30).
In this presentation I provide a taxonomy of performance in video blogs on YouTube in 2005 and 2006, that is during the first two years of the platform’s operation. I want to complicate the impression of a dominance of sincere self performances on early video blogs. I want to illustrate that video blogging was not a uniformly documentary practice that has been fictionalized in so-called ‘fakes’.
Note: If you want to know more, check out chapter 4 of my open access ebook Poetics of Early YouTube: Production, Performance, Success. Bonn: ULB 2016. http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2016/4407/4407.pdf
Opening production facilities in various cities, online and offline support for video producers, and all-star videos may require ‘new’ understandings from an ‘old’ media world that YouTube appeared to have left behind.
In its efforts to improve profitability, YouTube has expanded advertising revenue sharing opportunities to the masses of little popular users. Benefiting from revenue sharing is not a privilege anymore: In 2014 YouTube is monetizing the big head and the long tail.
All popularity rankings were discontinued between 2012 and 2014. While representation of contents in terms of popularity and promotion held a balance for a long time, a shift towards personalized and promoted contents asks us if YouTube is becoming less of a platform and more of a personalized broadcaster.
Note: If you want to know more, check out chapter 7 of my open access ebook Poetics of Early YouTube: Production, Performance, Success. Bonn: ULB 2016. http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2016/4407/4407.pdf
Note: If you want to know more, check out pp. 88-99 of my open access ebook Poetics of Early YouTube: Production, Performance, Success. Bonn: ULB 2016. http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2016/4407/4407.pdf
The website: http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2016/4407/4407.htm
The full pdf: http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2016/4407/4407.pdf
This article revisits the settings of early video blogs on YouTube and the arguments made about these settings and their cultural meanings thus far. Video bloggers’ use of domestic and other settings is a far more complex issue than it may initially appear. Convenience, creative ambitions, viewers’ expectations, and emerging conventions intersected in this dimension of video blogging. In contrast with the notion of ‘private spaces’ that were ‘simply’ shown ‘as ‘they are’, I suggest that bedrooms were locations which were willingly, consciously, and performatively put into the scene on video blogs. These locations offered their own materiality and meanings for adoption or manipulation. For these reasons, and because videos were typically produced to be publicly shown on YouTube, I challenge the notion of a genealogical relation of video blogs with home movies and home videos. Instead, video blogs should be historicised and contextualised with other public audiovisual practices. In order to create variety or because specific video projects required different settings, vloggers also began using settings beyond the bedroom. Over the course of time settings appear to follow an expansive outward movement from bedrooms to other settings in the home, to local and regional settings. From mid-2006 on several vloggers got involved with established media industries and shot videos with Los Angeles as a setting. At the same time, people at the margins of the industries who were already living in LA started YouTube projects. Accordingly, the expansive movement appears to culminate in LA, signalling the fast integration of YouTube culture into popular culture at large.
Note: If you want to know more, check out chapter 7 of my open access ebook Poetics of Early YouTube: Production, Performance, Success. Bonn: ULB 2016. http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2016/4407/4407.pdf
Typically, examples of regular video blogs were not mentioned. Nevertheless, negatively, the coverage gave the impression that video blogging was a confessional diarist practice of self performances about everyday topics (e.g. Rushfield and Hoffman; Glaister).
To a certain extent this notion is echoed in the YouTube research, for example when Markus Kuhn speaks of the conventions of video blogs which indicated authenticity and a non-commercial origin (“Authentizität und Nicht-Kommerzialität”), that were functionalized in seemingly ‘authentic’ vlogs like LONELYGIRL15 (“Medienreflexives filmisches Erzählen im Internet” 30).
In this presentation I provide a taxonomy of performance in video blogs on YouTube in 2005 and 2006, that is during the first two years of the platform’s operation. I want to complicate the impression of a dominance of sincere self performances on early video blogs. I want to illustrate that video blogging was not a uniformly documentary practice that has been fictionalized in so-called ‘fakes’.
Note: If you want to know more, check out chapter 4 of my open access ebook Poetics of Early YouTube: Production, Performance, Success. Bonn: ULB 2016. http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2016/4407/4407.pdf
Opening production facilities in various cities, online and offline support for video producers, and all-star videos may require ‘new’ understandings from an ‘old’ media world that YouTube appeared to have left behind.
In its efforts to improve profitability, YouTube has expanded advertising revenue sharing opportunities to the masses of little popular users. Benefiting from revenue sharing is not a privilege anymore: In 2014 YouTube is monetizing the big head and the long tail.
All popularity rankings were discontinued between 2012 and 2014. While representation of contents in terms of popularity and promotion held a balance for a long time, a shift towards personalized and promoted contents asks us if YouTube is becoming less of a platform and more of a personalized broadcaster.
Note: If you want to know more, check out chapter 7 of my open access ebook Poetics of Early YouTube: Production, Performance, Success. Bonn: ULB 2016. http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2016/4407/4407.pdf
Note: If you want to know more, check out pp. 88-99 of my open access ebook Poetics of Early YouTube: Production, Performance, Success. Bonn: ULB 2016. http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2016/4407/4407.pdf
Note: Some of the content of the presentation eventually became part of chapter 2.2 of my open access ebook Poetics of Early YouTube: Production, Performance, Success. Bonn: ULB 2016. http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2016/4407/4407.pdf
Finally, I want to point to mismatches between appearance and reality of empowering ‘ordinary’ users on YouTube, and also to the further development of user representation on the platform.