Youtube: A Platform for Power

Segal, N. (2013). The Power of Youtube. Retrieved from http://blog.koyotesoft.com/the-power-of-youtube/

Many believe that there is power in authenticity. Indeed, this is one of the core elements of Mike Robbin’s TedTalk. However, virtual networking has given us the tools to hand-craft separate online personas and assign social power to anybody we collectively decide to. 

The YouTube community is a broad one that ranges from calculus tutorials to video blogs (known as vlogs) and anything in between. Today, a handful of uploaders have found online success and gained a mass following of viewers who regularly watch their videos and follow their daily lives. I want to know, is YouTube a virtual network that connects us to one another, or is it a media network we exploit for our own empowerment?

There is no doubt that those with mass followings are considered to be YouTube’s most powerful. While Robbins suggests in his TedTalk that we best connect with others when we are able to be vulnerable and authentic (Robbins, 2009), Turkle argues, using the Panopticon as an analogy, that we often implement some kind of self-surveillance when we feel as though we are being watched (Turkle, 1995, p.247); those with a strong online following are likely to feel compelled to behave according to social norms, even if they conflict with their own identities and lifestyles. Lange refers to this as “privately public” behaviour (Lange, 2007); vloggers share a wide range of self information, while withholding that which may be damaging to their reputation, and as Allen notes, power and identity are interlinked (Allen, 2003, p.361).

So, are YouTube’s successful vloggers powerful because they are ‘authentic’, or because they use their power in some other kind of way?  I’ll be looking at the YouTube community closely to find out how vloggers create their identity in place and capture, utilise and maintain social power.

References:

Allen, J. (2003). Lost Geographies of Power. Melbourne, Victoria: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Kuttainen, V. (2015). BA1002 Our Space: Networks, Narratives, and the Making of Place – Lecture 2, Power. [Powerpoint slides]. Retrieved from https://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au/webapps/blackboard/execute/modulepage/view?course_id=_76323_1&cmp_tab_id=_43922746_1&mode=view

Lange, P.G. (2007). Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 361-380

Robbins, M. [Tedx Youth]. (2013, May 21). The Power of Authenticity: Mike Robbins at TEDxGreenbrookSchool. [Video file].  Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4iFAAUscVA

Turkle, S. (2009). Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster