Social media, YouTube, and mwesch
I came up with a “reading” assignment for my grad students that would give us a good basis for a discussion about user-generated video. You can see it here: The mwesch Assignment (feel free to copy it).
I posted a summary (with two additional video examples embedded) on Slideshare: mwesch Reloaded.
Last fall I heard Mike Wesch speak in New York at a really fascinating program about user-generated video (much more than only YouTube) — I wrote a summary with links to all the examples we were shown there.
What slammed me in the head last night, hours after our classroom discussion, was this: The newspaper and news industry discussions about what they call user-generated video miss the point. Seriously. All these news orgs fell all over themselves trying to hop on the online video bandwagon as fast as they could. Some of them thought UGC needed to be part of the mix, and some did not, but in either case, the rush to video had much to do with the explosion of YouTube.
The explosion of YouTube was only partly about video.
Only partly about video.
The other parts: community, sharing, communication, identity, self-expression.
Everybody in journalism needs to understand this. This is a huge piece that’s missing from the puzzle of how to save journalism.
You’ve hit it on the head, Mindy. The reason why user-generated content matters is less the content and more the activity about it. The traditional media tend to view user content as a product, whereas it should be looking at it as a process. Great course by the way.
October 2, 2008 at 1:50 pmMindy, you’re like some kind of magical superhero.
October 2, 2008 at 3:39 pmYou could easily change the world with your mind.
I think that is a huge piece that’s missing from the puzzle for the Internet in general. Reminds me of the rush to get company web sites when the web first started becoming popular with no clue about who might use your site or why.
October 2, 2008 at 8:33 pmYes! Yes! Yes! This needed saying, and rest assured: Most German newspapers are making the same mistakes: Trying to build half-assed so-called “communities” (which they can’t) and not understanding the social dynamics behind a successful online venue (since they have never committed time themselves to such a thing. Hey, they are reporters, they got shit to do, right?)
October 3, 2008 at 6:57 am[...] If that’s the case, I highly recommend this post by Mindy McAdams ‘Social Media, Youtube and Mwesch’. [...]
October 3, 2008 at 8:39 am[...] listen to what University of Florida journalism professor Mindy McAdams (the source of this assignment idea) had to say, in describing these very Wesch clips in relation to journalism today: The newspaper [...]
October 16, 2008 at 9:22 am[...] and various social aspects of YouTube as well as the appeal of really silly, stupid videos. I wrote a post about this earlier this month — the point being that community, sharing, communication, identity, and [...]
October 27, 2008 at 1:23 pm