June 29, 2009

YouTube as a Medium for Community

Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, gave a talk at the Library of Congress about YouTube and its role in the participatory culture. He explains how one of his videos, Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us, became very popular in just a few days and how this popularity took him by surprise. The video was remixed, translated, it was the starting point for a conversation at a global level.

To find how people communicate on YouTube, Professor Wesch and his students studied YouTube and the way anonymity, interactivity, authenticity and popularity define it as a new medium for community.


{ via YouTube Biz Blog }

2 comments:

  1. i stumbled across this after someone mentioned google was developing an operating system. i was quickly distracted and drawn into an intense philosophical tangent about how connective the internet makes people. some of the most valuable people in my life, are people i connect with and haven't met... and i am criticized by most people in "real life" for that. Very great feature

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