In Media Res: YouTube for Scholars? (I think not)

by Avi Santo — Old Dominion University
November 13, 2006 – 06:56

When we first announced the In Media Res component of the Making MediaCommons site, we made the unfortunate mistake of describing it in layman’s terms as “sort of a YouTube for Scholars”.

Our intention was to describe a process by which media scholars would upload media clips along with critical commentary, which would then be available for visitors to the site to view/read and converse about.

Beyond the guff I received from one misinformed scholar who thought that the commenting function was merely an add on, instead of the point of the feature, the YouTube association has raised a number of other concerns, which I would like to present to you all -- as both future MediaCommons members and potential In Media Res curators – in the form of a simple question:

Should curators be selecting their clips for In Media Res from the stash of material already available from YouTube?

My esteemed colleague, Ben Vershbow put the yin/yang situation best:

On the one hand this is a good thing. It makes it easy for curators to grab clips and gives us a ready-to-embed, externally hosted video. Resituating a popular media artifact within a more critical discussion also makes sense from a scholarly perspective -- reclaiming a bit of the YouTube culture. Then there's the possibility of outreach. MediaCommons could have its own YouTube channel, pulling viewers back into our site.

But the problems this raises are many. First, curators will be tempted to rely just on YouTube for material, which is by no means a comprehensive media library. Second, we do not want to be in any way beholden to YouTube (now Google) or overly reliant on their technical infrastructure. It's unwise both from an archival standpoint (videos are being taken down all the time) and from a political one (YouTube is not a defender of fair use -- they'll call you a pirate the minute the lawyers come knocking).

For many curators, there are also the questions of technological know how, availability of resources and, of course, time. Many of you who have expressed interest in curating have indicated that

A) You do not know how to digitize media clips
B) You do not own a Tivo, DVR, and/or DVD burner
C) You do not have a reliable IT person at your University who could digitize a VHS clip for you

We are in the process of developing a simple step-by-step guide for curators to be able to upload materials themselves to the site, but this will still require some accessible digital conversion method and comfort level. This lack of proficiency inevitably makes YouTube a (dangerously) easy road to take for many scholars, to some extent making us complicit with the very systems we are attempting to challenge.

I am a firm believer that it is not the technology that makes for radical practices, but that practices radicalize technology, but it seems here we have a dilemma, so I ask again, this time for the community:

Should curators be selecting their clips for In Media Res from the stash of material already available from YouTube? And, equally as important, what are the alternatives for those less technologically skilled yet radically inclined?

Comments

Characterizing our

by Ben Vershbow
November 13, 2006 – 09:56

Characterizing our description of In Media Res as “sort of a ‘YouTube’ for scholars” as an “unfortunate mistake” sounds to me a little too self-effacing. Maybe I’m just taking it personally since the YouTube analogy was mine — something I used as a point of reference in my publicity mailings. I think the point is that the comparison can be interpreted in multiple ways, which gives us the opportunity to unpack it here — not so much to defend it (I totally agree that we don’t want this to become the branding of IMR) but examine what’s true about it and what’s false.

I mean, In Media Res is like YouTube in the basic sense that it is a place to post videos and comment on them. But clearly we have different aims, which you go into in your post. What’s interesting is how this undoubtedly problematic analogy points to the very real concern of scholarly reliance on YouTube, a reliance stemming either from lack of technical skills or simple seduction by the fad (or any number of other reasons that you can delineate better than I).

I’m interested to hear from people what they think — from a critical, political and infrastructural standpoint — should be a scholar’s approach to YouTube. It would be great if we could begin to put together a sort of rough guide to YouTube, in the same way (but better) that some academics have tried to write guidelines for students on using Google or Wikipedia.

I'm kinda fond of the

by Kathleen Fitzpatrick — Modern Language Association
November 13, 2006 – 11:14

I’m kinda fond of the YouTube analogy myself, if only because it highlights the “social” aspect of the software, that what we’re doing here is driven by the (eventual) membership. Of course we’re doing it with, among other things, a bit of curatorial direction, and with a much stauncher defense of the scholarly need for a robust interpretation of fair use, things we might add to YouTube if we were able to make it serve our purposes. On the other hand, I see why the scholar Avi spoke of was concerned: though YouTube does allow for comments, those comments are almost never the point, whereas what we’re hoping for with In Media Res is precisely discourse — not just immediate responses to the clips, but interactive, developing analysis of them.

For me, the most important use of YouTube has been in the classroom: having ready-to-hand a massive archive of video clips that can be used to illustrate various pedagogical points has been exciting. On the other hand, as Avi points out, I can’t rely on those clips remaining available. Moreover, my conversation about such clips in the classroom, while vitally important, doesn’t evolve and develop in quite the same way that a slightly slowed-down, more substantive comment-based discussion like those on In Media Res might. What I’m hoping is that, like the “virtual slide room” that Jeremy Butler is developing in Screenpedia, In Media Res might gradually accrete an archive of clips and commentary that will be a stable, open-access resource for scholars and instructors.

I think that we desperately

by Virginia Kuhn
November 13, 2006 – 19:12

I think that we desperately need to engage YouTube as scholars since it is so much a part of the cultural vocabulary… but of course we also need to offer more critical ways to engage *with* the filmic texts themselves—getting inside and editing/commenting/critiquing—rather than just using words to comment on images. I know many academics have just the issues Kathleen describes that prevent their using video other than that found on YouTube so, at least for now, it is a great source of material. And we must also keep in mind that our students engage with such media on a regular basis, but that their engagement is not always what we might call a literate one. From this angle then, YouTube is crucial to remaining relelvant and also to modeling the sort of practices we hope our students will carry out.

Therefore, I would love to see an incremental practice of In Media Res - first words to comment on video (largely harvested from YouTube perhaps), then video commentary on video, then new ways to add and amend video that are independent of such Google-acquired archives.

I think this is all just a restatemment of both Ben and Kathleen’s points; still they bear repeating…

FYI, there's a

by Kathleen Fitzpatrick — Modern Language Association
November 14, 2006 – 14:04

FYI, there’s a thought-provoking article on scholarly uses of YouTube that appeared just yesterday on Inside Higher Ed…

I imagine we could do both -

by Jason Mittell — Middlebury College
November 14, 2006 – 14:41

I imagine we could do both - harvest/link from YouTube, and upload our own. If someone wants to talk about a ‘native’ YouTube clip, then embedding its link here makes sense. But uploading a copyrighted clip to In Media Res is a crucial practice for flexing our fair use muscles - YouTube will pull down any copyrighted clip upon request, even if there is a fair use argument. Let’s not underestimate the potential power of us asserting fair use given the hostile copyright climate of today.

Speaking as one of those

by Jonathan Gray — University of Wisconsin - Madison
November 15, 2006 – 20:22

Speaking as one of those people with no TiVO, no knowledge of how to digitally record, and no easy way of getting it done at the university, I’m sort of stuck with what Youtube can offer. I wonder if MediaCommons might give (or post a link to) instructions: knowing how to get something from my VCR to my computer is a skill that would help me well beyond the realm of MediaCommons, and I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling competent enough to follow instructions (and if that means buying some gadgets, or getting open source software, as long as i know where to go, can do that easily) yet incompetent enough to not know how by myself. If those of you with the knowledge can teach those of us without, it makes us less dependent on the Youtube. Thanks in advance :-)