Phillip Cuddeback
Sociology 022 – In the Facebook Age – Spring 2010 – Dhiraj Murthy

Phil Cuddeback
YouTube’s Potential
YouTube is a revolutionary form of media that has served as an easy to use distribution platform for anyone with the sufficient means to participate. YouTube’s slogan “Broadcast Yourself” is exactly what millions of people worldwide have done to an impressing extent in only the five years since it began. The prominent reason YouTube has become so popular is that is holds great potential to widely distribute filmmakers’ work and to let their voices be heard by the public. Unfortunately, standing in the way of filmmakers achieving the full potential of YouTube are that the site has the ability decontextualize a video and that YouTube marginalizes videos that do not appeal to it’s distinct and homogeneous audience.
The ability for individuals to widely distribute their work and express their voice through YouTube may be suppressed because YouTube can place videos out of context, which can cause them to be misinterpreted. People whose videos are ambiguous and understood only when sufficient background information is provided are easily misinterpreted on YouTube. The fan music video by Kirk Spock faced this problem. Fan videos films “remix footage from cult television programs to popular music, creating a distinctive form of cultural commentary” (Jenkins 2009). When the Kirk Spock video of Star Trek scenes set to Nine Inch Nail’s song “Closer” was released on YouTube, it was misinterpreted by the public to be comedic when the maker’s intention was to be disturbing because of the “vivid depiction of sexual violence” (Jenkins 2009). In the context of other fan videos, this misinterpretation would not have occurred, but on YouTube it did. Fan video makers are trying to utilize YouTube to widely distribute their work and to share a message with the public. But when the public cannot fully understand the true intention of the video, then the maker’s voice will not be heard and the wide distribution will accomplish nothing.
A second barrier video makers have to overcome in order to take advantage of YouTube’s capabilities is that YouTube marginalizes videos that do not appeal to its main audience. YouTube has an audience that lacks diversity and because YouTube “pushes up content which receives support from other users” (Jenkins 2009), the top videos are homogeneous and representative of the majority audience. The nature of popular videos are comedic, “amateur movies showing poor fools” (Keen 2007) doing almost anything. Thus, for an individual or an organization to effectively distribute a video to be viewed by the maximum number of YouTube visitors, they must make a video that falls within the tastes and interests of the majority YouTube visitors. Otherwise, a video will not be broadly distributed for few “visitors to the site move beyond the most visible content” (Jenkins 2009).
Once the barriers of YouTube are overcome, a video has the potential to circulate and take off virally. One example of an organization that cleverly overcame the barriers of YouTube is an organization called the Harry Potter Alliance that teamed up with Wal-Mart Watch. The Harry Potter Alliance released “a series of campy, over-the-top videos” (Jenkins 2009) that criticized Wal-Mart’s employment practices. The videos directed attention to the Wal-Mart Watch official website where people could find more information about the organization’s cause. This use of YouTube creatively targeted YouTube’s audience and stated the organization’s message clearly so that there was no misinterpretation.
While YouTube is a public space that provides a forum for anyone to share videos easily and effectively with the public, it is not as democratizing as it appears. YouTube portrays the illusion that it includes all people of society because there is “an inexhaustible supply of user-generated content” (Jenkins 2009) on the site. With so much material, it seems as though YouTube is highly democratic for every section of society must be represented so some degree; but this is not the case. At the foundation of the problem is that “people have uneven access to the means of participation” (Jenkins 2009); many people worldwide cannot afford a computer, webcam, or a video camera, and thus, these people of low socioeconomic classes cannot express themselves via YouTube. As Bill Ivey said in the Chronicle of Higher Education (2006), he unequal access extends beyond financial reasons and into “education, skills, […] resources, and time” (Jenkins 2009). The people that lack these means are not represented on YouTube and thus, YouTube is not completely democratized.
The second reason YouTube is not democratic is that it has restrictions on what content can be shared in the videos and what can be said in the comments. YouTube restricts videos that have sexually explicit content, graphic violence, illicit behavior, or hate videos that target certain groups (Community Guidelines 2010). Because of YouTube’s restrictions, the complete diverse spectra of videos that exist in our society are not represented. YouTube offers great potential for the “haves” of society, individuals that have the means to participate, meet the guidelines for video content, can express their message in the context of YouTube, and appeal to the specific audience of YouTube. But for the “have-nots”, YouTube is of no use and they fall further behind and become culturally divided from the “haves”. Until YouTube is fully democratized, its users are too suffering from not being completely cultured. They fall into a trap believing their entire society is represented when the exact opposite is true. If this continues, the “haves” and “have-nots” of society will continue to distance themselves from one another and YouTube will be the source of the problem.

Bibliography
Burgess, J. and Green, J. 2009. YouTube : online video and participatory culture. Cambridge ; Malden, MA: Polity., pp. 109-125.


Keen, A. 2007. The cult of the amateur : how today’s internet is killing our culture, 1st ed. Doubleday/Currency, Ch. 1., pp. 1-9.

YouTube (2010). YouTube Community Guidelines. .

The Internet, in particular Youtube, has allowed the participatory culture that defines today’s society to reach their potential in terms of ability to communicate and distribute information to the eagerly awaiting masses. Our “participatory culture is one which not only lowers the barriers to participation but also creates social incentives to produce and share what one produces with others” (Jenkins 116). Youtube has enabled this increased participation but the implications of such are not always beneficial. Youtube has both positives and negatives for society, but in the end, the positives outweigh the negatives.
Andrew Keen strongly believes that Youtube and the Internet in general has been over run with amateurs and has devastatingly impacted out society. In his mind, blogs, Wikipedia, and Youtube are prime examples of how amateurs (monkeys he relates them to) have created “an endless digital forest of mediocrity” (Keen 3) on the Internet. Focussing on Youtube, because most of the videos are made by amateur film makers, and this is true, he believes they are stupid and pointless videos that contribute nothing to out society and have diminished our culture.
While Keen is correct that many videos on Youtube are foolish videos, he is wrong is assuming that that is Youtube’s only function. Even if that was Youtube’s only purpose, they still bring laughter to millions of people and serve as a break from an individual’s everyday life to laugh at something stupid; in that, Youtube still has an important role in our society. Before examining Youtube’s more significant role’s it is important to take note of what the majority of Youtube does consist of, and that is simple, humorous videos. The audience of Youtube is clear in what they like and because of this, there is little diversity among Youtube videos (Jenkins 124). Because of this, to get across an important message via Youtube it must be done in a way that captures the attention of it’s primary audience.
Youtube is an excellent media source to spread important messages to the public for it is free, easy to use, and will distribute and circulate your video effectively. Youtube is “generative” in that it encourages it’s users to “tinker” with it and “adapt it to their own needs” (Jenkins 116). An excellent example of adapting to Youtube’s audience to promote a message is that of the Harry Potter Alliance teaming up with Wal-Mart Watch to spread awareness of Wal-Mart’s unethical employment practices. They used “campy, over the top [...] spoof” (Jenkins 115) videos to capture attention which then directed the audience to the Wal-Mart Watch website where they could find more detailed information.
A negative side of Youtube that exists is that a video can be viewed out of context and misinterpreted. This has occurred with fan video makers and one example is when a “Kirk/Spock vid, set to Nine Inch Nail’s ‘Closer’, leaked onto Youtube” (Jenkins 117) and the video as a whole was viewed as a comedy when the producers true intention was for the characters interaction to be disturbing because of its “vivid depiction of sexual violence” (Jenkins 117).
In the end, when comparing to positives and negatives of Youtube, the positives win out. The silly, comedic videos are enjoyed by millions of people and have little negative repercussions on society and the potential for organizations and individuals to spread a message that may change the world exemplifies the beneficial qualities of Youtube. Both of these functions outweigh the negative of videos being viewed out of context. In the future, I hope that more organizations will take advantage of Youtube’s potentials and more proactive videos will be circulating.

The Internet is a powerful tool that has the potential to doing things that have never done before. One of these potentials that cyberspace enthusiasts still believe can be fulfilled is to “revolutionize democracy” (Dahlberg 70). The enthusiasts believe that the Internet is a public sphere where individuals can gather to discuss and debate all issues and in the end inform and learn from one another to create a more democratic society. Unfortunately, this utopian illusion is just that, an illusion and will never materialize, for several flaws embedded in the Internet get in the way.
Lincoln Dahlberg and Zizi Papacharissi share similar view regarding the fact that the Internet does not currently and most likely will not in the future, create a more democratic society. Lying at the foundation of the flaws that inhibit the Internet from fulfilling its potential is that there is not equal participation on the Internet from all peoples of society. Without equal participation how can the Internet facilitate discussion that includes and covers all aspects of a society; there can never be true democratic discourse.
One reason that both Dahlberg and Papacharissi state as a reason for unequal participation is that access to computers and the Internet is unequal among society. The vast majority of the world does not have Internet access. As a result, the discussion that does occur online is dominated by only a select few from society. These few tend to be the “white, middle-class, men” (Dahlberg 77). Even worse, the people who can benefit the most from becoming politically active and voicing their needs, are the ones who do not have access to the Internet. But what should also be kept in mind is that just because someone has Internet access does not “guarantee increased political activity or enlightened political discourse” (Papacharissi 382). That is to say that even if Internet access became universal, as many proponents of the Internet’s potential to increase democracy, it does not mean that everyone will use it to become more politically active and thus, democracy will not be revolutionized.
Another major barrier to allowing the Internet spread democracy is that the Internet has been consumed by commercialism. The commercial control and censorship it enforces on sites that could potentially foster democratic discourse, eliminate the that possibility. In an Internet that is dominated by private, commercial enterprises, the types of communication and information that will be spread is of the nature that is marketable and most profitable (Dahlberg (75). Because of this, the diverse information and communicate that would be created from democratic input is not present and thus, the Internet cannot create a more democratic society. As long as the Internet is run by advertisement and commercialism, which I foresee happening, it will never live up to the potential Net enthusiasts believe in.
In addition to the barriers of allowing democratic discourse to take place on the Internet with involvement from all peoples of society and with discussion about any and all topics, I feel as though, even as a 19 year old, white, male, there are no prominent discussion forums to discuss politics for me to engage in. Or at least, the forums are not being presented to me. If political discourse on the Internet is not even trying to capture the attention of a consistent and involved user, then how will it ever reach the have-nots. The Internet will never be able to create a more democratic society to the extent that some believe it to already have done.

The Twitter site was an interesting one that changed from the beginning to now. When I first started the assignment, I felt that tweeting all the minute, uninteresting details of my everyday actions was pointless and that if I don’t even care about what I’m writing, why would anyone else. As I became more comfortable with tweeting and tweeted more often, it became more natural and I started to enjoy the whole Twitter experience to some degree. Also, it was fun to respond to other people’s tweets; my personal favorite was responding to Carl talking about his ab workout.
Although I became more comfortable to began to enjoy tweeting there are still some aspects about Twitter that I view as pointless. Firstly, looking back on my tweets, I now realize that I was mainly just talking to myself. I did receive a couple responses but the vast majority of my tweets were not responded to and probably not even read. Also, I am not yet completely accustomed to how the itouch and Twitter on an itouch works, so I feel that I was unable to fully engage with the assignment. Because of this barrier, I did not respond to the people I was following as much as I could have if I knew how to access their pages efficiently.
I know see that, in essence, what I have been doing over the past couple days is keeping a daily log of my actions. It was somewhat exciting and gave me pleasure to write about myself; I guess I’m just a little narcissistic, the truth hurts.
To give Twitter some credit, for I gave it none before this assignment, I can see how it would be fun and exciting to tweet on a regular basis with all different kinds of people, may they be friends, celebrities, and maybe even strangers, maybe.

The paper by Jones and Soltren, Facebook: Threats to Privacy, explores how private individual’s Facebook profiles are and the degree to which users value being private or public. It was found that the majority of users present a lot of private information for the public to easily view; they are opening themselves to surveilled by the world. Michel Foucault’s exert from Discipline and Punishment: The Birth of the Prison explores the idea of and panoptic society and what benefits could be acquired from the implementation of such power and surveillance of the authority. If Facebook users, and thus by assumption, other internet users are disclosing personal information willingly, do we even need a panoptic society?
The idea of a panoptic society is one in which the people can be object to surveillance constantly but can never know whether or not they are actually be watched. In the cases of having this power over children in school, they would always behave because they may be being watched at that moment and can be punished if not acting properly. The kids would not cheat and would be quite when told to be. In the case of workers, there would be no theft, disorder, or distractions (Foucault 303). Some effects of this society would be that the authority would have more surveillance into private sectors of individuals lives and the efficiency would increase. There are certainly positives and negatives of a panoptic society, but the thought is that, if no one has anything to hide, everyone is doing the right thing, then there should be no problems with the increased surveillance.
In comparing the idea of a panoptic society with how Facebook and its users, an interesting theme emerges. The study conducted by Jones and Soltren revealed that the majority of Facebook users are disclosing a significant amount of personal information. It was found that “users with lots of friends tend to be much more forthcoming with their personal information, particularly that which might be valuable to advertisers” (Jones and Soltren 16). The users with lots of friends are the individuals that use Facebook most frequently and are most familiar with Facebook. Thus, I would think that they would be more concealing about their information because they understand the privacy policies and how to set and control privacy settings. The fact is, they probably are familiar with the privacy settings for from the study 74% of users from a selected population are familiar with ‘My Privacy’ but choose not to set strict private setting; this is backed up by the fact that from the same population, only 9.7% of the individuals are concerned with Facebook privacy (Jones and Soltren 20).
The majority of users on Facebook are revealing personal information and allowing themselves to be subject to surveillance and so there it seems logical that there should be no need to increase surveillance by establishing a panoptic society. Although, the people of concern here are the minority, and it those individuals that need to be surveilled. If a panoptic society was put into place, then the concealing minority would either be exposed or they would be forced to act according to the law. Note that the concealing of personal information is not the at the foundation of why the minority needs to be surveilled. Of course, people conceal personal information to protect themselves from strangers. But it is all the other information in a Facebook profile, such as pictures, wall posts, and everything else on the page, that contains the incriminating material.
A panoptic society would create order and weed out the people who conceal information from the public online. This power by the authority and pervasive surveillance would not be welcomed by many and if it did occur, mainly through the Internet because it could easily be done, would deter people from the Internet. I feel that in the end, people who did not agree with the authority’s new approach and people who had material that could not be known to the authority would either change their ways or remove themselves from the Internet and technology in general.

In today’s society, where the Internet is an integral part of the youth’s lifestyle, they are utilizing it to express their selves. This self expression is mediated mainly by social networking sites that present risks with each opportunity it provides for the youth. As the youth continues to use the Internet more and more, there must be changes made to ensure that they are protected while using this advantageous yet dangerous medium.
The opportunities afforded to the youth are for development of “identity, intimacy, [and] sociability” (Livingstone 407) and the risks that come with these opportunities are risks “regarding privacy, misunderstanding, [and] abuse” (Livingstone 407). Focussing on identity, the youth expresses their identity either as display. The display of one’s identity can be seen through the profile pages on Myspace. Myspace allows its users to customize their profiles by designing and decorating their page with just about anything they want including personal information such as age, religion, residence, and what they look like (pictures). Some youth choose to elaborately decorate their profile, while others choose to keep it simple and plain. Each way is a choice that reflects the person who made the page. The expression of one’s self of social networking sites is beneficial to the youth because it allows them to find themselves and be proud of who they are at an early age; they are gaining independence.
The opportunity of self expression, though, comes along with a major risk. Displaying one’s identity can be dangerous if the youth do not clearly understand how much information to present and to whom it is presented. The youth claim to understand what information is appropriate to put online but are they just being naive? I believe that for the majority of youth, they are not being naive and do understand how much information to put up. Older generations sometimes become alarmed when they hear that the youth are putting up certain information online that they believe should not be there, but the Internet is a young tool and the people most comfortable and knowledgeable about it are the youth, generally speaking. In addition to knowing what information to place online, on social networking sites, the youth are also afforded the chance to customize their privacy and manage who can view their page and who can not. The combination of already knowing what information to post and managing privacy settings should allow the youth to be completely protected from any harm online.
The major problem that exists on social networking sites that endangers the youth is that the privacy of one’s profile is not being managed correctly because of confusing privacy settings. The language being used in the privacy settings is confusing to the youth and as a result, they are not protecting themselves. When a group of kids were asked “whether they would like to change anything about social networking, the operation of privacy settings [was among the] top priorities” (Livingstone 406). The privacy settings must be changed on social networking sites to protect the youth. If this is done, then the youth will be able to safely express themselves and the older generation will not have to be as concerned as they currently are with the well being of the youth.

Poster and McLelland present several intertwined and connected ideas concerning the Internet and ethnicity. In the McLelland article, he discusses the nature of Japanese cyberspace and what the Japanese define ethnicity as. The Japanese cyberspace, unlike the cyberspace that revolves around the languages of English, Spanish, and Chinese, is exclusive to Japanese speaking people, which is mainly only people who live in Japan. This form of the Internet does not offer the ability to connect people from all over the world as we are accustomed to thinking about the English Internet. Although, the Japanese cyberspace can be penetrated by foreigners, as seen by an American posting on a thread titled “Who do you (Japanese) hate more, Chinese or Koreans?” on the site 2-chanerru. The post by the American, though, was dismissed by the Japanese after getting a minimal response, and the Japanese dominated site returned to just that. Because the American was able to interact in the Japanese cyberspace, it proves that it is a “contact zone” but an extremely weak one at that because the American post had very little impact in the Japanese cyberspace.
Unaware of the Japanese cyberspace because it has not come about yet at the time Poster’s article was written, he believes that the Internet can connect people from all parts of the world, and this is seen through his involvement in CyberJew. CyberJew “enables all Jews, wherever they are on the planet, to connect with one another” (Virtual Ethnicity 205), but CyberJew is conducted on a non-Japanese cyberspace, so this makes sense. Poster belongs to CyberJew because he considers himself to be Jewish mainly because of the “micropractices” of his everyday life growing up. In this, he believes that religion and ethnicity, alike, are not determined by a rigid set of factors, such as the blood line in your family as the Japanese believe. The Japanese define one’s ethnicity strictly on their blood line and this is done so in an attempt to keep Japan unique and not hybridized with any other country; the Japanese do not allow anyone to be Korean Japanese, there is not even a word in the Japanese language that could be translated into Korean Japanese. Instead, those people are just Korean and it is very difficult for them to attain a Japanese citizenship. This dependence on blood contrasts Poster’s idea of ethnicity. His father was not a religious man, and it was because of his stepmother, a strongly religious Jew, that he practiced Judaism and now considers himself Jewish; the blood line had virtually nothing to do with his claiming of Judaism.

The factors that create the digital divide among adult Americans was examined in Internet Use Among American Adults and it was found that the two main factors are education and income. Data from 2000 and 2007 shows that there is a widening gap between people who use the Internet who are wealthy vs. poor and the same is true for educated vs. uneducated. Pippa Norris’ The Digital Divide also explores this phenomena as well as how digital technology divides the world and its impact on democracy. There is debate over whether the digital divide which separates post-industrial, modern countries from poorer countries that are unable to utilize the Internet and digital technologies, will increase or decrease with time. Proponents of an increase claim that digital technologies boost productivity and will allow the advanced countries to pull ahead even further. An opposing group believes that technological breakthroughs will help poor countries catch up; these breakthroughs are ones such as cheap cell phones, cheaper highly functioning computers, and Internet access that will enhance information access that can help solve many of these countries problems.
The effect of the digital divide is one that has certainly increased over the past decade between countries and within societies. But will this division expand or lessen as time progresses? Within societies, I believe it will continue to expand. The wealthy, educated people of the world will have the access to the Internet and other technologies and know how to use them effectively to connect with the world and better themselves. As they do this, and the poor, uneducated people continue living as they are currently, the divide between the two will increase. From the two readings, nowhere did it talk about ways to decrease this gap. I know there are programs to educated poor people so that they can rise above their current status but these methods, just as the methods to help poor countries rise up and equate themselves with advanced countries, will help but not enough. I believe this because, as these poor people and countries are slowly advancing, the wealthy people and countries of the world are advancing at a much faster pace, thus the gap will widen. The top tier section of society will have the ability to use new technologies that the bottom tier are unable to, and some of these new technologies will advance them even further. It is a process that is hard to break, I don’t see it happening soon.

The blogger “puts her whole life online”. Although she enjoys doing this, it is an invasion of privacy for others that she talks about. For example, her boyfriend who doesn’t want his whole life online.

Blogging opinions about people can be dangerous because they can read it know exactly what your thinking. You can hurt people’s feelings. This happened when Frankie called one of the doctors condescending.

I wonder how many people actually blog basically their whole lives?

Someone from Singapore offered to help Frankie because they read her blog. This proves how blogs can be helpful because it connects from all over the world; this is social capital.

“Easier to open up to people who are not looking at you”. People constantly make judgements based on appearance and this can sometimes be beneficial but most of the time is detrimental. This theme appears in the doctor who is good looking who is constantly judged and women are attracted to him.

Blogging is about an audience. I agree, to me it seems strange to blog about your life and the only reason to do it is to attract attention.

“I hate that you don’t have a blog, I hate that I don’t know what your thinking”. People are not supposed to know everything that everyone else is thinking. Thoughts are private and only public if someone wants them to be. Bloggers want thoughts to be public, their own as well as others. But the majority of the world, the none bloggers, keep at least some of their thoughts to themselves.

I chose not to de-friend any of my friends on Facebook because either I would de-friend someone who I like and would not want to make them think that I have changed my feelings towards them for some reason and also because if I de-friended someone who I barely know, the act of de-friending would not affect me nor would it the other person; the whole thing would be pointless. De-friending rarely happens on Facebook because if your relationship with someone went sour, you would most likely just stop communicating with them on Facebook and not need to de-friend them. De-friending on Facebook in not indicative of your relationship in the real world falling apart. I feel as though de-friending is childish because it doesn’t really mean anything. Although, if this is the case then why did I have difficulty de-friending someone. I think the answer may lie in the explaining or not explaining to the person why I did it. If I de-friended a close friend, I could easily tell them later that it was for a sociology class and then I would end up re-friending the person and the whole ordeal might have not have happened in the first place. Although, if I de-friended someone who I am acquainted with but not necessarily good friends with, then do I go out of the way to explain that the de-friending was for a sociology class and then have the awkward confrontation of re-friending them, or would I not tell them and just let the de-friending happen without any explanation. Both cases result in awkward situations that I did not feel like being a part of and thus, I did not de-friend anyone.