Revisiting Creative Consumer Culture: Youtube & New Media Forms

In my original post, "Creative Consumer Culture: Youtube & New Media Forms" I had expressed my thoughts on the way that new media forms such as YouTube will continue to allow individual expression and creation of content through all sorts of digital communication modes.

Since there are so many channels which allow for high levels of distribution of this media content, there is a greater variety in the content that is online. Individuals are able to pick and choose the content that they want to watch, and that content may not necessarily be produced by corporate means, or with capital revenue in mind -thus contributing to a more democratic cultural mosaic.

That being said however, there will still always be a hierarchy of content that creates a gap between the content creators based on things like the amount of likes or views something might have. Returning to the example of Youtube, a video of a pre-established music artist will have more views than one by a music artist who isn't pre established. These videos that have higher views will gain even further attention via the websites home page which displays the "popular" videos. Sites such as Youtube may even support paid-promotional videos. Thus, promotion and distribution of media content comes down to capital, creating the gap between content creators who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing, and those that do not have the financial means to follow suit.

However, there are plenty of examples of Youtube videos that have been created by average citizens, which gain high popularity among the masses. Such examples include Rebecca Black's "Friday" or even the Brock Harlem Shake video (Now with over half a million views!). Thus these sites can still provide a space for the creation and recreation of content in order to contribute to a more democratic cultural commons.