Watching You, Watching Us, Watching YouTube
There is an interesting dynamic happening with vbloggers; people blogging their thoughts and ideas via video: the more people tune-in to watch; the less the vblogger reveals;
As subscriber counts and page views steadily rise on vloggers’ personal YouTube channels, so too does the level of self-censorship. It makes sense: The more people who are reading (or in this case, watching) your diary, the less you want to spill your guts.
In his recently released book Watching YouTube, Michael Strangelove, an adjunct professor of communication at the University of Ottawa, says even when the vlogger is at home alone with his webcam, what he reveals can never be as raw as what he’d share in a written diary.
“When you turn on a camera in the privacy of your bedroom, you’re not alone, and that changes your performance immediately. Inescapably, you’re with the YouTube audience,” he says.
Yet, the vblogger still strives for truth – even has the become aware of how much they talk about and too how many…
What I found in researching Watching YouTube was that online diarists often feel that they are not being honest enough, not revealing enough, and thus they strive more to do so, yet know that they are never fully transparent.
In Watching YouTube I explore how various social uses of online video by amateurs construct reality in a fashion that is both similar to and different from television, home movies (film) and other media. No one medium (even the written word) can be said to provide a superior or more raw representation of reality. Nonetheless, there are aspects of amateur online video that are unique to itself.
Fittingly there are extracts from the book on – you guessed it – YouTube: Part one, two, three.
May 13th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Greetings,
Actually, in this instance the reporter created a trend where none exists. Nowhere in Watching YouTube: Extraordinary Videos by Ordinary People (University of Toronto Press) do I say or suggest that video blogger’s transparency tends to decrease over time. In fact, I present examples that suggest the opposite. I am not aware of any research that would support the reporter’s conclusion.
The reporter slightly misquoted me, and added that to a few interviews with video bloggers to reach her conclusion.
Indeed, the situation is quite possibly exactly the opposite (but the oppposite of the opposite will of course also occur — contradictions in human behaviour and trends abound).
As videographers participate in autobiographical vblogging they often develop a commitment to transparancy — to try and be more fully real to their viewers.
Here is the correction I wrote that appears along side the Globe and Mail’s online version of the article:
Dr. Strangelove