Case Study 1: YouTube Ch 5

Analysis: Chapter 5 from the book YouTube by Jean Burgess and Joshua Green

YouTube Ch 5 YouTube's Cultural Politics

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Diversity and Cultural Citizenship

YouTube has always been a commercial enterprise as a platform designed to enable cultural participation by ordinary people. YouTube is an open and inclusive platform in which allows anyone to creatively connect and communicate with its users and audiences. It has also aided the progression of digital media culture in a broad range of its participants. From a cultural perspective, the access to participation in using YouTube is an important element in the means to political participation and citizenship. It also drives the relationship between individual and global ideas of cultural communities, along with shared experiences and differences.

YouTube is a site that originates, evaluates, discusses, and curates ideas of cultural citizenship. It mediates and connects activities and practices of cultural citizenship in a sense that it is a space for engagement and community formation. Ultimately, YouTube is an enabler and amplifier of cosmopolitan cultural citizenship. The space allows individuals to represent their perspectives and identities, engage with others, and encounter cultural difference.

Globalisation and Localisation

Whether YouTube participates in globalization and localization is still a persisting question. Localization brings easier compliance with national legal and regulatory frameworks. YouTube is unavailable in China and banned in Turkey. Additionally, countries with local content traditions and advanced digital cultures have rejected the use of YouTube along with other US social media platforms. This reduces YouTube’s impact on multiple countries around the world. However, YouTube essentially assists in the globalization of producers, distributors, and consumers.

From a local perspective, YouTube is used in different formats and presented to users in different languages in different countries where it is available. With the using of YouTube in a global perspective arises debates on how the platform should appear. Moreover, the globalization of YouTube sparks political debates in some countries. Previously mentioned, YouTube was banned from Turkey due to political debates. Overall, the governance of platforms, in this case YouTube, is increasingly challenging across all digital and social platforms.

YouTube as Cultural Archive

Upon the familiarity with the majority of YouTube audiences using the platform to consume music they are already familiar with, a new question arises: is YouTube being used as more or a cultural archive? YouTube’s archive of cultural ephemera such as vintage advertisements, documentary films, and clips from children’s shows have been made available by amateur collectors and creators of television. They digitalize video tapes and edit them for upload on YouTube. This practice adds to the qualification that YouTube is building as a cultural archive.

This issue is far from being resolved. However, the question whether YouTube should be held responsible for preserving, archiving, and curating this archive withstands. This question hold significance in the sense of cultural heritage. Furthermore, it supplements more specific practices of cultural archiving, in which have become increasingly engaged in user engagement and crowdsourcing activities.