“An anthropological introduction to YouTube” video of Library of Congress presentation
Jul 29th, 2008 by Prof Wesch
The video of the presentation I gave at the Library of Congress last month is finally ready. This was tons of fun to present. I decided to forgo the PowerPoint and instead worked with students to prepare over 40 minutes of video for the 55 minute presentation. This is the result:
In case you want to skip around, or just want an overview of what the talk is about, here is a timeline:
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
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)
Dear Professor Wesch, I appreciate the timeline info, as it will make it a lot easier for my students to use your video!
You may enjoy seeing the results of our work producing “timelined” (we call them “indexed”) videos, for example, the series of interviews that Mike Wallace produced in the 50s. Here’s a clip apropos the media of those days, http://tinyurl.com/59ybyv, in which Oscar Hammerstein comments on the “stranglehold on the dissemination of ideas” that, according to Ayn Rand, was being cause by the felt was the “leftist liberals.”
This is part of a large project involving the School of Information at the University of Texas, the software developer glifos.com, and the Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala (http://solstice.ischool.utexas.edu/tmwi/)
Thanks for posting this. It was moving, for me, to see YouTube through the lens of the rebirth of community.
Is there any chance you’ll be posting a high-res version? I’d like to borrow/remix the section with the Lessig quote for a presentation I’ll be giving to public school administrators about the value of social networking/software.
Thanks and keep up the amazing work.
Your contribution to our understanding of the new world we live in is undeniable.
If you knew the value of your words in the education community, you would be amazed.
Your teaching goes far beyond the classes you instruct at KSU, largely because of Youtube. Wow! Thats incredible.
Keep conducting, we will keep listening. And tell your students to keep imagining, their hard work is helping to define our understanding of popular culture.
Im a Social Studies teacher and for the first time in my life, Anthropology sounds interesting
kidding….sort of
mrplough07
Very nice. You are helping all of us get a better handle on “networked individualism” and the power (and challenges) of these new communities.
Would you be willing to post the text of your “Little Glass Dot” poem? I know I can listen enough times and write it down, but if you have it . . .
Hey! Just recently watched your video “An anthropological introduction to YouTube” and might I say your videos are very inspiring for me–as probably is with millions others. I hope you continue your work with your studies with those wonderful students of yours. I am a teen student myself and it is nice to see videos like this that open a whole new door of how we think about the internet. Nothing is never dull with the rapidly changing Web it seems and for my generation, it is now probably the building foundations of our lives.
OKay! enough of the “trying-to-sound-wise” comment. The REASON I wanted to comment was to hope you would respond with a copy of your poem you wrote about the guy who spotted the earth in a image in space. I would like to spread and share more info about what he has said, learn more about him, and share your inspiring poem in my own AIM profile. So if you could please send me a copy via email, that would be great. (just check my email through this comment’s email inputed)
Thank You. For all you and your crew have done.
Bryan Quan - Age 16
Hi Mike, fantastic - been gagging to see this.
best dc
have you seen this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbx3qnKKC0Q
just posted full text for “the Little Glass Dot” http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=180
Video pulled from YouTube.
An indexed version would indeed have been quite useful.
It seems to be back up. Either a fluke or some other issue.
Hey great video! I’ve enjoyed watching your classes via the internetz
Keep it up.
Hi Mike,
Great video.
You might check out this video as well. It might add onto your presentation.
http://www.methemedia.com/
Incredibly thoughtful and inspiring.
Congratulations.
A wonderful capstone for the students, as well as yourself. You’ve demonstrated your full mastery of this medium. I hope your students realize what they’ve been a part of.
I wrote a bit more about your presentation: http://weblog.terrellrussell.com/2008/08/a-ze-frank-interview-and-michael-weschs-youtube-anthropology/
Thanks a lot for this incredible video (like the other ones) with EPIC 2014 they are probably my best boost of energy when I am down trying to build what could be another great way to share and make cultural disocvery.
Just finished a piece about the history of SNS, where I wrote that SNS are the possible path to re-enchant the post modern world the GEN Y can’t stand living in. Your video is a great proof of it. Thanks I will re-use it.
You might like this puzzle representation I did 2 years ago while starting working on virtual Identity.
http://ieditthereforeiam.leafar.eu/virtual-identity/
Sincerely,
Leafar
Oh One last thing. I wanted to see the full video with Regina Specktor music but didn’t find it … could you release the source.
Thanks again.
Us by blimvisible:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yxHKgQyGx0
I would love to watch this on my iPod — any chance of a downloadable version? Thanks!
Perhaps it would be an interesting meme for people to express how we each feel web2 changes wesch’s facets of culture?
Here are some. Perhaps people’s thoughts about these questions would be interesting in a wiki. Morphable and changeable.
copyright - a model which has a single point of value and a distributed cost or restriction is non viable in a mesh society. a photo of a class of students has a relationship to the students, their families, the educational organisation, the photographer, the website, the hosting company, the tubes, the grandmother at the other end and her technologies and isp.
None of them should have rights which exclude the rights of the others. Least of all the means of production.
That ultrasounds are copyright owned by the means of production is a stark example. DNA ownership is another nonsense and symptom of disconnection from what these things mean in ways which are not about aggregating potential economic returns.
authorship - we are making great reefs of culture and expression
each contributing what substance we can bring. this isnt ownership, its more like engagement. Attribution has been useful, it still works in contexts where one person is primarily speaking/creating. We ignore their infinite context. But in collaborative spaces even the attribution of direct participants can become noise in a collaborative signal. We need ways to value which are not about fences and exclusion.
identity We are both more faceted and more united.
We are still making spaces for different aspects of ourselves part of our efforts to generate good signal to noise ratio by slicing our voice into responses which are tailored for context. And yet our context is collapsing. We dress and function for work, we relax and celebrate at home, but we are transparent. We are glass.
ethics
by individuals: i am responsible for myself, for my impact on others, i do useful things. it is perhaps harder to anticipate the impact on others in an infinite information space. trolling can be life threatening.
by systems: http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/EC/Collecter08.html
how our data is collected, aggregated, used, whether we can shoose to discard it, or whether the systems can discard our data as a matter of course. many questions around sustainability and locus of control.
aesthetics: frank humanity, candour and reciprocity. finding beauty in the beings that we are and the flow of feeling or ideas which we generate.
love for the morphing potentiality of open practice. a finished thing is
one kind of goal, a living meme or genre or form is another kind of valuable. in some ways youtube is less mediated than face to face negotiation because there is no civil inattention required.
rhetorics: like authorship, debate is plural, many voices, a state of mind which is changing. negotiation, diversity. understanding that right of way is too much to ask in a multicultural open society and that we just need to
negotiate for chocies which are fit for purpose in contexts where we are engaged. eg npov in wikipedia. who is authoritative about the extinction of an indigenous language on wikipedia. the authoritative reference on the article or the language speaker viewing the site?
governance: we can organise to fund or implement change or action which we want to effect. Doctorow has predicted soe of this in his fiction. Also Sayke who wrote some interesting work on liquid democracy which is no longer visible online. Choices again emerging regarding governance by ownership (including ‘intellectual property’ ideas of ownership) and our responsibilities as custodians of ecology and society.
privacy: learning to be gentle or considerate of the implications of sharing. learning to be clear and certain about the kinds of rights and permissions regarding information which should be guaranteed by a service or tool.
remembering to allow space for people who are accessible in a world of potentially infinite correspondence.
commerce: understanding that the things we express are participating in a mesh of value. in which kinds of ways does commerce sponsor our rights or means to express valuable words, and what does it mean for inclusion and diversity of language and expression if there is correlation between valuable expression and the means to speak.
love: for me this feels like agape: selfless love of one person for another without sexual implications (especially love that is spiritual in nature)
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
I am in love with the hive mind, with its potentiality, with the idea of ourselves as one of the networks or synapses in play across the surface of the planet. We need to be able to include a full and useful means of understanding our ecology in this system, but I an hopeful that even the connectedness of people will help us to understand what we mean to each other and to our ecological context. This is a passion but it functions at a different focal length. It is not about skin.
family: biological, conceptual, people who are related by counterpoint, or related by their parallel journeys. there is a sense of trust or relatedness in
journeying alongside someone through the wikispaces, delicious, and mail lists and finding congruence in what we seek and value.
I also feel like there is a familyness about the idea of freedom in the floss sense. Because the concept is about making in a way which ensures that the culture or technology is open for future generations. There is a flavour of person who finds that value proposition imperative.
It is something close to Carse’s infinite game.
If I close my eyes it looks like a kind of sphere of influence, but it is more like a sphere of generosity or value, which means that the person has a broad and timeless understanding of themselves as a part of the context and opportunity space for others. This is human family.
Finally got round to digesting this one - fantastic discourse which has sparked loads of thoughts round the little head… thanks for sharing as ever and pushing the boundaries of the debate
Having just watched this entire video, I’ve gained a new appreciation for anthropology and also the media age in which I live in. I have been an observer of YouTube, but certainly participant in the consumer driven changes to the marketing machine.
thanks for reconceptualizing old theories and pushing us ahead. I look forward to future videos.
How I wish my university anthropology prof had been as cool as you - he went on incessantly about pigmies in Papua New Guinea and traumatized us with 1950s footage on excision rituals. Needless to say, I didn’t go back for a second round.
In an age of such strong individualism, this form of cultural anthropology — and this video — should be a required part of every university student’s course load. We’d all emerge from our contemplations with a much better understanding of ourselves, one other, and our motivations. And who knows where that level of understanding might lead?
I won’t feel so silly, from now on, when I tear up for the hundreth time watching the Free Hugs video.
Cheers!
Michelle
Absolutely loved this video - nice to have the joys (and sometimes pains) of YouTube explored in such a thoughtful and engaging manner.
I wonder if you have encountered the work of Alex Juhasz re: teaching on YouTube? The pair of you seem to have encountered similar experiences but come to differing conclusions.
http://aljean.wordpress.com/
A dialogue between the pair of you may be very interesting for those of us who are still looking to learn more about online communities and their use of video.
Cheers,
Paul
Thank you Prof Wesch (and students!) for this excellent and incredibly moving video. I’m about to start doctoral research on the experience of gender in religious community online and seeing work like this is a real inspiration.
One thing that I wondered hearing Lawrence Lessig’s words on the way in which people experience a sense of criminality in many of their activties online, and also seeing the many Guy Fawkes masks that made their way into your video was whether you or any of your students have done any work on the Chans? They’re pretty far removed from the work I’m doing myself but seem to me to be such a fascinating example of web culture, and a real powerhouse of activity and movement online. I’d be fascinated to know if anyone has begun looking at them through an anthropological lens.
Funny you should mention that. We are thinking about launching a study on that starting in Spring 2009.
It seems like the right time for it, doesn’t it? I’ll be very interested to see how you get on.
Thanks for the incredibly insightful piece onto the people that make the technology what it is. Is your focus on digital in the ethnography branch is a niche or is it more widely spread?
Would love to know more about your classes. Is there e-learning available?
I found you via Coturnix’s blog. YouTube is a major reason why teh Innert00bz is full of WIN!!!1!!1111!!!!eleventyhunderdeleven!!!!!!111!!
w0000000aaaaahhhhhh. I couldn’t believe the statistics. None of that “400 TV channels on cable and still nothing worth watching :-\ because we’ve seen it all before” crap. Between YouTube and half a gazillion other video-hosting sites, if you can’t find something to watch you must be dead (or at least comatose).
Also, I LOLd when I read the title. It reminded me of the lay public’s tendency to define anthropology as having to do with naked people running around in the jungle or some such.
Great talk! I think I’ll hang around and check out a few more.
p.s. I think a piece like this about how the Innert00bz became “a whole bunch of pipes, all full of kittens” (Cute Overload and its spinoffs, LOLcats/icanhascheezbuger, kitten wars, etc.) would be way cool too!
kthxbai =^..^=
A simply brilliant watch. My thanks for making and posting this.
You’re a rock star!
Thank for posting the video. I really enjoyed it and learned new aspects of YouTube.
Hello, here is a post (and some comments) from a french blogger : http://www.palpitt.fr/blog/index.php?post/2008/08/12/Une-approche-anthropologique-de-Youtube, thanks for this video
Prof. Wesch,
Thank you so much for putting this presentation online. It is a tremendous history lesson as well as exposing the significances of modern digital culture.
You are a clear example of what a modern educator should aspire to. You facilitate learning, instead of dolling it out to prostrate minds.
Know that your work (as well as those in your courses) is valued and appreciated.
BTW - You make me proud to be a Kansas State Alumni!
This is absolutely fantastic. Do you have any copies of what was presented in slide form?
Thanks for putting this together. Really great stuff. Again.
@ Paul, Almost the entire thing was done with 15 videos, which I started and stopped as I was talking (so there are no slides)
Truly fantastic. I actually got misty at a couple of points near the end. I am trying to engage the staff at the High School I work at to look at your videos and really examine the work we’ve done on our website, and even go so far as to try and create a Digital Ethnography club for students to study and ponder how technology affects their lives and the school.
I love this stuff.
This was really wonderful. As someone interested in ethnography, this project embodies what ethnography, and anthropology, is all about. My 15 year old daughter loved this as well, and it has become an inspiration to her to find her own ways of considering ethnography research. Well done!
Querus
Dear Mr. Professor Wesch! I’m a college student from Hungary writing my degree work of youtube. I was trying to find your presentation in text form on the internet, but there is no link, what I could find. I was wondering if you could help me. Thx.
Oh! I have forgotten to mention, which presentation I need in text form exactly. This one:
““An anthropological introduction to YouTube” video of Library of Congress presentation” Thanks again. Frank
Well I suppose it’s better late to the party than never at all! I saw this video linked from an article on a video game website to do with UK law firms suing pirates, so quite an exquisite link there.
But from anthropology being just another big done by people in ‘academia’ and being something far above the interest of this ‘uneducated’ offshore worker, (who hated YouTube before this) you have now turned it into something I want to experience more and educate myself on.
Many thanks for a great presentation, you brought a smile to my face, a new outlook on the world and rewrote the pre-conceived ideas in my head.
I liked the video, very informative. Can I know the different software used to make this video?
Hi
I’ve just started preparing teaching on a Digital Media Cultures module this year. Coming from a theoretical background I don’t have the technological or new media expertise that I sometimes think I could do with. I have decided I need to start at the very least a blog and maybe even start a vlog (maybe with a mask though
I’ve found your work and particularly the presentation given at the Library of Congress moving and inspiring.
Thanks for the inspiration.
I’ve subscribed today so will be back for more and hope to soon start my own adventure into the land of teaching theory through new media platforms as well as teaching new media platforms via theory.
Hi,
i loved the video, and I wonder if there has ever been made any effort in translating this piece into other languages? I know that in my country, a lot of business people of older generations have not enough skill in english language to fully understand such a presentation. Maybe a bit of subtitling would help getting the message to even more people, so if you have any written transcripts and support someone translating it, let me know.
andreas
Hello, i’m really excited that i found this video after hours and hours of browsing, because the vlogs on youtube will be the theme for my graduation work. I really enjoyed watching it and founding some of my ideas… and founding they are not really -my- ideas
And you know the funniest part of it? When i talked with my anthropology teacher this morning she even told me “well why don’t you make a vlog yourself?” 
But anyway! i just wanted to say you’ve done some really amazing videos and keep ‘em coming!)))
Greetings from Bulgaria,
Sevda Kozareva
As an older, non-traditional student, it would be interesting to know if the ages of the folks that leave comments fit the same profile…what was it 24%…as mentioned in your work? Sometimes I feel out of place but, yet, I get so revved up watching your presentations!
Am working on a Masters degree in Instructional Design and Technology and contemplating what my final work will be; thesis, project, or portfolio…have 3 more semesters at least…have been leaning towards a Thesis as it would be a good segue into a Doctoral program…
Prof. Wesch, Your work is phenomenal. Some people really are cut out to be professors. Thanks for the inspiration! ~Gabriel
Fascinating presentation. (and thanks for showing that when you abandon using powerpoint, you can create much more compelling presentations.
Is it possible to download this presentation. I don’t always have access to youTube and I want to be able re-view this presentation on a trans-atlantic flight I have this thursday.
Keep up the excellent work. From your “The web is using us” video, I’ve been following the links and discovering truly great stuff.
If you haven’t already connected with Andy McAfee from Harvard Business School, you should. He’s focusing on how all of this web 2.0 stuff translates to the enterprise, which is what my challenge is as well.
Bart
I just watched this over morning coffee, thanks to the link on Bryan Alexander’s blog. Thank you for a wonderful presentation, chock-full of teaching ideas and examples. I was interested in your presentation, interested in the material, but also very interested in how you presented it, and the structure of the courses that support it.
I came by to comment because the next tab on my morning browse gave me this:
http://www.gocomics.com/features/142/feature_items/396881
… and the coincidence seemed too perfect not to share.
What a great video. I learnt so much in just 55 minutes. I wish my lectures back in uni were as interesting as yours. Actually after watching the video I want to learn Anthropological especially surrounding the development of community online and how it can be used by brands to create a deeper connection with there consumers. For instance the Apple brand.
Keep up the videos. They are great and I will keep sharing them with people. I might even go on and make my first vlog and talk about your inspiration leading to the awkward production.
If it is possible could you start posting your normal lectures online?
Take care and all the best.
Dale
Founder jobfeedr.com
nice, really nice!
I am going to try to emulate your model. I’m not as fearless as you; not sure I could ever recite my own poetry at the Library of Congress, or dance/lipsync to TI (love that song) and then broadcast it. I find the public space of blogging and YouTubing somewhat terrifying. I like to see my audience. But just as I ask my students to inhabit spaces of discomfort, challenging their taken-for-granted assumptions about the world, I guess it’s my turn to do the same. This semester a new adventure in active learning begins. Wish me luck.
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