viz. - youtube

Hurricane Irene, Internet Argument, and Punishment

Marjorie Foley — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 04:44:06 +0000

As the Northeast prepared for Hurricane Irene last week, southerners who had weathered dozens of hurricanes sent both insults and helpful advice to their less-experienced neighbors in the north. The internet was abuzz with people wondering why New Yorkers were incapable of understanding what to do in a hurricane, and snarky retorts concerning Texans' inability to manage mild ice storms abounded. On reddit.com, the Australian redditor Xsophos posted this infographic comparing Irene and Hurricane Katrina with Tropical Cyclone Yasi, which hit Queensland, Australia this year.

Image credit: ABC News

Some American redditors promptly took offense, thinking that the post was intended as an insult to Americans' preparedness or fright, even though Xsophos offered no commentary about Australian superiority or the danger involved in any of these storms. One user sarcastically calls Australians "lucky" and another thread devolves into Australians insulting American sexuality and Americans making snide remarks about Australian censorship, as well as comparisons of flora and fauna.

The accuracy of the data is called into question on this thread, but it is most fascinating (and perhaps unsurprisingly stereotypical of internet culture) that an image comparing windspeeds generated more arguments about Americans' repressed sexuality and the ugliness of possums than it did arguments about media representation of natural disasters. Users' devolution into insults rather than discussion of the facts about these storms, or even the purpose of Xsophos' post, highlights the contradictory relationship between user anonymity and personal insult on the web--users fling insults at assumed Australians who may or may not be Australians at all. And the same goes for stereotyping New Yorkers and Texans: Though this time we know who they are and where they live, the distance creates an assumed anonymity in which it's okay to laugh at someone facing a natural disaster.

As Irene hit the U.S., one young YouTube user, Christian Flaherty, embraced the "haters" who comment on his videos by creating this interactive video in which those same haters can send natural disasters his way in order to punish him for the quality of his videos.

By pressing various buttons, users can send tornadoes, earthquakes, and blizzards in Christian's general direction (he creates a video for each in which he acts out the disaster), rather than merely commenting that he is "gay" or a "faggot" as some users have. Christian's response to those insults is remarkably apt and reminiscent of some ultra-conservative reactions to Katrina--for instance, Pat Robertson arguing that God sent the 2005 hurricane as punishment for legalized abortion. By interacting with Christian's video, we can play God. Instead of calling him names, users can send him a fictional chance at death.

Following Irene, some politicians again said that God sent the hurricane to punish Americans, except this time it wasn't to punish abortionists or homosexuals. At a rally in Florida, Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann argued that God is punishing us for the size of the federal government's budget. Maybe there will be a YouTube video?

YouTube & Fair Use (Part II)

snelson — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 03:29:37 +0000

Image Credit: Scott Nelson, Creative Commons, Attribute, Share-Alike

Last week, I addressed only the first stages in a YouTube copyright dispute. Should a copyright holder wish to issue a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice, the process is a bit more involved. This past year, the company introduced the YouTube Copyright School, a kind of “traffic school” for copyright violations. If a user receives a copyright violation notice, she is forced to watch a five-minute cartoon about copyright and complete ten questions regarding the content. As I mentioned above, on the third such copyright notice, the user is banned from uploading to YouTube for life. YouTube commissioned the creators of The Happy Tree Friends to craft the video tutorial, and so far, the video has received over half a million views, with around 1600 likes and five times as many dislikes. While the video certainly informs users of their rights and responsibilities under copyright, it uses visual rhetoric to present copyright law as frightening and complicated. Such a characterization contributes to the chilling effect on using copyrighted content to create YouTube videos.

The choice of the Happy Tree Friends is an interesting one. The cute woodland animals are not without controversy, as they have been attacked by parents’ groups for their depictions of violence. What’s more interesting for the purposes of this post, though, is that the Happy Tree Friends themselves couldn’t exist without Fair Use protections, yet they star in a cartoon that gives short shrift to users’ fair use rights. Compare the characters Lumpy and Splendid with another famous moose and flying squirrel.

Image Credit: Steve Eighinger & the Happy Tree Friends Wiki

The similarities are intentional, and I’m sure the creators of Happy Tree Friends would claim parody protections under Fair Use. Their cartoons, after all, are a cross between Rocky & Bullwinkle and The Itchy & Scratchy Show from The Simpsons. In their normal cartoons, the Happy Tree Friends dismember each other and fall victim to many industrial accidents. They’ve cleaned up their act a bit for the YouTube Copyright School, though.

The YouTube Copyright School video centers around Russell, a pirate sea otter who can’t seem to avoid violating copyright law. He captures video in a theater with his smartphone, films a live performance, and even attempts a mashup using his own puppetry set to copyrighted music. Only when he creates his own song for his final video does he avoid the narrator’s ire, and when he creates original content, he has “the right to post [the video] to YouTube."

The video addresses three situations where Russell has violated copyright, and gives only one scenario where he would avoid getting strikes against him: “by singing an original song” and “creating [his] own content”

While this is one scenario when copyright law would not be violated, the video fails to account for other forms content creation that would fall under Fair Use, and specifically places mashups in the “violates copyright” category, though that debate is far from over.

YouTube does address Fair Use in the context of mashups, but the visual and aural rhetoric is designed to mystify users and dissuade them from using copyrighted material. From cute scenarios acted out by the characters, we get a quick 23-second treatment of Fair Use, and this treatment is far from fair.

Fair Use literally forces its way onto the screen and crushes the main character. The narrator then reads through some legalese explaining fair use at a speed normally reserved for the end of commercials, where the fine print exculpates a company for any injuries sustained from the product. The speed at which it’s read coupled with its violent entry and intimidating wall of text paint Fair Use in a scary light, something reserved for lawyers and judges and not the laypeople of YouTube. This visual message is clear: Fair Use is dangerous and unintelligible, so you shouldn’t concern yourself with it anyway.

YouTube’s Copyright School chooses to make the rights of copyright holders seem simple, while portraying the rights of users, mashup artists, remixers, and home video enthusiasts as abstract and complex. In its defense, YouTube began offering a Creative Commons licensing option for uploaded videos, so it is stepping in the right direction to allow users to share their creations (though, at the time of this posting, there is no option to disallow commercial use of uploaded creative commons videos). YouTube’s reasoning behind their rhetoric is somewhat understandable, as Google is a company attempting to protect themselves against further litigation from copyright holders like Viacom and Fox. However, YouTube is a site that built itself on user-generated content, and as such, it owes its users a fair representation of current copyright law. YouTube’s Copyright School presents a skewed version of copyright, one which tips the balance in favor of owners over culture and public domain. Such portrayals can have a chilling effect on participatory media, where Fair Use is exercised less and less because people are frightened by possible ramifications.

YouTube & Fair Use

snelson — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 21:07:38 +0000

Recently, one of my YouTube videos was automatically removed for "copyright violations." I decided to take a closer look into YouTube's policies and found they may be dissuading users from exercising their Fair Use rights.

In partnership with Megan Varelmann and Vincent Robert-Nicoud, I created a video illustrating a few of Lev Manovich’s concepts from The Language of New Media. The scene YouTube found questionable was an illustration of the Language of Selection through a clip of the

IKEA scene from Fight Club:

Our use of this clip was in my mind well within Fair Use, so I filed a dispute. The video was restored within a week, but it got me thinking about some of the silencing effects from YouTube’s automated system and their approach to “educating” consumer-producers (or “prosumers,” to use Alvin Toffler’s term). The visual rhetoric of both the interface for filing a dispute and the cartoon copyright violators are forced to watch subtly argue for copyright as mainly for owners’ rights, rather than a balance between owners’ and users’ rights.

First, though, a bit of clarification on YouTube’s policies. In 2007, Viacom, Inc. brought a $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube for mass copyright infringement. Viacom argued that YouTube knowingly allowed users to upload copyrighted content, and Viacom wanted its share of the multibillion-dollar pie that is YouTube. In 2010, Google (the owner of YouTube) won the case, but only because the judge ruled YouTube is protected underneath the “safe harbor” provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In these provisions, online service providers are protected “from liability for information posted or transmitted by subscribers if they quickly remove or disable access to material identified in a copyright holder's complaint." Thus arose YouTube’s fairly recent measures to remove offending content.

YouTube created their Content Verification Program, where copyright holders could submit material to a database that YouTube uses to automatically screen uploaded videos. A match from the database then means the copyright owner can block, track, or monetize the content. Blocking the content automatically removes the video. Tracking allows the owner to keep an eye on the offending video for future action. Finally, the most controversial option allows the owner to “monetize” the offending video by placing ads around it. All of these options happen automatically (and impressively, from a computing standpoint – see this TED talk for a brief explanation of the system). That is, there is no human intervention in these stages, and there have been numerous complaints about YouTube’s crawlers assuming an offense before the facts are reviewed, especially since three violations equals a blocked channel. Even Lady Gaga ran afoul of this automated system when her channel was temporarily suspended for posting videos of her own copyrighted music performances. Fear not, though, humans: we can still petition our machine overlords.

If a video is flagged, users then have the option to dispute the automatic takedown for one of three reasons: 1. the Content ID program made a mistake (the video contains no copyrighted material); 2. the user doesn’t need the owner’s permission to use the content (the portion used falls under Fair Use); or 3. the user has the owner’s permission to use the copyrighted content. When a user files a dispute, YouTube automatically restores the video, but the user has just made herself legally liable should the copyright owner choose to sue for infringement.

If you’re feeling a bit confused, you aren’t alone. The process can be somewhat daunting for a casual YouTube user, and this is only the first stage in copyright complaints. Further, the dispute form uses some interface choices that serve to silence the user’s input into the process. The takedown notices from YouTube are vague, giving only a short statement that in my case read “Your video, Visualizing Manovich's New Media, may have content that is owned or licensed by FOX. No action is required on your part; however, if you are interested in learning how this affects your video, please visit the Content ID Matches section of your account for more information.” Of course, no action was required on my part had I chosen to not dispute their claim.

But I did want to dispute their claim. The video in question was made for a class, and I stood to gain nothing financially from challenging their claim. However, I wanted to exercise my Fair Use rights and learn more about this process. When I visited the Content ID Matches section to dispute the takedown, I was informed by YouTube that the length of the copyrighted material may not matter. While this is technically correct, the length also may matter in Fair Use disputes. On many other pages about copyright on YouTube, the company takes a hands-off approach, stating they “can't give [me] advice on either of these topics [i.e., Fair Use and Fair Dealing], and if [I] do plan to use even a small portion of copyrighted material in [my] video [YouTube would] strongly advise [me] to take legal advice first." But here, YouTube makes a point to tell users that the length used may not matter, thus pre-empting a common conception about copyright that may actually hold true.

YouTube cautions against frivolous disputes, as such actions could make me legally liable in civil suits (and should the “10 Strikes Bill” circulating in the Senate pass, possible criminal penalties in the future). However, it’s a computer program that chose to flag my video without any context to the situation, and thus no consideration of Fair Use rights. The program works in the owners’ favor by acting first and asking questions later, presuming guilt instead of innocence. Say, for example, that Fox had wanted to monetize my video instead of blocking it. Would Fox still receive revenue from my video between the time it was flagged and the time I acted to dispute the claim?

Even beyond the advantage given to complainants by YouTube’s Content ID system, the notice gave too little information to mount a thorough counterclaim. All YouTube told me was that my video contained some material copyrighted by Fox. My video actually contained clips from four other films, and only by searching the Internet Movie Database did I learn Fight Club was the only one Fox owns. In the larger arena of mashups, parodies, and home videos, a single uploaded video could contain a lot of copyrighted material that falls under Fair Use. What parts did YouTube’s Content ID system match? Was it a clip from a film? The television program running in the background of my humorous cat video? A couple of bars from a song? To effectively argue a position, both parties need information, and the current YouTube system hands more information to the owners while limiting the information given to users.

The dispute process interface further reinforces this imbalance of information. If the user files a dispute based upon Fair Use, YouTube gives the option of one small text field to explain the use:

In my case, I explained how my video fared under each aspect of the four-part test, and the text went well beyond the field given. Thus, it was difficult to edit my text and added to my frustration with the entire process. If the copyright holder rejects the dispute, though, no explanation is needed whatsoever. The user only receives a notice that the claim is rejected.

While YouTube doesn’t deny users their Fair Use rights, as such a practice would be illegal, they certainly frame the debate in such a way to make exercising Fair Use difficult. YouTube’s Content ID system is designed to shield YouTube from liability in copyright cases, and it’s understandable that any company would want to do so. YouTube must sift through the twenty hours of video uploaded each minute. Mistakes in such a massive system are inevitable, and I’m amazed by YouTube’s programmers for even being able to address such a large dataset. However, even when “educating” the public about copyright, YouTube errs on the side of copyright for owners’ rights. Next week, I’ll address YouTube’s Copyright School, a kind of “traffic school” for those it deems “copyright violators.”

Lesson Plan - Teaching Poetry with Image Databases

ebfrye — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 11:00:19 +0000

Image credit: My video "reading" of Donald Revell's "Election Year"

Last semester I began to experiment with various programs, particularly iMovie, as I think about how I'd make digital technology part of a course that focuses on poetry. In a brief post, I included a model iMovie file, and speculated as to how such an exercise might be used. Today, as we wrap up National Poetry Month, I'm posting a lesson plan that articulates the possibilities for this exercise more directly.

Goals:

Interpretation of content, historical analysis, visual literacy, public performance, class editions, citation, fair use

Overview of Assignment:

Each week one or two students create a digital “reading” of a poem using images. Students use image databases, such as the Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs collection, to pair relevant images with a poem of their choosing. They then record themselves reading the poem and arrange the images in an order of their choosing using a program such as iMovie. On their assigned day, students present their “readings” to the class, and the class is asked to respond. Students are also required to submit a process essay with their pieces that explains the rationale for their poem and image selection and how they are using images to “interpret” the piece. The essay should include a bibliography. The videos will be posted to a class blog or a class YouTube account. The exercise can be used to supplement or reinvigorate the recitation/ public performance exercises that are traditionally part of poetry pedagogy. Posting the videos in a common digital space create a class archive or collection of work, which could lead to further discussions about selection criteria and canonization.

The assignment may be repeated more than once during the semester to suit various ends:

-contextualize the poem historically using images appropriate to the poem’s time period

-interpret the poem’s content (may involve historically relevant but unaffiliated images)

-supplement their own pieces (in a workshop if the instructor assigns any creative writing assignments) with digitally available images or images they produce themselves

The assignment could also be done with an excerpt from a prose piece instead of a poem.

Assignment Length:

Semester-long project with each student contributing 2 videos and 2 process essays (4-5 pages and bibliography)

Materials:

iMovie, YouTube, image databases (Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs collection, New York Public Library Digital Archives, Library of Congress’s American Memory, etc.), class blog (optional)

Preparation Guidance:

Students should be introduced to and spend some time browsing image databases during class. They should also receive instruction for how to use iMovie and have some time to practice. It will also be helpful for them to have a model video, and you will need to set up a class YouTube account as a way to post their videos online. You may then choose to link those videos to a class blog. The videos should work in tandem with class discussions. These may emphasize the interaction of written and visual texts, historicist reading methods, the role of performance, and the impact of digital technology on literary production and presentation.

TOMS' "One Day Without Shoes" - Awareness, Activism, Advertising?

ebfrye — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 02:45:18 +0000

"One Day Without Shoes 2011," TOMS via Youtube

Today TOMS shoes conducted its second annual One Day Without Shoes campaign in which anyone (wherever in the privileged world) was encouraged to go without sandals, boots, sneakers, etc. The intention behind the event is to "raise awareness" for what it's like for the millions in less developed countries who daily go without adequate protection for their feet and, as a result, are at risk for serious infections. At the risk of sounding like a cynical jerk, I'm going to raise some questions about how the campaign attracts an audience through compelling visual tools and ultimately how it benefits those for whom it claims to be raising awareness.

From what I've observed by looking at the TOMS website and performing minimal internet searching, the campaign appears to be quite popular with high school and college kids, many of whom, it can be assumed, already wear TOMS shoes. Like other activist branding campaigns, this one predictably makes use of respectable celebrities. A screenshot from the video above shows that Demi Moore was into taking off her shoes:

Screenshot, "One Day Without Shoes 2011," TOMS via Youtube

So was Kristen Bell:

Screenshot, "One Day Without Shoes 2011," TOMS via Youtube

In addition, the campaign maintains a viable internet presence by encouraging its participants to post videos and photos. Students have been tweeting about the response they've received from administrators and passerby. Curiously, the Twitter feed resembles a composition notebook, perhaps emphasizing that it's acceptable to be distracted from class for such a good cause.

Screenshot, "One Day Without Shoes 2011," TOMS website

Similarly, the information that the site provides about its purposes are limited but they use a visual rhetoric that recalls the educational system but emphasizes that this is an alternative to the usual schooling. Also on the website, above some photographs of children playing without shoes (happily, which is odd given TOMS' message), is this blackboard-style equation:

Screenshot, "One Day Without Shoes 2011," TOMS website

Is this an education in activism? If so, it's also an education in consumerism. Before the big day, would-be participants were edged toward and rewarded for their participation by such videos as this one that feature fashion bloggers, editors of mainstream magazines, and doe-eyed, hipster dream-girls who give advice on "how to get your toes ready" for the big day. See screenshot and accompanying video below:

Screenshot, "Get Your Toes Ready," TOMS via YouTube

"Get Your Toes Ready," TOMS via YouTube

The video demonstrates the pull of the campaign on other corporations and media entities. In addition to the fashion elite, videos and images of employees at AOL, Google, and Microsoft can be found on the TOMS website. Yet, obviously, the brand that benefits most is TOMS. Now, I certainly don't begrudge anyone a pair of shoes, and, full disclosure, I've owned and worn bare a pair of TOMS myself. But I am struck by how by becoming compelled to buy more TOMS shoes, the "students" are also able to participate in an event that expands the experience of a brand beyond what they usually encounter. TOMS has one-upped the Gap's RED campaign by creating an extended moment of bonding with one's peer group.

Screenshot, "One Day Without Shoes 2011," TOMS website

Because the rhetoric of the campaign provides little information for what its participants should do after they become and make others "aware," I'm inclined to say that participants are not encouraged toward a specific kind of activism but a more definitive aesthetic. Alternative education, attractive celebrities, the relief of comfortable, canvas sneakers after a long walk. This is California dreaming at its best...

Reboot: Teaching You Tube by Emily Bloom

noelradley — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 15:09:44 +0000

Youtube is (as self-reflexive as my video book)via MediaPraxisme

H/T Justin Hodgson

Last month, MIT press published Alexandra's Juhasz newest scholarship in what they are terming a video-book format. Vectors Journal has hosted the online work, which collates together a set of videos by Juhasz and her students. The videos work within, as they reflect upon, Youtube. Last year, viz. writer Emily Bloom featured Juhasz's journey into the pedagogy of Youtube. Bloom helps to crystallize Juhasz's arguments about mediocre video, Youtube's popularity versus its radical potential, and the practical difficulties of teaching in the medium. Bloom's original post is rebooted after the break.

Start of "Teaching You Tube" by Emily Bloom:

Image Credit: You Tube

H/T: Noel Radley

In the Fall of 2007 at Pitzer College, Professor Alexandra Juhasz embarked on an adventurous pedagogical experiment in teaching new media through new media. Her course, which focused on You Tube, attempted to provoke critical thinking in her students about You Tube through class assignments in which students composed vlogs and wrote commentary on others’ videos. As she has documented in a series of academic inquiries in the International Journal of Learning and Media, her blog and on You Tube itself, Juhasz concluded that You Tube’s rhetoric of democratization and viewer-empowerment belies the essentially corporate nature of the medium and the mediocrity of its output. Juhasz’s discussions of You Tube and pedagogy also show the challenges for instructors who may find the public spheres of new media to be uncomfortable, exhausting and resistant spaces for pedagogical work.

In her article in the International Journal of Learning and Media, Juhasz writes, “by reifying the distinctions between the amateur and the professional, the personal and the social, in both form and content, YouTube currently maintains (not democratizes) operating distinctions about who
seriously owns culture.” Against proponents of You Tube who argue that it offers the radical potential for punk style DIY interventions into mainstream culture, Juhasz stresses the corporate structure and emphasis on popularity in the website’s search functions as mitigating against radical experimentation or critique.

Image Credit: You Tube

Juhasz is also refreshingly honest about how difficult the class was to teach because You Tube is not designed for academic learning or critical inquiry. In her final You Tube video presentation for the class, it is clear that she is physically and mentally exhausted from the semester. Right now, I’m winding up my own new media assignment in which I asked students to create podcasts. While this is only a fraction of the investment Juhasz made in teaching new media, my three-week unit gave me a glimpse into some of the tensions, frustrations and pedagogical self-questioning that she discusses.

Image Credit: You Tube

Although there are many benefits to teaching new media such as the contemporaneity of the subject, its import for rhetoric, and the empowerment it gives students to comment on their own cultural environment, there are also many difficulties that Juhasz details in her writing. Students may be less familiar with the media and technologies than we assume, they may encounter the topics with less intellectual rigor and the corporate structures of these new media may inhibit the work academics are trained to perform. That said I still believe that sites like You Tube are important subjects of inquiry and tools for teaching public writing but I think it is also useful to consider the challenges and limitations of using sites such as You Tube as pedagogical tools. I am looking forward to continuing to learn innovative ways to incorporate new media into the classroom and would love to hear more from my colleagues about how they have experienced and mastered these challenges.

Original comment by Jim Brown (below):

Thanks for posting this, Emily. I thought I'd share a couple other YouTube assignments.

Students in my "Anthologics" class just started a YouTube assignment this week:

http://eng3010fall09.pbworks.com/YouTube+and+Detroit+-+The+State+of+the+...

Students will be using Prezi to put together a kind of "anthological map" of a YouTube conversation. I'm asking students to analyze the videos for rhetorical strategies, but more importantly I'm asking them to look carefully at all of the metadata on a given YouTube page (comments, tags, categories, related videos, etc.)

I'd agree that teaching about (or on) YouTube raises some interesting questions. I'm not so much worried about its corporate nature (I'm not sure what website/internet service/web 2.0 technology is not "corporate"), but I do think it takes some extra effort to get students to understand that their project is "research." I've asked them to do some real digging about who has posted videos by examining a YouTube poster's previous posts (and thus their ethos), and I've also asked them to look at the "conversation" in the comments section. (The scare quotes are there because, as I'm sure we all know, YouTube "conversations" are not typically the most useful dialogues: "OMG! You suck!")

Also, Bill Wolff at Rowan University has been doing vlogs and oral histories on YouTube for a while:

http://williamwolff.org/courses/wrt-fall-2009/wrt-assignments-f09/assign...

War Games - Isao Hashimoto

Michael Widner — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 13:30:00 +0000

"1945-1998" by Isao Hashimoto

Originally created in 2003 by the Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto, "1945-1998" maps all 2053 nuclear explosions during that period.

A Wired article from the time quotes Hashimoto as saying he wanted to show "the fear and folly of nuclear weapons." The increasing pace of tests culminates in a global frenzy of explosions. Each nation's tests have a different color and sound associated with them. The effect is oddly beautiful and reminiscent of an early video game. Even the counters for each nation look like scores.

Hashimoto states that he chose lights and sounds to provide "equal messaging to all viewers without language barrier," yet the clear association with video games also invokes a chilling disconnect between form and content. While appreciating the abstract beauty of the map, we also consider the horror of mass destruction displayed in such a seemingly trivial form. It reminds me of another cautionary work in the war-as-video-game genre:

When Humor Hurts - Domestic Violence PSAs (part one)

Cate Blouke — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 03:13:36 +0000

Image credit: The OPCC via YouTube

H/T to Rachel for suggesting the topic sending me the clip

Although Halloween is behind us, and we've packed up the glam make-up and eaten all the goodies, I'd like to call your attention to an interesting use of bunny suits I recently came across. Or, perhaps "interesting" isn't quite the right word... inappropriate, insincere, ineffectual... these seem more apt. While this ridiculous domestic violence PSA has already been addressed by Irin Carmon over on Jezebel, I think there are some more fundamental issues we can tackle from a rhetorical standpoint. Ultimately, the commercial leaves me with questions about when humor actually hits the mark and when it just goes horribly wrong.

Using humor to "get your attention," the two segments of the commercial don't line up. Bunny suits and feigned infidelity, while possibly funny (though I found it rather inane), have nothing to do with the realities of domestic violence that the second half claims to concern itself with. The attention grabber, by essentially admitting to its own frivolity, undermines the potential for taking the second part seriously. So does using David Arquette to deliver the message. As pop culture spokesperson, he's woefully impossible to take seriously, despite the attempt to reclaim authority at the beginning of the commercial.

While I'm a huge proponent of using humor to make a point, here, all it does is undermine the message it attempts to deliver. In the following Australian PSA, however, the humor really hits home...

Image Credit: YouTube

Whether you laughed or cringed or both when the husband handed over the baseball bat, this commercial hits its mark. The "humor" correlates directly to its message, and makes it even more affective. Aimed not at those perpetrating violence, but people who stand by and do nothing, laughter, regardless of motivation, implicates the viewer in the scene of violence we hear behind the door. Laughing at the problem is tantamount to ignoring it, or, like the next door neighbor, handing over the bat.

Whereas the audience for the Arquette commercial is undefined at best, this commercial makes it clear that domestic violence is a concern for everyone, not just the abusers and abused. The Jezebel post I cited above includes a French commercial that is similarly aimed at "the people around abusers," and it raises interesting questions about audience which I'll pick up on in my post next week.

Multi-Media New Orleans

noelradley — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 15:07:45 +0000

"Hey Cafe Magazine St. Uptown NOLA Jan. 2010" by Infrogmation

Via Flickr

This weekend, I visited a friend in New Orleans. On Sunday, we sat in plastic chairs outside a coffee shop along Magazine Street, with my friend sipping a Diet Dr. Pepper (her addiction) and me indulging a tall glass of latte (my addiction). Let's not mention the almond-butter infused croissant. As my host surveyed the Times Picayune, I took in the people passing and the variety of businesses and signs. George Harrison "My Sweet Lord" was echoing from a restaurant across the way, and the morning air was mildly warm and a little smelly. We chatted with some NOLA locals sitting at the table nearby: a mother and toddler, who was dressed adorably in an orange jack-o-lantern hoodie. We talked about the Saints game (the toddler could cheer "Who Dat") and about Halloween festivities the coming evening. When the toddler threw down the plastic lid from his chocolate milk, his mother coached him to one of the over-flowing trash cans on the sidewalk.

Upon returning to Austin, I have been thinking how New Orleans is more than just an image, although you should check out fotogail, JustUptown, and Editor B for some Flickr users whose streams of photos give a sense of the visuality of NOLA. By "more than an image," I mean that there is something about New Orleans that engages all the senses simultaneously: a kind of multi-media experience, if you will. The city streets are a mixing of trash and human landscape, sound and sight, young and old, taste and touch, local and tourist. Add in the alcohol, and you feel like you're in a new state of existence. Maybe that's why New Orleans seems to have the effect of either waking you up(making you feel life's vitality), or delivering you to what feels like a surreal dream state (you might be eager to go home from at the end of a weekend of taking in too many "spirits"). I'll end with an interesting Youtube montage from earlier this year by The Economist Magazine. Watch how Economist Magazine shifts from images of New Orleans' deep loss, experienced during the events of Katrina, to the regaining of life in the years since the storm. Next, the montage adds the next chapter of the New Orleans' saga by depicting the events of the BP Oil Spill. Long live New Orleans. Bless those who were lost, and those who continue to try to thrive there.

Glitter re-visited (deadly and disembodied)

Cate Blouke — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 19:43:55 +0000

Image Credit: Norton

H / T to my mom for sending me the video in response to last week's post

Last week on Viz I posted about glitter as an undermining agent in images of solemnity. In this commercial for Norton security software, the glitter use results in deadly (and delightful) consequences.

The commercial functions through analogy. "Your on-line bank account" is like an adorable little cartoon unicorn - friendly, harmless, and essentially insubstantial. Depicting on-line information as a mythical creature, the commercial highlights the "unreality" of computer-based data. Whereas we can (and should) shred our sensitive information when it comes in physical documents, our on-line information is much more vulnerable through its illusive, unicorn-like existence floating in the ether.

Dolf Lundgren, however, is a very "real" representation (so to speak) of all the nasty bad guys out there waiting to do horrible things to our unicorns. "Real" criminals can seriously harm our ephemeral information, as demonstrated in the alternate version of the commercial below. Criminal activity is embodied in the looming stature of Lundgren, whereas our own points of vulnerability are disembodied (cartoon) and unwittingly dreaming of rainbows.

Similarly, Lundgren's weapons are also very physically menacing (a knife, a pistol, and a flame thrower), whereas the unicorn's defenses (when bolstered with the Norton software) are just as fantastical as the unicorn itself - he/she/it defeats Lundgren with a cloud of poisonous, sparkling fairy dust.

While I still hold that the comparison between security software and fairy dust might not actually be that reassuring on closer examination, in this instance the incongruity seems intentional. The fact that the unicorn fights off an automatic weapon with a cloud of smoke shot out of its horn (complete with tinkly fairy noise), causing Lundgren's head to explode into a cloud of glitter, is hilarious. The seemingly innocuous dust has deadly effects which are made festive and amusing through sparkle.

Overall, I find the embodied/disembodied personifications the most rhetorically interesting aspects of the commercial, but who doesn't love some unicorns and glitter? Or flame-throwers and bad jokes (below)?

Image Credit: Norton

H / T to my mom for sending me the video in response to last week's post

Reboot: Visual Tweets by Emily Bloom

noelradley — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 17:18:23 +0000

Image Credit: Screenshot of viz.

Elizabeth's post earlier this week on visual representations of Twitter reminded me of a blog entry from about a year ago by Emily Bloom, who often highlighted New Media pedagogy in her blog posts, and who contributed a wonderful New Media Pedagogy and Visual Rhetoric page. You can see Emily's "Visual Tweets" entry reposted after the break, or you can link to the original Visual Tweets post and the comments from September 2009.

Start of Emily's original post:

Image credit: From YouTube
H/T to A Mutual Respect

Full confession: I just joined Twitter about 30 minutes ago. However, for considerably longer, I've been curious about the significance of Twitter's text-based 140-character format. Although Twitter contains some visuals such as profile pictures and links, it is primarily a print-based medium. The viewer experiences Twitter posts, or tweets, as a wall of sentences. While tweets are themselves primarily textual in nature, two recent videos offer visual interpretations that play with the relationship between image and text.

The first, by http://markfullmer.com/ ">Mark Fullmer, uses the 140-character constraint of tweets to take on the most iconic of American genres-- the road odyssey. In the video for Tweet, Tweet: A mysticotelegraphic fistbump panegyric to the American open road odyssey, Fullmer voices these micropoetic tweets over black and white footage of the passing scenery. The video begins with the image of a twitter feed, but most of the subsequent imagery focuses on the western landscape. Once on the road, Fullmer shows himself jotting his words onto a pad of paper as he drives. In the sense that Fullmer writes rather than texts his words on the journey, tweets become a poetic constraint rather than a new media per se.

Image credit: From The Washington Post on YouTube
H/T to Kevin Bourque

A very different visual interpretation of tweets is the Washington Post satire of celebrity tweets called “Twits." In this series of visual/text juxtapositions, actors read celebrity tweets with all the pomp of a Masterpiece Theatre production. Emphasizing the grammatical mistakes, bizarre punctuation and tonal oddity of these tweets, the actors illustrate not only the strangeness of celebrity but also, the absurdity of our interest in them.

Together, these videos led me to think about the nature of the tweet and the kinds of restraints, opportunities and follies it engenders. As Fullmer says in Tweet Tweet, “A tweet is not a text, not haiku, not a telegraph. Stop. A tweet is.” I’d be interested to see what other kinds of visual rhetoric and poetry the tweet may inspire. Is there any way to visually capture the back-and-forth quality of tweets? Can a visualized tweet recreate the immediacy of the ever-changing updates?

The Sweet Tweets of Pedagogical Success

ebfrye — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 04:23:29 +0000

Video Credit: Twitter and World Simulation

I’m always impressed (and, I have to say, sometimes a bit bewildered) when I hear of instructors who are especially successful in using online social networking in a classroom setting. For an example of what’s lately leaving me pedagogically awe-struck, take a look at the video, posted above. More, after the jump.

The video documents one of Kansas State professor Michael Wesch’s many ongoing teaching experiments in digital ethnography. Just in case you blinked or sneezed during the first part, the quickly moving text of the video tells you that students in an “Introduction to Anthropology” class created their own cultures along with “live simulation” scenarios. I’ve heard of such exercises being used before; what’s new to me is that the class used twitter to record their findings.

I’m also quite interested in the means through which the YouTube video communicates the method, the overall scope of the project, and the intentions behind the project. Atop the footage of students directing, trading, and interacting with each other runs a feed of associated tweets.

Particularly striking is the way in which the video, with a blurred effect, intersperses factual information and images alongside the class’s simulations.

Image Credit: Screenshot of Twitter and World Simulation

In trying to read the significance of blurring contemporary and historical photographs, I can only speculate as to the videographer’s intentions. The incorporation of news photography, relevant data, stills of recognizable figures such as Naomi Klein (below) and Ghandi, and a quotation from the work of Margaret Mead point to what might constitute the theoretical backdrop for class discussion.

Image Credit: Screenshot of Twitter and World Simulation

As a result, the video successfully communicates the scope of a class project while situating it in a contemporary, historical, and theoretical framework.

Challenging a Youtube Video Take Down

noelradley — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 18:58:31 +0000

Image Credit: Know Your Meme H/T Hampton Finger

This youtube video explains the difference between fair use and copyright infringement involving Youtube videos. It also shows how to dispute the take-down of your video on Youtube, if you have created a fair use work.

Girls Just Want to Party in the USA (and Boys, Too!)

Rachel Schneider — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 19:21:09 +0000

Image Credit: Screenshot from YouTube

As everyone reading this blog knows, I love random bits and pieces of pop culture. Jezebel is one of the websites I visit to indulge this love, and they did not let me down last week. I’ve been saving this since then, and though I know it may be a bit late to write on this, I couldn’t resist bringing this to everyone’s attention as a kind of alternative archive in its own right.

Marisa Meltzer, in a blog post called “Video Vixens: Spice Boys and Barbie Men,” groups together several YouTube clips that feature young men lip-synching to songs made by women. Meltzer wrote a book called Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music, which claims that bands like the Spice Girls helped popularize the empowering message of riot grrrls for both men and women. Speaking of clips that include covers of artists like Shakira, Taylor Swift, and Aqua, she writes:

There's something very joyous and celebratory about girlhood in all of these songs. They can express, in a kind of candy-colored way, excitement, heartache, and pride of being a girl. I don't think boys who film themselves lipsynching are making fun of us girls, though. I think this is a way of expressing some kind of homage to us and our music. I'm not sure there's an equivalent for boys—that is, music marketed to boys expressly about the state of being a teen boy, which is perhaps why so many guys are so happy to post themselves singing along.

Watching the clip of the young men lip-synching to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” does make me feel quite a bit of joy:

However, I’m not sure I can totally accept Meltzer’s reading here. Homage may be a part of the Taylor Swift cover, for example, but this version isn’t acknowledging Lauper’s popular song (and its own memorable video) so much as re-envisioning it. The shirtless male bodies rolling around in the bed enact a kind of queer performance of which the gay icon Lauper would probably approve. We as an audience see the singer hump a car and a friend put a whole banana in his mouth to perform a sexuality that the song insists is for “girls,” but which the male performers co-opt for themselves. The men here look manly, but not manly in the heterosexual way of the Abercrombie-attired boys who lipsync and dance their way through Aqua’s “Barbie Girl.”

The same queer aesthetic seems to be part of the semi-famous lip-synch cover of Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA,” which Meltzer did not include in her post:

These men here lay on the beach here in their highly colored bathing trunks to purposefully camp up their performance of the Disney teen’s song. As they try to surf in their blow-up swimming pool while wearing colorful Ray-Bans, I can’t help but want to take part in their fun. The fact that they tag it as “Party in the FIP” makes the queer connection explicit (as Fire Island is a notorious gay vacation spot) as well as its intent to be a transformative performance.

The homemade aesthetic that these videos share, whether filmed on Flip cameras or in front of iMacs, incorporates a call for authenticity of a particular kind. Each of these artists attempts to construct himself for his YouTube audiences by following the common models of other viral videos, but in these works each works to condition that performance through girl’s pop music. This isn’t to say that this qualifies the kind of masculinity, but draws our attention to the process of its construction in lo-fi and high-fi ways.

I can agree with Meltzer that this is all in good fun, but this seems to be more than just tribute. There may not be “music marketed to boys expressly about the state of being a teen boy,” but it’s not like popular culture lacks an attention to teen boys (see: Harry Potter). These clips instead seem to be doing another kind of cultural work, hopefully one in which we can all join in.

Teaching You Tube

EmilyBloom — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:02:08 +0000

Image Credit: You Tube

H/T: Noel Radley

Image Credit: You Tube

“Selectable Output Control”: The video proposal

John Jones — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:23:24 +0000

I saw this video on BoingBoing last week:

I think this is a perfect example of a video proposal argument, the kind that students should be making to connect their work in the classroom with the outside world.

MIT project documents videos removed from YouTube

John Jones — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:38:01 +0000

CNET reports MIT has a new project that provides information about videos that have been removed from YouTube. From the article:

The site, an effort by the MIT Free Culture group, scans the most popular YouTube videos for the metadata Google inserts after a video has been taken down. YouTomb shows a list of recently removed videos (which you can’t actually view), who requested their removal, when they were taken down, and how long they were up beforehand.

This site should be a helpful resource for online video researchers, particularly those interested in copyright issues.

I am the condom friend ever useful to you

mkhaupt — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:07:23 +0000

Here's a Telegu (East Indian) sex-ed video extolling the virtues of using a certain brand of condoms, featuring a Bollywood-style anthem and men dressed up as dancing condoms. I have to wonder, though, who is the target audience for this video? They address men and women both gay and straight, but the message seems geared toward a younger demographic. At the very least, the dancing condoms juxtaposed with line drawings of gay sex is jarring. But this might just be a problem of cultural legibility.

At any rate, at 7 minutes long, the video is sure to get its point across, no matter who the intended audience is.

(Contains some images that may be offensive to some, and likely not safe for work.)

Rock the Vote

Jillian Sayre — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 19:02:39 +0000

Obama supporters have been called fanatical and naive but something that we've also noticed is that they are also rather musical. MK noted the Will.I.Am video and McCain parody here and Tim posted the somewhat...let's say cheesy...response from Clinton supporters here. Starting with the "Obama girl"'s song (who, it turned out later, didn't vote), and helped along by the accessibility of web publishing, Obama's participatory rhetoric seems to elicit a creative response that belies an identification (perhaps over-identification) with the candidate.

Here in Texas we've got two new videos hitting the tubes. The first attempt to argue against the widely held conception that Clinton is the candidate for Latino (and in this case Mexican American) voters:

The corrido emphasizes Obama's humble roots, flashes pictures of him in crowds of people, and argues "his fight is our fight."

The second, recently composed by Austin singer Kat Edmonson:

The video asks the question "What would you do if you were president?" and flashes to different people holding their answers in the form of cardboard signs. What intrigues me about the Will.I.Am video and these two latest incarnations is the various ways that they argue an identification with Obama, in the "we" "our" and (notably missing) "I" that signifies a corporate or cooperative identity.
It makes me think of the larger ideas of collaborative composition that inhere to ideas of New Media and Web 2.0 and I think it is interesting to consider how this "new idea" for politics that people attach to Obama might be a larger "new idea" of culture.

The call is coming from inside the House!

Jillian Sayre — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 17:53:14 +0000

Check out a new political ad from the Clinton campaign:

I almost didn't want to be the one to blog about this one, because we've got some pretty rich material here. My favorite thing about this piece, though, is that it reminds me of the old Babysitter horror stories we used to/still tell ourselves. It really puts the domestic in domestic threat.

Women in Art (more rhetoric of the montage)

Jillian Sayre — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 02:04:45 +0000

Perhaps a good point of departure for a discussion of Women in Film would be the creator's earlier attempt to give us an overview of Women in Art:

Does high art create/communicate normative body structures or gender roles in the same way as popular culture?

Perhaps it is the chronological extension (this montage covers 400 more years than Women in Film) but the faces here seem to resist the homogenous beauty of the doe-eyed starlet. On the other hand, it is also interesting to note a similar lack of racial diversity. If modern cinema produces 3 African American actresses, 500 years of Western art produces none.

Women in Film

Justin Tremel — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:52:52 +0000

I recently read a New Yorker article that mentioned the spell-binding youtube video "Women in Film" seen below. It's quite mesmerizing, have a look.

In the article, author David Denby points out certain common visual elements that the diverse group of female stars all share:

The video "Women in Film," on YouTube, morphs the faces of female stars, from the silent period to the present, in a continuous progression, making it clear that eyes may be freakishly pinned open (Crawford) or flirtatiously half closed (Marilyn Monroe), but they must be liquid and voluminous. And lips must be full, the lower gently crescented and the upper a perfect bow. The women were often filmed with chin raised, looking up at men, so the neck had to be a clean line, the shoulders pliant and yielding. Women's hair in the glamour period was curtain and foliage, the luxurious motif of sexual abandon.

The video seems to me a good compliment to the Dove campaign discussed previously on Viz. In a rhetorical avenue of inquiry that places so much emphasis on images of the female body, it is compelling to see how much significant visual study can be done, even when concentrating on simply the face in monochrome. Our students may not recognize any of the earlier Hollywood stars, but I think they'll find the last thirty seconds of the video quite compelling when the morphs take on the faces that they are very familiar with.

The full text of Denby's article isn't currently available online from the New Yorker, though you can find an abstract. You can, however, access his article in html via Academic Search premier:

FALLEN IDOLS. By: Denby, David. New Yorker, 10/22/2007, Vol. 83 Issue 32, p104-114, 7p; (AN 27150834)

Dove onslaught

mkhaupt — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:20:52 +0000

Dove expertly uses visual rhetoric to combat the insidious forces of ... visual rhetoric.

Black sheep and propaganda

timturner — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:20:36 +0000

This poster is a political advertisement for the SVP (in English, the "Swiss People's Party"), a far-right political party in Switzerland that has made anti-immigration policies a centerpiece of its campaign in an upcoming election. The posters have been controversial: the tagline reads "to create security," and the image depicts three white sheep booting the black sheep from the swiss flag, presumably symbolic of Swiss territory.

In fact, deportation is an important component of the SVP's proposed immigration polices, including a proposal to "let judges deport foreigners after they serve prison sentences for serious crimes. The measure also calls for the deportation of the entire family if the convicted criminal is a minor. Human rights advocates warn that the initiative is reminiscent of the Nazi practice of Sippenhaft, or kin liability, under which relatives of criminals were held responsible and punished for their crimes" (NYT).

Although comparisons to Nazism are usually taken to end arguments rather than advance them (see reductio ad Hitlerum), in this case the comparison may be apt--and not only because of the SVP's policies. Consider this short film, called "Heaven or Hell," that was also created by the SVP as a political advertisement in its campaign:

The film is a thorough compilation of basic propaganda techniques: flames, black-and-white vs. color, the threat of violence against women (and the underlying assumption that women are helpless in the face of such violence). At the end of the film, the text reads "the choice is clear" ("Die Wahl ist klar"), and the use of klar/clear (imposed over the smiling, shiny Swiss couple) only reinforces the underlying metaphor of opacity/darkness as "pollution" that the poster presents in visual terms.

It'd be nice to think that because of its lack of subtlety, this video could easily be written off, but some of the YouTube comments suggest otherwise: "simple, true, effective"; "Awesome!!! We need a video like this in the U.S.A."; and "It's absurd to see the SVP described as 'extremist' and their message labeled 'propaganda'."

One final example of SVP propaganda:

Filet a fish, or: Why do people hate some advertisments?

John Jones — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 16:58:35 +0000

I’m a big fan of Seth Stevenson’s advertising columns at Slate (he’s going on sabbatical and will be missed). On Monday he posted a new column, where he discusses readers’ submissions for the worst ads on TV. Like a therapist, Stevenson doesn’t so much agree with the contributors as he commiserates with the feelings of anger, betrayal, emptiness and loss directed at or prompted by these advertisements. One question that we can ask ourselves (and our students) is: Why do we care so much about ads? Take this McDonald’s ad for example:

The ad, which is called “hideous” by its nominator and a “Filet-O-Failure” by Stevenson seems to me to be quite good at selling the product. This is not an artsy ad where it is impossible to tell what is for sale, as in this Simpsons parody:

Instead, the ad reaffirms the product constantly by repeating its name over and over. At the end of the ad, you know what’s for sale, and the repetition has drilled the product into your brain. If you pull up the Filet-O-Fish ad in YouTube, the second item in the list of related videos is this ad, which is titled “Worst Commercial Ever”; however, I would argue that it too is effective. When the ad is over, you know what Flea Market Montgomery is just like—a mini mall! Further, the bizarreness of both the Flea Market and Filet-O-Fish spots is likely to get people to watch them (and share them with their friends on YouTube), an increasingly difficult proposition in the age of TiVo. Shouldn’t the title “worst commercial ever” be reserved for an ad that doesn’t do these things?

So, what is it about these ads—ads which I feel are quite effective at selling their products—that irritates people so much? I think this question might be a good entry into a discussion with students of the rhetorical effects of ads; to get the ball rolling, here are two answers I came up with.

First, I believe that sometime around Bud Bowl I—possibly earlier—consumers began to expect that advertisements should entertain them. (This is a development that might be unique to television; I don’t think radio advertisements are made by people who are worried about entertaining listeners.) If an ad is weird or unfunny, then that somehow violates the unspoken agreement we have with advertisers that they must entertain us. The existence of such a contract would explain why the two commercials discussed above are considered so awful: it’s not because they are bad advertisements, it’s becuase they are bad entertainment.

Secondly, I think commercials like the Filet-O-Fish one irritate people because they offend our culture’s logo-centrism. Consider this quote from Stevenson on the McDonald’s spot:

I will admit I occasionally grinned the first time I saw it. But in terms of selling the product? Filet-O-Failure. One should not film fast-food items in their sad cardboard boxes, exposed to the audience's close inspection in a series of long, tight close-ups. Those greasy fish-bricks look decidedly unappetizing.

Here he is attacking the ad on logical grounds. Fast food is gross, he says, so it isn’t logical to show it in closeup in advertisements because then people won’t want to eat it. But everybody knows that Fast Food is gross (particularly the Filet-O-Fish), but even post-Fast Food Nation and Supersize Me people still flock to McDonald’s: the company’s recent resurgence has been built on the back of their greasy staples, not their salads. Clearly, logic isn’t the only thing driving our food-purchasing behavior. Acknowledging this, I think, is cognitively difficult for many people, so when they see ads that defy logic, they ask why a person would make such an ad. The answer—they made it “that way” because that way is effective—is troubling, and the seeming disconnection between the purpose of the ad and its logical effect makes them upset. In other words, hating an advertisement is often an expression of a person’s own dissatisfaction with their emotional decision-making processes.

The necessity of teaching video composition

John Jones — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:58:05 +0000

A few weeks ago I suggested that the seeming ineptness of many amateur videos indicates that most people are more skilled at textual production than at video production. William Saletan’s piece at Slate on video resumes got me thinking about this topic again. While the popularity of non-commercial videos on youtube argues that our culture is in many ways already video-literate, it is likely that the youtube community is self-selecting for video-savvy individuals. However, Heather Havrilesky’s recent review of Donald Trump’s Apprentice implies that there is a lack of awareness of a broader audience in that group, as well. Since we are near a point when video production will be as ubiquitous as text composition, it will soon become necessary for training everyone in video composition. If this is the case, I think it is likely that a huge part of the training in the rhetoric of video communication will be left to composition departments.

Technological innovations like Apple’s iSight camera, which now comes standard with all of its laptops, will soon put this technology in the hands of everyone with a computer. Returning to the Saletan piece, he provides a fairly inclusive list of pros and cons for video resumes, which, for the purposes of this conversation, can be summed as: everyone is going to start providing video resumes, so you need to as well. If videos are going to be a requirement for job-hunters, who will give students a rhetoric for creating these videos, the topoi that they should cover (or clichés they should avoid), and techniques for presenting themselves to their audience other than composition departments?

Eventually someone is going to have to create a video rhetoric for classroom use. Those of you who are more familiar with film studies might be able to suggest works in that field that already do this. I think the first step towards brining this conversation into the classroom would be assigning student videocasts. Blogging Pedagogy has had some interesting discussions on podcasts, and I think that assignments like this one by John Pedro Schwartz could easily be adapted for students with cameras in their laptops. Any thoughts on other videocast assignments?

YouTube fights the law: Who will win?

John Jones — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 15:18:10 +0000

Andrew K. Woods has a short piece on Slate titled “The YouTube Defense: Human Rights Go Viral” where he argues that judicial decisions, from Brown v. Board of Education to recent rulings on Guantanamo detainees, have always used public opinion as a bellwether, despite claims of strict fidelity to established law. Realizing this, lawyers for one Gitmo inmate, Adel Hamad—who Mr. Woods identifies as a Sudanese school teacher—have posted a video on YouTube outlining the paucity of evidence supporting to his detainment. After 70,000 viewings, the U.S. government has placed Hamad on a list of detainees to be released.

These facts lead Mr. Woods to argue that Internet video provides the following benefits for human rights reporting: it allows anyone to report on abuses, and that reporting can instantly reach everyone with an web connection; it is more “visceral” than text; and it is “story first, message second,” allowing the video-makers to “capture [an audience’s] attention with the narrative, and slip the message in between the frames,” in this case, a message about human rights.

I generally agree with Mr. Woods’s claims about the differences between video and text, though perhaps not with his specifics—the Internet has been around for a while, and I’m sure someone knows of an example of a text-based (or text- and graphics-based) campaign that influenced some legal or governmental decision, and I’m not sure that, in their essential natures, text is quite so intellectual or video quite so emotional as Mr. Woods is claiming. The argument does, however, bring up the question: what benefits do video, and sites like YouTube, make available to human rights groups and others that would like to draw attention to arguments that would otherwise go unreported in the media?

Here is my suggestion: because video is richly contextual, that is, because it provides information about setting, behavior, physical appearance, and other details that would be tedious or merely time-consuming to list in print in their entirety, it allows for the greater likelihood of an audience member emphasizing with the subject—or being repelled by them; consider the difference in reaction to Mel Gibson and Michael Richards’s racial outbursts; how much of the public response to each has been mediated by the fact that most everyone has seen one outburst but not the other?—and therefore has the potential to be more persuasive. One downside of this effect is that text has the benefit of being streamlined; it is easier to focus an audience’s attention with text than with video. Also, more people are skilled producers of text than they are of video (though the gap between the two is quickly narrowing), making it likely that, at least for the foreseeable future, there will be rhetorical gaffes in video production.

With that caveat, however, I believe that Mr. Woods is correct. Video production on the web is going to propel major changes in the way groups without access to the media will be able to make arguments to wide audiences, thereby effecting changes in legal decisions and governmental policies.

Sheep’s clothing

John Jones — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:12:32 +0000

Barack Obama has taken some heat for remarks made to a New York Post reporter attacking Al Sharpton (who’s had a lot to deal with lately, thank you very much) which pundits are arguing were made by an Obama operative. Now there’s this:

source: YouTube, by: ParkRidge47

This hatchet-job on Hillary Clinton, which incorporates footage from Ridley Scott’s striking Super Bowl ad for Apple, is now making its way around YouTube in various guises. Significantly, it ends with a plug for Obama; once again, it seems, Obama’s thugs are on the prowl, taking shots at anyone who would threaten his rise to world supremacy. Whether or not this characterization represents the reality of the situation—apparently the identity of the video’s creator has yet to be established, and the Obama camp has distanced themselves from it—it is clear that the creator of the video is bashing Hillary and providing Obama as an alternative.

With that fact in mind, I’ve yet to see anyone analyze the content of the video to see if this Obama’s-operatives-theory makes sense. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the user who posted the video claims that s/he did so in response to “Hollywood entertainment mogul David Geffen's public critique of Clinton—and ‘Clinton's campaign bullying of donors and political operatives’ in the wake of it.” This explanation would be believable enough if it weren’t for the Obama plug at the end. The association with Obama smears him by implying that he is smearing Hillary. Does this seem like a logical move for an Obama-supporter to make?

More telling is the actual argument of the video. By making the association with 1984, the video presents the senator from New York as a Big-Brother-like figure, one who is interested in socializing American culture, if not in the actual spoken text (“people who want to be part of a team, the American team”), than at least by implication. This isn’t a liberal argument against Clinton; it’s a conservative one.

So, either the creator of the ad 1) is pro-Obama, but was ignorant of the video’s rhetorical effect, or 2) the ad was created as an attack on both Hillary and Obama. I vote for 2.

That aside, I like the stylish "O" at the end of the video, fashioned after the old, rainbow-colored Apple logo. While the leaf is a bit distracting—it reminds me of “Ó,” the wrong letter—I enjoy the thick line of the “O” and its perfect circularity. Obama should definitely adopt it for his website. In my opinion, it is far superior to the Bank of America-esque logo he’s using now.

Update: Apparently on today’s episode of Good Morning America, the above argument is mentioned. Some have taken this to be evidence of big-media spin. Unfortunately, since I am not a member of the media, big or otherwise, anyone who wants to take a shot at this blog entry will have to do so by attacking my argument, not my ethos.