In what ways does the social networking site 'MySpace' and video sharing website 'YouTube' transform the production, circulation and consumption of popular culture?
The landscape of Popular culture has been entering a new and radically different era since the dawn of the second millennium and the proliferation of vast quantities of digital information on the Internet. As Arjun Appadurai describes, 'It takes only the merest of acquaintances with the facts of the modern world to note that it is now an interactive system in a sense which is strikingly new.' The interactive system of which he speaks includes many areas such as politics and finance, but I will focus specifically on the ways in which the production, circulation and consumption of popular culture has been revolutionized by the rise of information sharing websites in particular the Social Networking Sites (SNS), in particular MySpace and the video hosting website YouTube.
Drawing on the work of Jean Burgess I believe that the task for popular cultural studies is to find new ways to understand and engage with 'the full diversity of existing and emerging media contexts' in which I don't consider there is an up to date framework for analyzing contemporary features of the production and consumption of popular culture. The issues I will specifically explore include consumer agency and self-representation, drawing on the research of Dan Perkel, I will look at how the production of a MySpace profile involves the reproduction and a strict literacy in the signs of popular culture. I will also explore the ways in which the increase of amateur production and easy methods of information circulation have impacted tradition producers of popular culture, and in conclusion I will explore the attempt of online production company ViveCoolCity.com to subvert the tradition circulation and consumption patterns of popular culture through drawing on the framework of Jean Burgess.
There is much anxiety in cultural studies surrounding the issue of consumer agency and the intrinsic value of popular culture. In Burgesses work 'hearing ordinary voices' he accurately points out that recent developments in the uses of new media have significant ethical and methodological implications for the discipline of pop culture. New democratic forms of media such as SNS have radically transformed the way ordinary people interact with popular culture blurring the distinction between both production and consumption and fandom and self-representation. Henry Jenkins 1992 work 'Textual Poachers' is a good base for exploring the logical developments of passive fandom through to representing the self through textual reproduction on SNS. Jenkins' describes fan culture as 'a complex, multidimensional phenomenon, inviting many forms of participation and levels of engagement', which ranges from the immediate reception of information through to the construction of alternative texts and alternative social identities. 'Textual Poachers' describes the construction of communities through the reproduction of popular culture in which participants create meaning in a postmodern fragmented landscape using materials that others, such as Theodore Adorno of the Frankfurt school, have characterized as trivial and worthless. Criticisms such as Adorno's fails to recognize the significance of new meanings that consumers and fans create once they rework borrowed material into their own lives and experiences, and such criticisms are heavily outdated when applied to the use of pop culture references and reproductions within SNS.
The rise of popular SNS such as MySpace in conjunction with information hosting and sharing websites such as YouTube has given rise to a new form of creativity and democratization within popular culture. Mimi Ito argues that " new convergent media...requires a reconfigured conceptual apparatus that takes productive and creative activity at the 'consumer' level as a given rather than as an addendum or an exception (in press p.4.) The concept of "participation" here assumes that engagement with media is social, active and is used as an alternative to consumption, which has previously been negatively viewed as a relatively passive process or fandom, which was generally viewed as an extraordinary mode of engagement with popular culture. Josh Hartley argues that in the new mediascape, which is highly dependant on the democratic cyberspace of the internet 'the source of the cultural value (that is, the source of judgments about the interpretation of cultural forms) shifted from cultural elites (critics, academics, and producers) to cultural consumers (audiences, readers, and fans).'
MySpace and YouTube transform the circulation and blur the distinction between consumption and production by creating a new social process by which personal identity is created and performed as well as social relations built- through the use of popular cultural text using online media to proliferate the text. These processes are quite varied and range from new autonomously created texts displayed in popular televisual format and disseminated through YouTube, right through to expressions of online identity defined purely using the texts of popular culture. In Arjun Appadurai's 'Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Economy' he describes a new global cultural process in which the imagination and creative engagement with popular culture is central to a new social practice.
'No longer mere fantasy (opium for the masses whose real work is elsewhere), no longer simple escape (from a world defined principally by more concrete purposes and structures), no longer elite pastime (thus not relevant to the lives of ordinary people) and no longer mere contemplation (irrelevant for new forms of desire and subjectivity), the imagination has become an organized field of social practices, a form of work (both in the sense of labor and of culturally organized practice) and a form of negotiation between site of agency ('individuals') and globally defined fields of possibility.'
In the new global cultural process, the imagination, creativity and most importantly Pastiche, in Jameson's postmodern sense of the word, are central to social practice and a new global order. SNS in particular MySpace are a central part of youth socialization practices and expressions of social identity. Using MySpace involves creating a personalized media intensive web profile where information about the self can be creatively displayed and online interactions with others can occur. Most pages include text, pictures, music linked from artists MySpace profiles and embedded video's linked from video sharing website YouTube. Dan Perkel, who studied teenagers use of the site in 'Copy and Past Literacy' found that the creation of a MySpace profile 'concerns a technically simple but socially complex practice: the copying and pasting of code as a way to appropriate and reuse other people's media products' The importance of this new copy and paste practice is that is subverts the common understanding of reading popular text and the conventions of reading popular culture in a way that situates consumption and production as relatively autonomous practices.
The construction of a MySpace profile involves the copying and pasting of popular images, text and embedded YouTube videos in a quite schizophrenic manner to produce a personalized web page. The pages are constructed in order to express a self-identity that is highly self-conscious of the semiotic meaning another MySpace user, who may or may not be a friend outside of cyberspace, will read into the profile. Users are also encouraged to link the music of favored artists to their page via the artists MySpace 'music profile'. A vast majority of users predominantly employ the visual texts of popular culture rather than obscure underground culture as most users have a strong understanding of the processes involved in the 'reading' MySpace profiles. If a user wishes to participate in subversive cultural politics, they may engage in altering recognizable images or alternatively place these images wildly out of context or use them ironically. The small act of copying and pasting blocks of popular culture code from different sources is at the core of many teenagers' individual expression on MySpace and this practice represents a new logic of culture in which consumption and production becomes blurred as each profile is created through complex methods of distributed production. The practice described above is also an example of what Arjun Appadurai called the new 'global cultural proceses: the imagination as a social practice' Here it can be seen that the language of popular culture is used as the central basis on which MySpace users can express identity in cyberspace and so consumption of popular culture becomes very important in a way that theorists of the postmodern consumption logic (I consume therefore I am) predicted.
The logic of popular culture is not only being transformed at a grassroots level. Traditional producers of culture are fast adapting to the new use of media on SNS and YouTube and finding ways to feed amateur creativity back into a new version of the old culture capital system, which is complementary to both the traditional consumer and producer. Shane Homan and Chris Gibson in 'Popular Music: Networks, Industries and Spaces' (2006) describe how the traditional territorial boundaries of audiences and markets are subverted by file-sharing websites such as both MySpace and YouTube, quoting Julian Hamilton of band The Presets, 'We can't be in Tokyo tonight, but someone in Japan can be... checking out our live videos on our website'. Exemplifying the way in which the ethic of amateur creativity is fed back into the culture system by traditional producers was that two years later in March 2008 Modular Records, whom The Presets are signed to, sent out a promotional e-mail that contained the link to a YouTube clip, which featured an Asian man whose user name was 'tellytubby999' performing a cover of a new Presets song. Modular records propagation of this link as a form of marketing and promotion, shows how traditional producers are engaging positively with the new ethic of amateur production and cultural engagement.
The new mediascape tools that MySpace and YouTube offer users for self expression and voice has created a new platform for 'hearing ordinary voices'. Importantly the former puppeteer of popular cultural images, the United States, has lost some of its hegemonic power in controlling cultural products and determining which voices are heard. A new complex transnational construction of imaginary landscapes is fast forming. Using Appadurai's description of the new global economy, I would suggest that to grasp the role of SNS and YouTube in relation to popular culture, 'we need to bring together: the old idea of images, especially mechanically produced images (in the Frankfurt School sense); the idea of the imagined community (in Anderson's sense); and the French idea of the imaginary (imaginaire), as a constructed landscape of collective aspirations'.
Strong tensions exist between the figure of 'the creative consumer' who is seen as both a key to the new economy, as demonstrated in the Modular Records example above, and a major potential disruption to the dominance of commercial media. While Jean Burgess brings up the concern of social inclusion and the unevenness of access to 'voice' in the global mediascape, I don't view this as being particularly unique to the new mediascape in which popular culture exists, as there was certainly an uneven level of representation in the old format. Perhaps a better question to ask is if there is going to be a significant transfer of media power and if previously unheard voices will now be heard. Using the platforms of YouTube and MySpace for proliferation, ordinary people certainly have the potential to be heard through their own creative efforts however there is no necessary transfer of media power, because they will remain within a system of power that is still controlled by the mass media. It is still the mass media that decides whether to run a 'story' on the likes of television, such as the channel 10 program 'Friday Night Download' which was a program featuring media clips found on the internet, or in the newspaper that will in turn see an 'ordinary voice' receive attention of a significant level. As Jean Burgess laments 'the mere fact of productivity in itself is not sufficient grounds for celebration'.
It appears so far that SNS and YouTube have radically transformed the circulation and way that people engage with traditional popular culture, however meanwhile it also seems that there has not been any significant transfer of the power to control who gets their voice heard. Savvy producers of vernacular creativity, Melbourne based worldwide production company ViveCoolCity.com are attempting to revolutionize the way that people interact with media on the Internet and subvert the traditional popular cultural capital system in a way that companies such as YouTube.com have largely failed to do. Producing short five minute episodes using the strict codes of popular youth television (such as MTV) in genres familiar to their targeted audience, ViveCoolCity.com produces digital vernacular stories based on traditional themes of pop culture such as relationships and music- mixing these themes with both localized and international folk tales such as the sex industry of St Kilda, or kidnappings for ransom in South America. The company's efforts attempt to gain internet 'subscribers' who will engage with the media form in the traditional sense of engagement with a television series, and hence gain corporate sponsorship while simultaneously subverting traditional methods of gaining voice in the media and also bypassing the strict scrutiny and censorship practices of the mass popular media.
Building on Burgess' work of vernacular creativity in the form of digital storytelling, ViveCoolCity.com operates as an articulation of contemporary popular practices, a dynamic site of relations between textual arrangements and symbolic conventions, technologies for production and conventions for their use. ViveCoolCity.com's aim is not only to legitimate vernacular creativity as a relatively autonomous and worthwhile contribution to public culture, but also to build a movement of consumers and a capital network of corporate sponsors that can bypass the traditional gatekeepers and producers of popular culture in an original attempt at subversion. The online media production company I have been speaking of is not a magical solution to unequal access to media power but it certainly signifies a start to what may be seen as a significant attempt to democratize popular culture. The people who collaborate to create episodes for ViveCoolCity.com are neither consumers not 'victims' in the sense that those who are exploitated for documentaries and reality television productions are, as Burgess describes them, they are autonomous citizen producers. Importantly though while ViveCoolCity.com does offer a legitimate cultural alternative for traditional popular culture consumers it still relies on the same popular literacy skills and knowledge's described as being necessary for SNS so perhaps it can be seen as a complementary alternative to mass media's popular culture rather than as an attempt to completely sabotage to the current dominant system.
In conclusion it can be seen that social networking sites and YouTube have transformed popular culture towards a logic and politic of participation which heavily blurs the previous distinct categories of 'consumption' and 'production'. Amateur cultural production is now increasingly part of the logics of everyday life, and relies heavily on a key understanding and knowledge of popular culture to become meaningful. On MySpace ordinary people, not just dedicated fans interact with and create social identities using the texts of popular culture as both a tool of communication from which to make meaning from. Hence forth, in the advent of SNS and YouTube, creative 'consumer' productive activity should be taken as the 'norm' rather than the exception. In fact no longer should cultural studies predominantly use the terms consumption to describe the uptake of popular cultural knowledge, this should be replaced by the dominant activity of "participation" which assumes that engagement with the media is predominantly online, social and active. Engagement with popular culture is central, particularly for youth, as a key in a new social practice that focuses on the imagination. While there is no necessary transfer of media power in this new practice of creative engagement, the platform has certainly been given for amateur production companies to bypass the traditional system such as is ViveCoolCity.com's aim, and for ordinary citizens to gain access to a global voice.
Words: 2624
Bibliography
Appadurai, Arjun , 'Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy', Public Culture, 1990
Atton, C. 'The Mundance and its reproduction in alternative media', Journal of Mundane Behaviour, vol 3 no 1, 2001
Burgess, Jean, 'Hearing Ordinary Voices: Cultural Studies, Vernacular Creativity and Digital Storytelling', Continuum, June 2006
Homan, Shane. & Gibson, Chris, "Popular music: networks, industries and spaces", in Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy, No. 123, May 2007
Harley, J. 'The "value chain of meaning" and the new economy', International Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 7 no.1 2004.
Ito, Mimi. 'Mobilizing the Imagination in Everyday Play: The Case of Japanese Media Mixes', Forthcoming in International Handbook of Children, Media, and Culture ed Sonia Livingstone and Kirsten Drotner.
Jenkins, Henry, Textual Poachers: Television fans & participatory culture, New York: Routledge, 1992
Leadbeater, C. & Miller, P. The Pro-Am Revolution: How Enthusiasts are Changing Out Economy and Society, Dermos, London, 2004
Perkel, Dan, 'Copy and Paste Literacy? Literacy Practices in the Production of a MySpace Profile'
Accessed from the Melbourne University Library Supersearch catalogue on May14th 2008
Online Bibliography:
Vive Cool City
Accessesed from : www.vivecoolcity.com on 5th of June 2008
YouTube
Accessed from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV0yBAalvgc on 5th of June 2008
MySpace
Accessed from the authors home page: www.myspace.com/chessiqua on 5th of June 2008
Appadurai, Arjun , 'Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy', Public Culture, pp.1
Burgess, Jean, 'Hearing Ordinary Voices: Cultural Studies, Vernacular Creativity and Digital Storytelling'pp. 212
Burgess, Jen, 'Hearing Ordinary Voices: Cultural Studies, Vernacular Creativity and Digital Storytelling' pp. 201
Jenkins, Henry, Textual Poachers: Television fans & participatory culture pp. 2
Jenkins, Henry pp. 3
Ito, Mimi. 'Mobilizing the Imagination in Everyday Play: The Case of Japanese Media Mixes', In press.
Ibid.
Hartley, J. ' The "value chain of meaning" and the new economy' pp.132
Appadurai, Arjun , 'Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy', Public Culture, pp. 5
Perkel, Dan, 'Copy and Paste Literacy? Literacy Practices in the Production of a MySpace Profile' pp. 1
Perkel, Dan, 'Copy and Paste Literacy? Literacy Practices in the Production of a MySpace Profile' p. 7
Appadurai, Arjun , 'Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy', Public Culture, pp. 5
Homan, Shane. & Gibson, Chris, "Popular music: networks, industries and spaces" pp.61
The link attached to the Modular Records e-mail: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV0yBAalvgc
Appadurai, Arjun , 'Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy', pp. 5
Ibid.
This idea is based very loosely on the work of Burgess, Jean, 'Hearing Ordinary Voices: Cultural Studies, Vernacular Creativity and Digital Storytelling' pp. 201
Burgess, Jean, 'Hearing Ordinary Voices: pp. 203
Burgess, Jean, 'Hearing Ordinary Voices: Cultural Studies, Vernacular Creativity and Digital Storytelling' pp. 207
Ibid.
Burgess, Jean, 'Hearing Ordinary Voices: pp. 209
Ibid., pp. 204