Last week, Internet giant Google agreed to buy the video-sharing Web site YouTube.com for $1.65 billion. The 18-month-old Web site, which makes little profit and whose content is determined by anybody with some basic computer software, now sees over 100 million hits per day from around the world.
To discuss the phenomenon of YouTube and the effect of open forums for artistic media on our society, as well as our perception of artistic creativity, the Daily caught up with Julie Dobrow, Director of the Tufts Communications and Media Studies Program.
Question: What is the phenomenon of YouTube? Here we have a Web site where anybody can post a short video and millions of people are viewing them.
Julie Dobrow: I think it's really a very interesting phenomenon. It's about what I would call "digitized democracy": It's an opportunity for professional filmmakers and videographers, but more importantly, it's an opportunity for anybody to have this interesting outlet for the broadcasting of artistic expression.
If you look at the range of stuff that you can find on YouTube, a ton of it really is of very good, professional quality. However, some of it is very amateurish. Some of it is highfalutin art films; some of it is as mundane as, "Look at my cat fall down the toilet!" There's all kinds of different stuff that you can find on YouTube.
I think that the attention and the number of hits [the Web site has] gotten, is something that Google took notice of. It's not surprising that Google wants to buy YouTube and that they'd pay so much money for it. Google is banking on YouTube as a very profitable endeavor.
Q: Were people looking for this kind of open forum for artistic endeavors before the Internet existed?
JD: In a culture like ours, in which visual communication is increasingly important, there really can't be too many outlets for seeing different sorts of things. We also like things that we've seen before, and we like things that feel familiar. There's a certain kind of comfort, and there's also a kind of sharing that goes on. [People say], "Oh I saw this really cool thing on YouTube," and it becomes a form of sharing culture, a kind of initiation or sharing of a part of yourself.
You want somebody else to see what you see. What's interesting and different to me about [the YouTube phenomenon] is that you could take something that's actually quite private and broadcast it so millions of people could see it.
Q: You use the word "sharing" for open forum. When does it cross the line from sharing into a bandwagon mentality or cultural homogeneity?
JD: There is the common problem that with the Internet: We still don't have a lot of great ways to evaluate content, and it's so easy for people to post stuff with an enormous amount of content. We have to learn ways of becoming more careful and critical consumers.
With something like television or film, or advertising or print media, there are specific systems in place for vetting a lot of the content. What is developing with the Internet are projects that help people to evaluate Web site content, but these are in their infancy. And yet there's so much more content out there that we need to learn how to evaluate more.
With regard to the issue of homogeneity: There's an old adage in Hollywood that says, "Nothing sells like success," which is why we see so many television programs, so many ads ... that look like other things that we've seen. We like having content that we are familiar with, from which we can hearken back to an earlier time when we believed that everything was happier than it is now. We like to think about a pre-9/11 world, when we thought that we were safer.
Another thing about YouTube is that it's drawing from a much larger base than you would normally see. There are people around the world who are posting things, so YouTube has the potential of exposing us to content that isn't homogeneous. Whether or not that will happen remains to be seen.
Q: YouTube is an open forum that operates in the medium of film, which is ostensibly artistic and creative. Is there any downside to open exhibitions of artistic media? Or should we not be critical of people's individual and independent statements and efforts?
JD: I think we should be critical of this. This is just another reason why media literacy is so important. We're living in a world where there are endless possibilities, endless ways for getting exposed to media. Are there implicit and explicit messages that we can take from any media content about larger social issues like race or class or gender?
It's terribly important to develop those critical faculties, if for no other reason then because there is just so much out there, and media becomes an increasingly important way for information and culture to be conveyed.
