Digital Ethnography @ Kansas State University

Below please find great presentation of professor Michael Wesch giving the taste of the anthropological approach to new media platforms.

Enjoy:



0:00 Introduction, YouTube's Big Numbers
2:00 Numa Numa and the Celebration of Webcams
5:53 The Machine is Us/ing Us and the New Mediascape
12:16 Introducing our Research Team
12:56 Who is on YouTube?
13:25 What's on Youtube? Charlie Bit My Finger, Soulja Boy, etc.
17:04 5% of vids are personal vlogs addressed to the YouTube community, Why?
17:30 YouTube in context. The loss of community and "networked individualism" (Wellman)
18:41 Cultural Inversion: individualism and community
19:15 Understanding new forms of community through Participant Observation
21:18 YouTube as a medium for community
23:00 Our first vlogs
25:00 The webcam: Everybody is watching where nobody is ("context collapse")
26:05 Re-cognition and new forms of self-awareness (McLuhan)
27:58 The Anonymity of Watching YouTube: Haters and Lovers
29:53 Aesthetic Arrest
30:25 Connection without Constraint
32:35 Free Hugs: A hero for our mediated culture
34:02 YouTube Drama: Striving for popularity
34:55 An early star: emokid21ohio
36:55 YouTube's Anthenticity Crisis: the story of LonelyGirl15
39:50 Reflections on Authenticity
41:54 Gaming the system / Exposing the System
43:37 Seriously Playful Participatory Media Culture (featuring Us by blimvisible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yxHKgQyGx0
47:32 Networked Production: The Collab. MadV's "The Message" and the message of YouTube
49:29 Poem: The Little Glass Dot, The Eyes of the World
51:15 Conclusion by bnessel1973
52:50 Dedication and Credits (Our Numa Numa dance)


It is really interesting presentation about anthropological approach to new media platforms with special devotion to YouTube not only as a new media tool, but mainly as a new mean of users expression and a new experience of being in touch (with who – that is completely other issue).
YouTube is not only one application – it is an element of the whole bunch of sites connected in an interactive net, in which all elements can and do influence each other. It is a new relation within mediasphere, that in television would be called intertextuality I suppose. Here the convergence (in the sense Henry Jenkins uses it) is more applicable term catching the sense of the media practices users are performing. Peoples’ activity links platform such as dig, del.icio.us, blogs, YouTube, Facebook…
I suppose YouTube is a great victory of everyday lifa and simple pleasures. As Michael Wesch shows in his presentation most of the videos on YouTube are home videos – simple and funny. On the other hand vlogs present the great deal of self- and technology awareness.

I really like author’s perspective - that shows great deal of anthropological (and ethnographical) sensitivity – presenting media not as its contant or even useful tool of human communication but rather as the milieu of human RELATIONS. I do really wonder if the same tale told a friend face-to-face is different when recorded on vlog or described on blog. If it changes once released to (potentially) hundreds of viewers/readers. If it changes when there is noone physically close to me – there is only computer. I believe there is a change in relation not only the mean of communication. That is the question of human experience which is far more than only the story telling.