Creative Consumer Culture
In the digital age, the consumption of culture has transitioned from a one-way flow of communication, to a vast and intricate web of creation of content between producers and consumers. We have moved passed the idea of the passive and mindless entity, and onto something bigger. With Social Media, consumption has become highly interactive. Not only are we consuming the content that is being created, but we are re-creating, appropriating, and inventing our own cultural content.
Jenkins states that there is an "alarming concentration of the ownership of mainstream commercial media, with a small handful of multinational media conglomerates dominating all sectors of the entertainment industry." (Jenkins, H.) This is problematic, as concentrated ownership works to homogenize our culture, taking away from individualism and creativity.
YouTube & Cultural Production
Lucas Hilderbrand describes Youtube as "revolutionary" for it's increased access to content over restricted access laws (Hilderbrand, L.). In relation to the topic I have been exploring over the course of this semester, I wanted to provide an example on News and the way in which YouTube can act as a weapon against the concentration of culture. This video displays a parody of CBC news and the issues regarding Canadians, as depicted by a group of people in Barbados. This video is a great example of how anyone is able to produce their own content and distribute it via YouTube, regardless of factors such as geographical location or finances. Video can be found here
.
This example of how popular culture is appropriated shows the way in which people are "fighting for the right to participate more fully in their culture, to control the flow of media in their lives and to talk back to mass market content." (Jenkins, H.)
Youtube & Copyright Laws
As new media, Youtube accelerates the relationship between producer-consumers, as millions of video content is constantly being produced by all sorts of people all over the world. However, if we examine the type of content that is being produced, much of it is content that has already been created. Again, if we return to the example of the CBC news parody, it is taking content that has already been created and redistributing it in a new form. The video is taking familiar symbols such as the CBC News acronym, and re-appropriating them.
Parodies, remixes, and recreations of original cultural products are all highly popular on Youtube. While copy right laws have increasingly become more and more severe, it is interesting to see that this content is circulated among the masses, regardless of copyright infringement. Thus, new media such as Youtube work to promote a "cultural commons" one that is freely accessible by the public.
My prediction is that with forms of new media, our culture will not only continue to become more and more diverse as individuals are able to produce their own content, but we will continue to fight for control over free access to cultural markets even in the face of increasingly powerful copyright laws.
Hilderbrand, L. (2007). Youtube: Where Cultural Memory and Copyright Converge. Film Quarterly. Vol 61, No. 1, 48-57.
Jenkins, H. (2004) The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence. International Journal of Cultural Studies. March 2004, 7: 33-43
I like how you based your argument around what the internet was to what it has now become. With a vastly changing system, you need to keep laws and rules up to date as well. I also really like how you predicted how the future will hold even more diverse forms of media and that there will be a constant struggle about how to govern them. YouTube is the prime example of how people can freely post remixes of originals and call them their creation. This is expanding our culture and it will continue to.
ReplyDelete