Making and Sharing YouTube Videos, History, and YouTube Economics and Advertising

Less than 2 years after YouTube was created, the search engine giant Google bought the start-up for 1.65 billion dollars. According to the Associated Press, the announcement “came just a few hours after YouTube unveiled three separate agreements with media companies to counter the threat of copyright infringement lawsuits” (Liedtke, 2006). Years later, YouTube's legal concerns continue, as Google has recently lost a court battle, forcing it to remove content from YouTube. Google is appealing the decision to a higher court (Landau & Marquez, 2014). The recent lawsuit is just one example of YouTube's significant and global influence and its deep and abiding connection with larger social concerns and institutions, such as freedom of expression, the power of democracy, and computer-mediated communication. YouTube's history, corporate ownership and influence, cultural recognition as a place that can promote hate speech and bullying tactics, and the continued legal challenges that threaten individual rights to fair use and freedom of expression all define YouTube's power as part of the new evolution of the Internet and Web 2.0. Tempering YouTube's democratic potential and cultural importance is YouTube LLC's predetermined economic goal to increase revenue streams through advertising and content creation. To those ends, YouTube provides detailed instructions on how to make videos and how to advertise. A detailed case-study of one video's path through the creation and advertising process on YouTube illustrates how user-generated videos become YouTube videos.

YouTube's Importance and How the Internet Shapes the YouTube Experience

YouTube is more than cute pet videos and aspiring musicians. Fully understanding YouTube and how it influences, reproduces, and changes our culture begins with accepting the role of media technologies inside and outside of YouTube. The history of the Internet and its core technologies provides one foundational proposition in this book. Two other propositions, regarding YouTube's reliance on Internet-based technology and historically relevant communication theories, specifically Cultural Studies and Medium Theory, are discussed, as well. In consideration of important historical and theoretical perspectives, YouTube is transformed in our minds from a simple user-generated content repository to a cultural change agent. The tools and technology associated with the Internet, richly integrated and manifest in YouTube, allow us to change the world around us. Understanding the function and design of Internet-specific technology and how we experience social networking can contextualize current trends and influences in our daily online experience. Essential to our understanding and ultimately our power over the technology that we create (in this case, YouTube) is informed through understanding the technologies presented as part of our shared history. Finally, grasping the technological concepts and terminology reveals a deeper perspective on our cultural and participatory experience with the Internet and YouTube far beyond cute pet videos.

YouTube and Google

Google's purchase of YouTube created a partnership between the world's largest search engine and the fastest-growing user-generated content (UGC) site. Over the past 10 years this combination has produced a great number of domestic and international news stories. This chapter highlights the salient issues regarding the business partnership between YouTube and Google, focuses on how an economic and capitalistic-driven mandate dominates YouTube's virtual space in the form of advertisements, and explains how YouTube's social networking activity is designed to encourage user activity in support of Google's revenue-generating business model. Some predictable but unintended legal consequences of YouTube's meteoric growth and the overall growth of video creation and sharing on the Internet present copyright challenges for YouTube in its role as a third-party distributor for content. YouTube copyright cases involving Viacom and YouTubers themselves are notable. Technology, in the form of YouTube's Content ID software, has consistently provided an umbrella of protection for YouTube in its claim that the company makes efforts to enforce U.S. and international copyright laws. YouTubers continue to upload copyright-protected work and utilize the legal doctrine of Fair Use, thwarting efforts by large movie studios, artists, and television networks to enforce their copyright privileges. YouTube and Google continue to forge partnerships with traditional major media outlets to produce original content, repurpose and distribute older content, and extend mass media's reach.

The Filmed Wars

In the late 1960's, unfamiliar people, exotic places and violent battles—all part of the Vietnam War—appeared on television screens around the world, in living color. Film cameras and sound equipment captured shocking images and stories audiences had never seen before. The Vietnam War, presented by popular networks like CBS and told through the words and expert storytelling abilities of respected broadcasters like Walter Cronkite, “magically” appeared in our living rooms. This top down delivery method (i.e., “one to many” mass broadcasting rather than the UGC bottom up distribution model common in YouTube's digital sphere) made the television viewing experience live rather than pre-recorded in terms of the news cast itself. The audience experienced the Vietnam War narrative as if they were actually there but also in a passive way. However, today, YouTube offers the Vietnam War story as an on-demand active experience and the original network broadcasts have been repurposed, rebroadcast, altered, and appended with YouTubers' textual comments and mashed-up videos about the Vietnam War and current worldwide military conflicts. YouTube provides a bridge between the past, present and future, using words, images and sounds that teach us a great deal about the Vietnam, Persian Gulf, and Iraq wars. Important conclusions can be drawn about how these events connect and relate. YouTubers have a lot to say about the Vietnam War and their comments on broadcast television news shows and programming from the past illuminate that time and the future. Broadcast television news video production technology, specifically the reduction in equipment size, accessibility and production equipment cost has facilitated new ways of telling war stories. Today, the concept of the embedded news reporter is common in war reporting and, in fact, very desirable in terms of driving viewers to broadcast network programming as embedded reporting is an effective and engaging story-telling technique. The embedded reporter has evolved and empowered the average YouTuber to take an active role in producing breaking news content and uploading that content live to YouTube and other websites.

YouTube Politics

“With the shift of television to digital format in the next decade, it will become virtually interchangeable with the internet. Hence, those firms that come to dominate digital television may well be poised to play a major role in the age of the internet” (McChesney, 1999, p. 167). The previous quote, written long before YouTube existed, is somewhat prescient. YouTube is a website of influence and power for traditional media conglomerates. Even early in scholarly literature about mass media, Todd Gitlin suggested that human experience, as it relates to mass media, has become a commodity. According to Gitlin (1980), the only way to solve that problem is to “demolish the media and to create a movement as an alternative source of values, network of relations and standard of authenticity” (p. 255). His politically charged language frames well what it means to be political in YouTube. That said, being “political” in YouTube is different for everyone and all of the definitions resonate with traditional ideas of political activity in terms of demonstrations and the exercise of democratic and free speech. For many, the 2008 presidential campaign is a watershed moment for YouTube, as it is credited with helping candidates gain supporters and increase political activism, specifically among younger voters. While this technologically deterministic view is limited, YouTube provides an inexpensive and socioculturally relevant platform for political messages from politicians and the people. International politics, in particular the Arab Spring and the spate of horrific murders committed in the name of fundamentalist political and religious fervor by Isis and others, have found a worldwide audience in YouTube who comment, post, and repost videos and generally provide thoughtful criticism about what's happening. This is an obvious contradiction of what many in the popular press see as YouTube's raison d'être. YouTube is also a place for local political activity, although not as prevalent as national politics nor used as efficiently. In terms of political activity, user-generated videos uploaded by “citizen journalists” have been credited for motivating change in countries around the world, no doubt related to YouTube's worldwide audience.

The New Jersey YouTube Experience Survey

YouTube has changed dramatically since 2005, both in look and platform functionality. There have also been many culturally and internationally relevant events that probably would have not received as much attention from the popular press without YouTube's video sharing and distribution power. This chapter presents current and original research on YouTubers' attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs about YouTube, using the research plan and model designed for the Bronx YouTube pilot study in 2009 described in detail in Chapter 7. New research in the areas of surveillance and learning in YouTube offers insight into how research participants (university students in New Jersey) use YouTube and what they think regarding its potential to help them learn. This chapter also offers observations on the research outcomes and potential future research possibilities in a growing body of scholarly work regarding online activity and the relationship between new technologies and people. As in the 2009 Bronx study, this chapter argues that, while YouTubers are aware of YouTube and Google surveillance strategies and are not necessarily in control of those strategies, they are unconcerned about surveillance unless money or email information might be unprotected. More work along the lines of focus groups and randomized experimental studies will provide better evidence from which generalized conclusions can be drawn regarding people and technology in the YouTube digital sphere. The New Jersey YouTube Experience research study focused on how YouTuber's learn and acquire all types of knowledge. The descriptive results indicate that, as suggested in the earlier Bronx study, YouTubers' obtain information from a variety of sources including professional academics, lay people, corporate interests and random commenters. YouTubers' learn at every level and people of all types are participating in transmitting knowledge. Generally, this happens with little immediate financial benefit although for-profit driven education and learning in YouTube is becoming more prevalent. While the knowledge creation in YouTube isn't all accurate, or even relevant, and sometimes comes with strong bias and personal agendas, this is also true in traditional education although many of us would like to think otherwise.

YouTube

According to the London Telegraph (Barrett, 2013), Online London has one CCTV camera for every 11 people in Britain. The average number is most likely around five million cameras in total. MSNBC (Timm, 2013) reported in August 2013 that the number of security cameras in the New York City public sector was as many as 6,000. In Chicago in May 2013 (Cox, 2013), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reported a “frightening number” of surveillance cameras, with as many as 22,000 citywide, posing what Adam Schwartz of the ACLU called a menace to privacy. The twin concepts of surveillance and power are expressed in unique ways in YouTube. Philosophers such as Michel Foucault have written extensively about these ideas regarding cultural institutions such as prisons and democratic governments. In many ways, YouTube is organized and exhibits similar expressions of who has power and who is watching us. However, YouTube is different; the Internet and YouTube have made citizen surveillance fast, inexpensive, and easy. According to many companies and corporations, including YouTube's parent company Google, consumers are tracked—in fact, each mouse click is tracked—to provide better services and more products and to prepackage demographic and socioeconomic information, which corporations and companies can sell to other for-profit entities. Google and YouTube make this easy with Adsense and Adwords technologies and, like television and film, the YouTube worldwide audience is ripe for commodification, often with users' full knowledge and consent. YouTube advertising strategies are widely used; reportedly, a full-size YouTube banner advertisement can cost $200,000 or more. YouTube provides a place to make money, although not a living wage for most YouTubers, and this possibility and cultural narrative is widely disseminated throughout the Googleverse and YouTube. Similar to broadcast television audiences, YouTube audiences are measured using A. C. Nielsen tools. This company creates and controls the measurement technology used to determine YouTube's monetary value so advertising costs can be institutionalized. YouTube audiences and how they think, behave, and function in YouTube is an important part of YouTube discourse. The scholarly discourse surrounding Audience Studies shines an additional light into what it's like to be a YouTuber.

Learning in YouTube

In academic and business institutions around the world, the transfer of knowledge and the awarding of academic degrees or certificates have been educational and economic practices for decades. However, in recent years, these postsecondary degrees and certificates are available more cheaply, in greater numbers, and requiring less time to complete. Full online academic degree programs, massive open online courses (MOOCS), and other forms of distance learning are quickly becoming the choice for people who cannot afford a traditional brick-and-mortar education. These learners have identified that they have no need for a full load of coursework, learn better visually and through repetition using video, or simply want to learn more about the world. Using technologies such as YouTube, Skype, Facetime, and LMS (learning management systems), learners have more choices than ever before. Online learning and degrees are often provided using YouTube as a delivery platform for knowledge and for corporate marketing messages. Pedagogy and learning in nontraditional lecture formats has long been studied; however, current technologies bring into sharp relief the question of who has the authority to present the knowledge and award degrees and which cultures agree to assign financial value to the marketplace. Today, learners have more power in the choice of the types of knowledge they need and the ways in which they are taught. Worldwide, traditional academic institutions have discovered the financial benefits of online training and education. On the instructional side, less real estate is required for classrooms, labor is less expensive as new labor models and contracts can be written, effective marketing opportunities are being developed to drive traffic to higher education institutions, and now a much larger international and national audience of learners can be accessed. What knowledge is the most valuable and important, who is the true author of that knowledge, and how much knowledge is enough to be considered an expert? Colleges and universities have made strong efforts to stake a claim as the ultimate knowledge authority but they struggle with the tension of providing relevant educational content quickly and affordably amid political pressures to train students for future jobs. The general public has fairly easy access to expert knowledge simply by powering up a mobile device, loading the YouTube app, and selecting the Education Channel on YouTube. With an Internet connection, anyone can Google a word or question and, most of the time, link to a relevant video where, with a little attention to detail, accurate and relevant information can be found.

Original Research Examining YouTube Users' (YouTubers') Attitudes, Beliefs, and Behaviors

YouTube offers a wealth of combined, creative, and surprisingly expert-vetted knowledge on a variety of topics across ethnicities and culture. Even though it appears that YouTube focuses on kittens, pandas, and exploding bottles of soda, it actually provides knowledge across a wide spectrum, from how to play piano or iron a shirt to learning about hegemony from Noam Chomsky on YouTube (TheEthanwashere, 2012). Partly through its design (ease of use), purpose, and worldwide ubiquity, YouTube has also become a depository for enormous amounts of what many people think is useless dreck. This chapter and the next chapter provide a historical snapshot of two important YouTube research studies. The Bronx Pilot Study, described in detail here, provided the foundation and research design for a more robust and complex study several years later: the New Jersey YouTube Experience Study. To date, most scholarly research about YouTube has tended to focus on YouTube content (i.e., types of videos created and/or shared), the marketing and commercial aspects of YouTube, specific groups in YouTube and their political activities, and of course the unusual videos that “go viral” and end up on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon or Tosh 2.0. Each research study reported in this book employs a Uses and Gratifications (UG) framework grounded in Cultural Studies (CS). Each study analyzed YouTubers' attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors in relation to YouTube. As a reminder, a “YouTuber” is anyone who uses YouTube to post a comment, watch videos, or upload or download videos. While not experimental, the Bronx Study provides insight and direction for further Social Sciences-based YouTube research.

Medium Theory, Cultural Studies, and Other Ways of Seeing YouTube

This chapter presents several theoretical perspectives through which YouTube, social networks (platforms), and social media can be examined. One particularly influential form of analysis, especially useful in describing how various forms of power and surveillance work in television and other forms of media, is Cultural Studies. Cultural Studies makes assumptions about how media and power coexist, as well as how specific power structures strengthen traditional ideas of who should have power and how power is used by individuals, groups, and organizations. Cultural Studies also examines the differences between cultural, or constructed knowledge, and knowledge that might be assumed to be more objective in nature. Medium Theory is connected with Cultural Studies but is concerned specifically with cultural and human activity in and around television, film, and the Internet. This chapter introduces several medium theorists, such as McLuhan, Postman, Meyrowitz, and Carey, as well as cultural studies scholars such as Stuart Hall. A brief analysis of Post-modernism and Uses and Gratifications frames the YouTube discussion and introduces the theoretical approach to the original YouTube studies in this book. There are many types of SNSs and social media worthy of examination, but YouTube is the most culturally influential SNS, due in large part to its technological connection with Google. YouTube is an enormous, free, easily searchable database available to the whole of humanity with a simple mouse click.