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:

Excellent article by Dakshana Bascarmurty, and probably the first in a major news source to explore the epistemology of online diary.

A minor correction:

“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.”

This is not quite right, as the difference between media types such as video diary and written diary cannot be defined as a better representation of reality — one more raw and real than the other. I make this in the book, but may have misspoke in the interview.

In Watching YouTube: Extraordinary Videos by Ordinary People (University of Toronto Press) 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, cinema, film-based home movies, 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.

Dr. Strangelove