Audiovisions: YouTube as a new page in the evolution of audio-visual media.

(1)

Audiovisions: YouTube as a new page in

the evolution of audio-visual media.

Gerrit Jan Dennis Morsink

Television & Cross-Media Culture

(2)

Introduction

In the spring of 2016 I was driving home when I heard a radio DJ interview a woman who had just won tickets for a concert. He asked her what she was doing now, and she replied that she was watching clips on YouTube. He then asked her what kind of content she enjoyed on YouTube, did she watch the professional channels or just cat videos? “Neither”, she replied, “I’m watching music videos”.

This short anecdote seems quite arbitrary, but this short example does show what the contemporary ideas about YouTube are. No longer is it just a website where everyone can put videos of their pet or other random fluff online, YouTube now has ‘professional channels’. YouTube has evolved into a platform of production, a place where creative individuals can earn their money by building a brand or selling a personality. What this anecdote illustrates is that YouTube is not only changing, but is also changing the contemporary media

environment.

In a 2008 editorial for 'Convergence Culture' Henry Jenkins and Mark Deuze wrote a small piece on the role of YouTube in the society of convergence. They praised YouTube as a system for grassroots initiatives which has the power to empower, with every single individual being able to participate. However, there are other authors such as Jin Kim who are significantly more critical of the medium, criticising it for catering to the corporate nature of society whilst hiding behind the "lies" of being a participatory medium. No matter the academic opinion, it cannot be denied that YouTube plays an important role in the formation of the current cross-medial environment. In this research thesis I aim to provide arguments that not only show how YouTube forms a significant departure from other dominant audio-visual media such as television, but also show how YouTube has changed, and is changing, the media landscape. I have elected to analyse not only the aesthetics (the form of the medium) but also the political economy (the economic drive behind the medium) behind the televisual force that is YouTube.

In order to understand my argument that YouTube is a major departure from television, I will first lay out a condensed timeline of the history of television. From that foundation I will argue about how YouTube in 2016 has adapted different elements of television, how it constitutes as an evolution of television and what new aspects YouTube has brought into the contemporary media environment. The main question of this research is formulated thusly:

(4)

"How does the platform of YouTube and its aesthetics and political economy mark a significant change from television and how does this affect the contemporary cross-medial environment?"

In order to answer this question, I have raised a short list of sub-questions that allow me and you, the reader, to more efficiently structure this thesis. First I will analyse the history of how the medium of television has evolved to what it is today. This will be the first section. In the second section I am going to introduce the main subject of research of this thesis, namely the online video platform called YouTube. In the third and fourth section I am going to analyse the aesthetics and political economy of YouTube and show how this medium is not only connected to television, but also how it marks a significant change in how television works and is perceived. Finally, I will conclude this thesis with an answer to my main research question and discuss my findings. Thus, the sub-questions are as follows:

1. How has the medium of television evolved into its contemporary form? 2. What is YouTube and how is it connected to the medium of television?

3. How has YouTube aesthetically been given form and how do these aesthetics relate to televisual aesthetics?

4. How does YouTube work from a perspective of political economy and how does this relate to televisual political economics?

In order to frame this research, I will use the concept of audiovisions, thoroughly explained in the book ‘Audiovisions: Cinema and Television as entr’actes in history’ by Siegfried

Zielinski, published in 1999. In this book, Zielinski argues that the media practices of cinema, television and what he calls “advanced media”, something we now refer to as new media, can be referred to as audiovisions. Audiovisions are a range of dispotifs that audio-visual media have had in their history, with the main argument that audio-visual media do not contain a main essence, they are subject to change in form and use. The development and evolution of form and industry behind audiovisions is influenced by previous and co-existing

audiovisions. Zielinski discerns four major dispotifs throughout the history of media in the nineteenth and twentieth century (Zielinski 1999, 19):

- The production of illusory pictures and ensembles, seemingly moving because of trickery with light or movement, but where the images themselves do not move because technology did not allow for this to happen yet.

(5)

- The cinema, where the practice of projecting moving pictures was perfected and slowly became dominated by a culture-industrial complex.

- Television, where broadcast flows made it possible for the general public to receive information and audio-visual content inside the private setting of their homes, where content was scattered and controlled by an outside force.

- The advanced media or an “advanced audiovision”, which allows for remixing, blending and new ways to produce, receive and store audio-visual content through a complex network.

Zielinski adds to this list of dispotifs that they cannot be arranged in a linear history of development, as they’ve developed alongside each other and influenced the evolution of one another (Zielinski 1999, 20). With this list of dispotifs as the foundation of his book, he has written a history on the development of audiovisions. Zielinski provides a detailed history of audio-visual media up until the early stages of the development of new media. Engaging with this theory on the development of audio-visual media not only allows me to describe how YouTube is derived from other audio-visual media and how television has influenced its evolution, but it also gives me the framework to show that YouTube is something that is different from television. Showing that YouTube is deserving of a status as an audiovision of its own will provide evidence for my argument that YouTube has changed the contemporary media landscape. Naturally I will engage with Zielinsky’s ideas about audiovisions as a concept, the audiovision of cinema, television and his remarks on the early stages of development of advanced audiovisions/new media in the first segment. I will start with a short summary of Zielinski’s findings on the audiovision of cinema, as that dispotif is heavily connected to the audio-visual forms later developed, after which I will move on to the

dispotif of television.

(6)

§1. Audiovisions in the 20

th

_century

The twentieth century was a century of major development in audio-visual content, with the birth of cinema, television and mass-communication. To understand an audio-visual medium as an audiovision is to understand its development and the influences it has had during this development. Because of this, this first segment of the thesis will deal with the development of aesthetics and political economy behind television, albeit in a condensed form. However, first I will engage shortly with the development of cinema, as it has been quite influential on the early years of television.

Moving pictures: the rise of cinema

Cinema was an important stepping stone for the development of modern technologies and forms of media. In its early years, it quickly became a daily sight in the eyes of the common people, it became a force to be reckoned with.

“Cinema originated as a new and attractive segment of a mass culture whose spaces and venues for its events lay outside of the four walls of the home, the space for private

reproduction. It was a special case in a historic departure where concentrated entertainment began to be mass organised publicly and commercially.”

(Zielinski 1999, 85). Cinema became a part of a set of distractions of the daily slur, of being stuck in life and work, it provided a short but fulfilling distraction for the people, a small attempt at escape (Zielinski 1999, 87). Only after the nineteenth century rolled over into the twentieth, cinema changed into a form we are more familiar with today, as cinematographers settled into permanent venues (Zielinski 1999, 88). Cinema integrated with mass culture and quickly it became less mystical, the attention to the medium shifted from the magic of the moving picture to what was projected on-screen.

Up until the Great War that started in 1914, cinema became more and more integrated with the idea of capitalism. Where its development started off as a sort of “free-for-all”, it became dominated by large production companies and groups of companies who were fighting for monopoly rights (Zielinski 1999, 93). The boom of cinema attracted many new players looking to expand their business or players looking to grab a lift up with its exploding popularity. However, the content of the cinema did not progress as quickly, as the notion was

(7)

that cinema was a quick divergence, it needed not to be long, diverse or interesting, and according to Zielinski, that was the major mistake of the early production companies (Zielinski 1999, 96). Films were typically no longer than fifteen to twenty minutes. That is where producers independent of the major companies came in. They settled on a production site that came to be known as Hollywood. Hollywood, the sector of cinema that is now known for its industrialized and monopolistic agenda, began as a break from what it has ironically become now (Zielinski 1999, 96-97).

In 1914, the First World War broke out, and with it cinema changed. The United States of America became the major leader in cinematic development, and with that came a fundamental change in the industry as well, with cinematic production and the market being divided among several larger production companies such as Fox. This divide was the foundation for the studio-system the cinematic market would fully adapt during the 1930s and 1940s (Zielinski 1999, 103).

On an aesthetic level, the audiovision dispotif known as cinema rapidly developed from tiny fairground attractions into small sedentary cinemas for the plebeian class into cultural powerhouses for the bourgeoisie. Its technologies developed rapidly, so that films became longer and more complex, story wise and technology wise. From a political economist standpoint, cinema rapidly changed from a free-for-all market into a socio-industrial complex ruled by larger companies, it became a large booming business that was quickly given form and foundation to become a profitable business under the eye of large media companies.

Rise of a new audiovision: the inception of television

The development of radio before and during the First World War laid the foundation for a wireless network on which people could listen to broadcasts inside their own homes, a foundation that was of significant importance for the development of television (Zielinski 1999, 122). After the First World War, the network was there, the radio operators were trained, but the main use for radio (the army) was seemingly non-existent, so the people clamoured for a private use of radio, creating one of the first instances of

mass-communication (Zielinski 1999, 124).

Shortly before the Second World War, television began to rise. It was envisioned as a combination of multiple media before it: cinema, radar, radio, telephone etcetera. Television was destined to become a popular new form of entertainment, with the amount of household having one in their living room increasing rapidly (Zielinski 1999, 105-107). The

(8)

development of television coincided with the development of many technologies that

changed time and space, technologies that designed new ways for seeing and hearing, such as the automobile, the establishment of a mass-communications network as a need and

occurrence, the reproductive machines of the cultural industry and a growing need for governmental control (Zielinsky 1999, 132-134). Television was to be a remediation of both radio and cinema, a combination of the two in order to not only project audio inside the homes of the private consumer, but also to project video. Due to its connection with radio, it was theorised that television would be a mainly live object, it would broadcast events inside your house as they were happening (Zielinsky 1999, 138-139).

From its inception in the 1930's, televisions power and role was thought of in three areas. Firstly, television provided a sense of immediacy, it could be a means to

instantaneously distribute material such as information, with the viewers at home connecting with the televised event as it was happening. Secondly, television provided a sense of

intimacy. As televisions were set up in the living room, which more importantly can be described as the domestic space, it could address viewers in their own homes while providing close images of distant events. Thirdly, television was thought of as a hybrid medium, as it combined different forms of media such as theatre, the newspaper, radio, film etcetera, but with the distinct advantages of live immediacy and intimacy (Creeber 2011, 593).

With television’s ability to show everything, the question of what we wanted to show arose. From 1939 onwards, television adapted to its role of showing what was happening, blurring the lines between public and private, allowing the consumer to become a faraway spectator (Zielinski 1999, 174). Where cinema reveled in visual spectacle, television shined during the showing of the daily, the mundane (Creeber 2011, 593).

The audiovision of television after the Second World War

Television really began to flourish after the Second World War. In the 1960s, nearly 70 percent of all households had at least one receiver and television set. Television was no longer a status product, it became a widespread daily object that could be found in most of the households across the Western world. The choice of content began to grow, as series and programmes produced in the USA were spread across the globe, with the globalization of television culminating in the 1960s when everyone with a set was able to receive images from across the world (Zielinsky 1999, 212).

(9)

“The time had come for a differentiation of the market, for the intensification of supply, for the implementation of additional innovations which the advanced accumulation of electrical and cultural industrial capital with the private TV screen as its focus made possible.”

(Zielinsky 1999, 183) The market for television needed something new, something to advance the industry of the already risen audio-visual medium. Pay-TV was the answer, an initiative for separate channels for separate interests such as sports, culture, feature films etcetera (Zielinsky 1999, 184). Communication satellites and an advanced cable network allowed for a multi-media system that served targeted and “serious” programs that were not just sides for

advertisements.

At the end of the 1980s, there were virtually no more places in the world where one could not find a television. Many other products were available to increase the televisual experience, such as gaming consoles, personal computers etcetera. As the range of media products increased and diverged, so did the media companies. Successful media companies were vertically aligned within the media sphere, and were active in all of the forms of entertainment and information distribution industry. However, the plans for uniformity did not end there. The door that opened the modern world would be an integrated network made up from satellite connections and fibreglass cables, a uniform system that could connect all and would be able to transport the flow of data and information across the globe (Zielinsky 1999, 227).

During the final decades of the twentieth century the video recorder was becoming more and more associated with television. It was used by the consumer to record whatever they wanted in order to be able to watch it back later, it destroyed the programming created by the stations and created singular audio-visual experiences (Zielinsky 1999, 238). For the first time, viewers could exercise power over the programming of the television, as they could disrupt television time by watching something they had recorded a while back. One could see this as the start of on-demand television. People were ready to participate in the surge of technology, people longed for interactivity, to be able to have power over the one-way stream of data.

As technology increased, so did the audiovisions. Television became a cog in a machine of progress, as computers and the digital became more and more apparent. Zielinsky calls these

(10)

the advanced audiovisuals, in which it became apparent that consumers were longing for participation:

“At the level of advanced audiovision, the phalanx of electrical, cultural and computer industry capital and their associates, the developers of software, played on by the wishes of many to participate actively in the reshaping of culture by technology.”

(Zielinsky 1999, 265) Zielinsky describes this era of new technologies that allowed for participation and remixing as “new (…) founding years”. These new founding years or advanced audiovisions differ from the original founding years of audiovisions: where in the nineteenth century the people were content with receiving audiovisions in a public setting, now they had all these devices that allowed them to exercise control over their audio-visual devices (Zielinsky 1999, 272). However, on a cultural-industrial level, not much has changed, as the ways for maximising profits have stayed relatively the same. Zielinsky expresses that these new founding years contain hope for the future, as they pave the way for new, uncontrolled media and

audiovisions (Zielinsky 1999, 272).

At the end of the book, Zielinsky arrived at his present, 1999. He expresses that the rapid technological changes of the media environment allow for a whole future plethora of new audiovisions, as more power is given/taken by the consumer. He uses the example that while at the beginning of the 1990s one could only edit film by renting “outrageously expensive time in post-production studios”, while now one can do all that from their own personal computer (Zielinsky 1999, 279). In the age of advanced audiovisions, spectator and participant are not mutually exclusive roles, they have been opened up so one can shift between them.

The most important changes in the dispotif of television at the end of the twentieth century were threefold: the once passive television-watching audience was gradually turning into active participants, more content was available to the audience and media companies were starting to spread across multiple audio-visual channels. Television was at the brink of becoming a multi-media platform, and in the next part, I will describe the final stage of the evolution of television, from the beginning of the twenty-first century up until now.

(11)

After Zielinsky: television in the 21st_century

As the book by Zielinsky makes clear, the beginning of the twenty-first century was marked by a technological boom, from both the industrial end and the cultural end. The Internet and World Wide Web made it possible for audiovisions to expand quickly and to adopt new forms, while a growing desire from consumers for agency and power over the productive end shifted the balance between spectator and participant.

Television has always been a deficient medium, constantly looking for improvements in an ideology that is called TV repair (Newman & Levine 2011, 129). From the remote control to the VCR, the development of television in the twentieth century allowing television to break loose from the network era and become something more interactive. The creation of the DVR and the increasingly accessible DVD allowed viewers a form of empowerment in the late 1990s, allowing viewers to “watch on (their) schedule, not the programmers” (Newman & Levine 2011, 130). This new empowerment of the viewer meant that

broadcasters and advertisers needed to change their strategy, and these struggles of power between broadcaster and viewer meant that the TV was moving on from the broadcast and network eras, viewers were changing into users (Newman & Levine 2011, 131-132). Because of the newfound power of viewers, not only the television model had to change, television storytelling was also getting a major boost. Shows in the 2000s were getting more narratively dense and complex in order to gain favor and maintain attention (Newman & Levine 2011, 139-140). This increase in television storytelling and the coming of interactive television also brought about forms of viewer passion known as fandoms. In turn, the production companies started courting these passionate and engaged viewers, making products that demanded attention and engagement in order to fully appreciate (Newman & Levine 2011, 143).

Television became more sophisticated, it became more videographic with an increased focus on style and the visual, slowly closing the gap that formed the boundary between TV and cinema (Creeber 2011, 594). Television showed its new-found stylistic way in serials such as Lost, which matched cinema in visual style, spectacle and budget (Creeber, 595). Cinematic television is in its basics an increase in visual style, aided by enhanced and upgraded

technologies in order to create a denser image, supported by an “effective soundtrack” (Mills 2013, 57). Technological developments, such as the rise of CGI (computer-generated-image) have supported the growing assortment of cinematic television in order to attract an audience known as the ‘quality demographic’, those who seek complex technological television (Mills 2013, 58-59). Another term closely linked to the increased cinematic quality of television is that of ‘quality TV’. Quality TV has a double edge, in the first case it refers to the ideal

(12)

viewer, the ‘quality viewer’ (Bottomley 2015, 485). Networks program their specific content in order to attract this ideal audience, these quality viewers. However, as the term already implies, quality TV also asserts a certain set of values and tastes to the program. It has a certain aura of authenticity, features a large cast and contains a serialized narrative. The program is a self-aware piece, mixes genres in order to avoid being predictable and generally has harnessed favorable reviews and ideally has received awards (Bottomley 2015, 486). Both cinematic TV and quality TV are terms that in my opinion are intrinsically linked because they embody a shift in televisual content. Series and programs on TV became smarter, more complex in the twenty-first century, and the viewers started to expect more from television.

A more recent and perhaps the most important development of television is that it moved away from the television screen itself. Multi-mediality has been connected with TV ever since the development of distribution methods such as video tapes and the DVD, but now the screen of the television has moved across other forms of media, mostly new media. New sites of production and distribution changed the media environment of the television: “If the VCR and DVR are devices for time-shifting, mobile viewing as well as web-streaming and downloads can be considered space-shifting technologies. In a literal sense, the

experience of watching programs on a cell phone or laptop screen potentially brings TV into new and varied sites, such as corporate office cubicles, buses and trains, and libraries.”

(Newman & Levine 2011, 145) New spaces for watching television are innumerable, virtually anywhere where one brings his cell phone or laptop is now a space for watching TV. This development unchained television from its long-standing place in the living room as a common household object, it has

individualized and personalized watching television to new heights. Television’s newfound mobility releases it from time and space-bound constraints, we can watch whenever we want, wherever we want (Newman & Levine 2011, 146-147). As much as mobile viewing is a result of technological improvements, it is also part of a larger trend of increased agency for the viewer. This trend, starting in the late 1990s, has come to full fruition, as we now have the power to decide when to watch television and where to watch television, and with on-demand services such as Netflix and streaming of online databases, we also have the power to decide whatever we watch.

(13)

Not only has the agency of the viewer increased dramatically in those areas, we also have the power of making our opinions about programs known instantly. Social media and their role in contemporary media viewing have been of major importance here, giving

viewers a voice to express their views and opinions about the programs they were watching at the time of viewing, discussing with one another. Because of this, these media underline the idea that because of converging media, users are no longer a passive audience (Bennett 2012, 512).

Television in the age of convergence is no more linked to just the television set, it has moved to a plethora of different forms of media to create a multi-media experience in which the audience can become a participatory force. Television is dispersing across many different forms of media and many different audiences that all interact with each other like a living biological organism. Michael Curtin describes the current state of television as a ‘matrix medium’, “characterized by interactive exchanges, multiple sites of productivity and diverse modes of interpretation and use” (Curtin 2009, 13). Successful production companies not only master one platform of television, they play a part in every platform that television has moved across (Curtin 2009, 12). In the 2007-2008 television season ratings and average viewing times were as strong as they every were, but they were more spread out, across online services and platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, YouTube etcetera. The audiovision of television had changed, in the network/broadcast era it was produced and broadcasted from a centralized hub towards an “undiffering mass audience”, in the matrix era the audiovision of television consists of a multitude of distribution platforms interacting with one another and addresses a complex structure of niche audiences (Curtin 2009, 13-14). If they wanted to survive, broadcast networks had to become multi-media producers, convincing advertisers that the focus was not on prime-time advertising, but on the ability to distribute

advertisements across the plethora of platforms now connected with television (Curtin 2009, 15). These multi-media companies and television itself is still mainly funded by advertising, and producers and advertisers are not looking at commercial minutes anymore, they are more concerned with their multi-media reach, expanding their horizons across the entire

interwoven media landscape known as the media matrix (Curtin 2009, 19).

Television as an audiovision has changed rapidly in the beginning of the twenty-first century. Aesthetically speaking, it has increased its visual and audial levels to new heights, being connected to terms such as cinematic and quality TV. It has evolved from a multi-channel

(14)

network based medium into a multi-media practice, spreading across multiple forms of new media, altering the time- and space-bound medium into a time- and space-free medium. Continuing the trend raised by Zielinsky in the 1990s, viewers have harnessed even more power over the medium, being able to see what they want, where they want, when they want, on whatever choice of multi-media-device available to them. As for the political economy and cultural-industry, the landscape of the audiovision is now dominated by huge media conglomerates who have followed television across the multiple platforms, using many different modes and platforms of distribution to sell and create more niche programs, whilst adopting a new advertising strategy based upon the interwoven field of media that is now television.

This entire segment was dedicated to showing how the audiovision dispotif of television was founded and how it has evolved over the years. The changes involved in the dispotif of television have been fuelled by technological, societal and economic factors that have morphed the dispotif itself over the years. No audiovision stays the same, they are inherently subject to change. Changes in the audiovision changed a media-landscape

dominated by television, as television assisted in globalization and the rise of the matrix era. Developments in the television dispotif in the twenty-first century have shown television to be able to adapt to a multimedia environment and that audiences have become activated users. Both of these important developments have naturally led to the creation of online video-spheres like YouTube. In the following segments I will engage with YouTube, first establishing a general academic foundation about what YouTube is, and after that engaging with the aesthetics and political economy of the platform, providing arguments that reflect my idea that YouTube not only is a significantly different form of audiovision than television (deserving of a dispotif itself), but also that YouTube has had significant impact upon the media environment in its short span of existence.

(15)

§2. Online video: What is YouTube?

The potential for online video is huge in the contemporary media environment. Consumers averagely stream 85 videos per month in 2008, with YouTube delivering more than a third of the views (Curtin 2009, 17). Creators of online videos are able to freely experiment with formats and formulas in order to attract and maintain online audiences. A great part in this production scheme is the online video-sharing platform known as YouTube. YouTube is a platform for video sharing and watching, founded in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. After its start-up in 2005, it rapidly grew to be one of the most popular and frequented new media platforms with over 65.000 videos uploaded daily and delivering a hundred million views per day in 2006 (Snickars & Vonderau 2009, 10).

At the end of 2006, YouTube was purchased by Google Inc. After this take-over, YouTube kept growing, with over a billion users, hundreds of millions of hours watched daily, over a billion individual views generated each day in 2016 and over sixty hours of video uploaded every minute. YouTube functions as a participatory platform, users are allowed to sign up for free and can upload copyright-free content at their hearts desire. Over the years, YouTube has rapidly evolved, starting of as a website containing mainly videos of low quality and even less product value into a website supporting many professional content creators who maintain popular and ever growing channels (a fact which is supported by the fact that most academic texts concerning YouTube are quite outdated and with a scarce pool of academic research discussing the modern, less amateurish form that has risen throughout its development). Other users can watch content of other users, generating views. Ever since the corporate takeover of Google, YouTube uses advertorials to generate revenue, with short adverts being shown before the video can be watched. Content creating users can be

rewarded for generating views, providing them with income and the means to keep producing popular content. In time and with enough popularity, this allows them to become full-time creators. YouTube is referred to as a platform in the participatory culture. A culture of participation is a culture that provides people with the means to participate actively in

personally meaningful activities. In these cultures, products are not only consumed by all but also produced by all, transforming the passive consumer into an active user (Liu & Ziemke 2013, 186).

In this segment I will lay down a general academic foundation of what YouTube is, how it works and what its role in the contemporary media environment is. It will provide an introductory reading into the inner workings of the platform and general academic notions

(16)

about the role of YouTube in the contemporary media environment. In my understanding, showing what YouTube is must be done in order to later engage with its aesthetic and industrial value as an audiovision. Three questions are here at hand: what are the social workings driving YouTube, what kind of cultural role does YouTube have in the

contemporary multi-media environment and what kind of role does YouTube have in the empowerment of the user in this environment?

YouTube as a social practice

As a starting point, it is important to know what kind of role YouTube has in the online sphere. YouTube is an audio-visual medium geared towards public participation, with YouTube, the people of the world attained the power to show their audio-visual creations to the rest of the world. Users can upload their own content on their own channels, after which other users can watch these creations, place a quick comment on the video in either the form of ‘likes’ or ‘dislikes’ or in the form of text. YouTube acts as a mediator in this regard, a social channel that uses video as its base form for communication (Snickars & Vonderau 2009, 10). However, YouTube has been criticized for not being a form of social media “pur sang”, as most of its users tend not to interact with each other, using the website only for watching videos to enjoy themselves, not to find community (Snickars & Vonderau 2009, 12). This however, does not change the basics of the social practice found within the core of the medium: YouTube is an audio-visual medium driven by people watching each other’s videos. Jose van Dijck offers the term ‘homecasting’ to describe the practice of using YouTube, a term derogative of the well-known televisual practice of broadcasting. Homecasting refers to the fact that one can record inside one’s home and broadcast it to everybody’s home (Van Dijck 2013, 148). Homecasting, as with the multi-media practice of narrowcasting, is inherently tailored to target a specific target audience with specific forms of content. However, unlike narrowcasting, it involves a two-way form of communication, as users of YouTube are not only empowered to watch clips, but also to upload them to the database of YouTube. Herein lies another important part of homecasting: YouTube did not produce any videos on its own, it was a databank for you, the viewer and creator (Van Dijck 2013, 149). Homecasting shows that broadcasting and online video are inherently connected and woven into the same media environment: homecasting does not increase the

obsolescence of television and neither does broadcasting affect the user-generated form of homecasting, both are evolving together and are useful in defining the role of the other (Van Dijck 2013, 150).

(17)

And what kind of content will be homecast on YouTube? While YouTube was originally known for its home-video and webcam aesthetic, in the later years it developed formats of its own, including the popular ‘LetsPlay’. LetsPlays are defined as recordings of people playing games accompanied by commentary (Rizzo 2015, 118). This format provides a hybrid form of televisuality and gaming, with an online personality added in the mix. The popularity of this format is not to be questioned, with eight of the top twenty-five most subscribed channels being geared towards this format (only surpassed by music channels with nine, which are mostly owned by companies). LetsPlays are an adequate example of the flexibility that YouTube and homecasting provides, as they reshuffle and mix game culture, online culture and television culture into a single, flexible form (Rizzo 2015, 118-119). YouTube is a place of invention, experimentation and professional amateurism, a public sphere of participation, driven by people creating and showing their own videos, creating their own genres and formats.

One of Van Dijcks comments on homecasting already hints at another important distinction in using YouTube, namely its role as a database or archive. Metaphors concerning YouTube usually point in two ways, its role as a digital video-archive and its role as a digital platform: “From a computer-science viewpoint, YouTube is nothing but a database, but in any given cultural context, moving onto the platform and watching a video obviously entails more than that. It is therefore debatable whether “we watch databases” only, as Geert Lovink has stated, even if the pragmatics of viewing moving images have changed in YouTubian times.”

(Snickars & Vonderau 2009, 13) Interacting with YouTube is not only like looking through or adding to an archive or library, it is also like zapping through a vast array of television channels of which one can easily become a part (Snickars & Vonderau 2009, 15). It is interesting to shortly address this debate, as it concerns the very spirit and use of the medium itself.

YouTube as an archive

When looking at the way YouTube is formed, one cannot help but think of it as a digital archive, where amateur and professional video can be stored online in order to retrieve them anytime in any space. Corporate media, blogs and national archives already use YouTube to refer to and store information, similar to the use of an archive. As an archive, YouTube is

(18)

proven to be the greatest video-archive ever created, with the added benefits of its ease-of-access due to its interface promoting its status as an online video-database (Snickars & Vonderau 2009, 13-14). Since its inception in 2005, YouTube has challenged standard archival practices, creating a debate between the use of copyright, whether the archivists or the archival users are the key figure and whether access should be open to the public or not (Prelinger 2009, 268). During its initial period of rapid growth, YouTube became the default moving-image archive in the eyes of the public, As Rick Prelinger notes:

“Much of archives’ labored steps towards providing public access counted for naught when when placed next to YouTube’s simple, low-functionality service. Without even knowing that a competition was on, archives had lost the contest to determine the attributes of the future online image-moving archives.”

(Prelinger 2009, 269) What made YouTube attractive as an archive can be reduced to four attributes. First,

YouTube seemed like a complete collection, with every search returning with at least one or more relevant videos. Second, YouTube is open to contributions from the user, whoever they might be. Third, YouTube is easy to access, providing different kinds of content in one simple format online. Fourth, YouTube implemented basic forms of social networking, allowing users to instantly engage with the material they dug up (Prelinger 2009, 270-271). However, as an archive, YouTube has also been criticized for its unpredictability,

unprofessionalism and fleeting strategies of preservation (Snickars & Vonderau 2009, 14). The metaphor of YouTube as an archive assumes that YouTube is being used for preservation of documents, while this is not true for the medium, as the social practice of using YouTube to watch and upload videos is clearly more important for the medium (Kessler & Schäfer 2009, 276). Engaging with YouTube as a medium that can be used to store and distribute content, Kessler & Schäfer opt to use the term ‘database’ instead of archive. YouTube allows the user to retrieve and add their own content to the database, which is being given form through metadata, allowing the user to easily access and navigate the many different nodes of the network that have been provided by similar users. The medium connects with other Web 2.0 applications that collect and provide information, becoming part of a larger network of online infrastructure (Kessler & Schäfer 2009, 278-279). Thinking of YouTube as a database rather than an archive opens it up to more modern interpretations and uses, but the idea stays

(19)

relatively the same: YouTube is a medium that can be used to collect and access a massive storage of information.

YouTube as a platform

While classifying YouTube as an archive or database may seem like an objectification, it cannot be denied that it serves that role quite well. What is interesting about YouTube being an archive or database, is that the use and cultural context of these units of storage is subject to change (Snickars & Vonderau 2009, 13). Its experimental nature and its use of public participation open YouTube up to another avenue of thought, namely that of YouTube being a platform. This is a term that encompasses more than meets the eye. According to Gillespie, YouTube being a platform means a multitude of things:

“YouTube must present its service not only to its users, but to advertisers, to major media producers it hopes to have as partners and to policymakers. The term ‘platform’ helps reveal how YouTube and others stage themselves for these constituencies, allowing them to make a broadly progressive sales pitch while also eliding the tensions inherent in their service: between user-generated and commercially-produced content, between cultivating community and serving up advertising, between intervening in the delivery of content and remaining neutral”

(Gillespie 2010, 348). YouTube was created as a place for user-generated content in the form of videos, but in order to stay afloat, it became a platform that has to be suited for the user as well as the companies. As Gillespie notes, the term platform is applicable for a multitude of forms, but in its

contemporary iteration, a platform provides opportunities to communicate, interact or sell (Gillespie 2010, 351). YouTube forms a platform in this sense because it provides the individual a place to speak, opening its arms for all to use it as a stage to be empowered (Gillespie 2010, 352). In this sense, it is the new age reaction to the big industries of Hollywood, that are restricted to all but a few. However, YouTube had a need to monetize, just to keep its services for the people running. Because of this, it became more complex as a platform, as it led companies into its fold. This led to YouTube having to juggle its three audiences: end users, advertisers and professional content producers (Gillespie 2010, 353). However, the flexibility of the term platform proves useful in this juggle, as it represents the interests of all three audiences. In monetizing the participatory culture provides through its

(20)

platform, YouTube is not only a platform for empowered users, it is also a platform for advertisers, "a platform from which to sell, not just to speak" (Gillespie 2010, 354). Thinking of YouTube as a platform broadens the scope of the use of the medium, using the metaphor to stress its social, technological and cultural importance (Snickars & Vonderau 2009, 13). The medium is not just about information, but also about empowerment, giving individuals and representatives of larger groups a place to communicate their message. This brings me to the last question of this segment: what kind of role does YouTube play in the empowerment of the user?

YouTube as a grassroots disruptive medium

There still are different academic notions about YouTube’s role in the empowerment of its user and what place it takes in the contemporary media environment. In an article by Jenkins & Deuze, they argue that contemporary media developments cause for a media transition: "We are living at a moment of profound and prolonged media transition: the old scripts by which media industries operated or consumers absorbed media content are being

rewritten"

(Jenkins & Deuze 2008, 5).

Media can be seen as the drive behind the growing integration of commerce and culture. In the traditional sense, viewers/consumers/the audience was seen as just that, passive entities, but in the light of new media developments, they have evolved into active beings, becoming producers and participants of their own surrounding culture (Jenkins & Deuze 2008, 5). Because of these developments, media are now in a state of 'hybrid media ecology', in which the many different factors that make up media culture are ever more interacting with each other in increasingly complex ways. Platforms such as YouTube are new places where creative grassroots minds meet and create for their own goals, but each of them "helping to shape the total media environment." (Jenkins & Deuze 2008, 6). These changes in the media environment create breaks and shifts in the traditional sense of media production, where individuals and creative minds can make their opinions heard, and where media

conglomerates actively try to create and maintain a financial beneficial presence across the multitude of media channels that are available nowadays. It provides "a culture of remix and remixability", where user-generated content is presented within the channels of

commercialism, but also outside of it, supporting and subverting corporate control (Jenkins &

(21)

Deuze 2008, 7). The culture of convergence we live in today is marked by an ongoing tug-of-war between media companies that try to regain their grip upon media production and

distribution, and media users that try and hold on to their newfound power of production and free creativity, creating a media landscape that is constantly in flux (Jenkins & Deuze 2008, 7). Thus, the age of conversion is heavily marked by the activation of the consumer, creating collaborative networks that create and circulate content, demanding the right to participate in the creation of media content, destabilizing traditional media practices and asserting control of cultural flows (Jenkins & Deuze 2008, 9). Platforms and channels such as YouTube and Flickr are being used by the users to create and share their own creative content, allowing grassroots media producers to take up a central place in the contemporary media landscape. Everyone involved in the creation of media content, from media companies to grassroots creators to the activated audience, believe that media are destined to become more and more participatory. The industry, Jenkins & Deuze conclude, is working towards this participatory model of media creation, with grassroots creators fighting to be taken more seriously by the media industrialists and issues of net-neutrality and intellectual property are being fought over in the public sphere. Jenkins & Deuze advocate the participatory culture that is being created by independent creators, hailing platforms such as YouTube for their ability to allow creative minds to create and share, while media companies struggle to gain power over these grassroots initiatives (Jenkins & Deuze 2008, 10-11).

Jenkins & Deuze show in their work the power of digital platforms such as YouTube and the power desired by the activated consumer (or user/participant). They argue that convergent media empower the independent grassroots creators in the new media-landscape, giving them a voice and a weapon against the corporate establishment in the media

environment. However, YouTubian activities can also be seen as a new age commodity that have already been sold to the corporate media industry.

YouTube as a commodity

In a dissertation from 2010, Jin Kim provides a detailed recollection of the history of UGC and the power of the activated audience in YouTube, and how throughout its evolution, YouTube has shifted from a 'UGC-platform' to a platform essentially controlled by classical industry forces. Kim argues that the main shift in YouTube's role in the new media-environment began with its purchase by Google, Inc. in 2006. While the pre-Google era of YouTube was characterized by low-quality videos in an advertisement-free atmosphere, the post-Google era of YouTube is characterized by high-quality videos in an ad-friendly

(22)

environment (Kim 2010, 93). Google allowed the YouTube-platform to become monetizable by allowing for advertisements from companies to be displayed along with or during videos. Also, with the take-over from Google, YouTube was no longer seen as a threat to copyrighted products, and media companies began posting their videos and content on the website (Kim 2010, 96). Kim argues that YouTube and major network services have collided, but these networks now continue to adapt YouTube's model of video-sharing while also using YouTube as another distribution channel for their own content (Kim 2010, 98). Because of the Google take-over, media industries could get a better grip on the free nature of YouTube, commercializing it with more ease and allowing them to promote their own content. Thus, Kim argues, YouTube has become less of a platform for user-generated content, but more for professionally-generated content (PGC), as to create an ad-friendly environment in which content and advertisement would link seamlessly (Kim 2010, 99). While UGC has not been eliminated because of PGC, it has been marginalized, essentially transforming the grassroots idea of YouTube into a commercialized broadcasting channel (Kim 2010, 105). The

evolution of YouTube into a professionalized channel is a direct consequence of media companies trying to gain power into the new media-environment.

In doing this study, Kim has tried to demystify the understandings of YouTube as a democratizing and interactive medium, addressing two myths about YouTube, namely the aspect of community and user-empowerment (Kim 2010, 148/151). In the community aspect, he argues that while YouTube allows for a communal feeling and a sense of

group-participation, most of the community activities it provides are being "mushroomed", they are being farmed for monetary advantages by media companies (Kim 2010, 150). He refers to Van Dijck’s categorization of different communities, and that YouTube is mainly based upon 'taste-' or 'brand-communities' (Kim 2010, 149). Communities in YouTube are organized around people having similar tastes, which are then being commercialized to obtain brand-recognition of the selling of products.

More importantly however, YouTube has surrounded itself with the myth of user-empowerment. Many academics refer to YouTube as a grassroots medium with participatory characteristics, creating user-empowerment by allowing users to create and distribute their own content (Kim 2010, 153). Kim however, discards these "myths" by listing their biggest flaws. First, he argues, is that YouTube allows for self-expression, but in doing so, it uses self-expression as a form of self-commodification, transforming themselves into "cybernetic commodities" that promote, advertise and provide information (meta-data) to create market strategies for media-companies (Kim 2010, 153). Second, YouTube creates the idea of

(23)

power-sharing between users and the industry, that users have power over the industry because they can participate, but this idea blinds the users to the fact that they are being used as commodities and consumers (Kim 2010, 153-154). Third, that the idea of participation has turned into a spectacle, active users are not the same as critical users, they confuse the acts of consuming and acting. In being able to select their own content, they acquire a feeling of savviness, of being smarter than the system, but they are not acting, just consuming (Kim 2010, 154). Last and most important however, Kim argues to show that the idea of user-empowerment is nothing new. The idea that Web 2.0 practices have turned passive audiences active is a fallacy, as studies show. Audiences were always actively engaged with media content (Kim 2010, 155). YouTube farms the idea that it has empowered users, that people can let their voices be heard, and even while many don't, the idea is almost magical (Kim 2010, 156). With this myth, it attracts users to a commercialized environment that has long since lost its connections to grassroots and independent creativity. According to Kim, YouTube does not truly empower the user, it uses the user as a commodity to be sold to industrial companies.

YouTube as a remediation of television?

The previous segments have shown that YouTube is a diverse medium, capable of asserting different roles (as a database for information and a platform for speaking and selling) whilst creating a social space for creating, sharing and watching videos. It can be seen as user-empowering or as a tool of the industry in the matrix era. The questions I have dealt with in this segment have dealt with the spirit of the medium and the role it has taken up in the contemporary media environment. However, the most important question for this thesis is still standing: what is the relationship between YouTube and television? The YouTubian form of watching video online could seem like a form of new-media television. Richard Grusin argues that YouTube is a remediation of television, it has redefined and adapted the rules of traditional television in the ‘world of networked publics (Grusin 2009, 62).

Television performs as a mediator between the viewer and the world, literally showing the viewer a window into the world. Similarly, YouTube also performs as a mediator, albeit more connected to the system of networks and the mechanisms of data created by new-media technologies. YouTube is less of a neutral mediator than television is, activating its users into producing and sharing their own windows into the world (Grusin 2009, 61).

YouTube can be thought of as television in the online sphere. It has opened up the future for television, using televisual practices and terms (such as the trademarked slogan

(24)

‘Broadcast Yourself’ or the use of the word ‘Tube’) and made them more democratic, opening television up to incorporate an activated audience (Uricchio 2009, 26-28). Uricchio shortly addresses the similarities between television and YouTube, but most importantly asks the question whether YouTube is an extension of television, or if television ends at its

terminology, opening up the future for YouTube as a different form of media. YouTube forms a cross-medial outlet between television and the Internet, placing televisual content online, but it is also a breeding ground for new forms of content, mixing genres and formats into forms that would not have been possible in traditional television (Uricchio 2009, 28-29). It has adopted navigational strategies from media that came before it, incorporating the idea of Raymond William’s flow and the idea of on-demand content that has shown itself in television in the late twentieth century, but has also adapted them to its own format, giving the user more power over how to navigate and even the content that one can navigate. It has been a symptom of the trend of fragmenting audiences, but it has also brought these

audiences together because of its social form (Uricchio 2009, 31-34). In short, Uriccio argues that YouTube is reminiscent of television, but it is also something new, something different than television.

I return here to the concept of the audiovision. I propose that YouTube is indeed reminiscent of television, but because of its own aesthetic form and industrial practices, it has indeed become something different than television. In this sense, YouTube is influenced by the audiovision dispotif of television, but it has become its own dispotif, that of YouTube as an audiovision. In the next segments I will discuss this proposition more concretely, first in engaging with its aesthetic form, then in engaging with its political economy.

(25)

§3. Aesthetically speaking: YouTube

The aesthetic form of YouTube forms an important part in describing its value as an audiovision. When dealing with the aesthetics of YouTube, one will not only have to deal with the form of the medium (channels, videos, comments, subscriptions, views etc.) but also with inherent capabilities of the medium (featured/recommended videos, binge-watching, viewers). In short, I will engage with how YouTube presents its practice of a video-sharing medium, and the form of content that one is able to watch through this practice.

Viewing YouTube: mechanisms of watching

As seen in the previous segment, YouTube’s main power lies in its role as a database for online video and as a platform from which individuals can speak, and corporations can sell. Necessarily, the medium has an infrastructure that accommodates watching and sharing videos, an infrastructure that is equipped with the necessary tools to make navigating and using YouTube as easy and user-friendly as possible.

The infrastructure of YouTube lies in its homepage, the video-viewer and the

channel-based system. The homepage will show different kinds of videos based on trending topics, new videos from subscribed channels and videos that are connected in subject or theme to videos the viewer has recently displayed an interest in. The video-viewer is being used to display the currently watched video, whilst videos like that video are being displayed in the sidebar, allowing for easy navigation to other videos within the theme of the displayed video. The channel-system is the overarching structure that allows for engagement with specific content creators on YouTube, showing the videos that they’ve made and videos that the viewer might enjoy watching. Whilst this is a condensed explanation of the infrastructure of YouTube, it already brings with it an array of implications.

There are multiple ways YouTube uses that exist to assist the user in navigating the immense amounts of videos YouTube has to offer. The first is the subscription-based model. Every channel and every video made by that channel is being accompanied by a ‘subscribe button’, that allows the viewer to follow that specific channel. This way viewers can become part of the creators following by subscribing to their channel. Subscribing is mainly done because the viewer enjoyed the content or the personality associated with the content, seeing as YouTube videos are primarily entertainment. Channels act as the main hubs of the creators on YouTube. Every YouTube user has a channel; it is up to the user himself/herself if he/she wants to upload videos on the channel. The channel-system has become increasingly

(26)

important in the contemporary structure of YouTube, as channels dedicated to more

professional or entertaining content have grown to become production hubs of their own, as a dedicated group of subscribers can allow for a steady stream of advertisement revenue. For example, the YouTube channel BlueXephos (YOGSCAST Lewis & Simon) has harnessed enough popularity over the past few years to set up an entire YouTube production office, setting up a brand under which other creators have gathered, creating a network of connected producers, editors and sound engineers in order to provide more professional content to their viewers. This is but one example of a major trend in YouTube, with budding and inspirited talents working hard to create profitable channels of their own. Thus, subscribing is a two-way profit, it allows the viewer to easily organize and follow content that he/she likes to watch, while it allows the creator to collect and engage with a following, ensuring the creator of more views in the future.

Another, and significantly more important system of structure is that YouTube makes use of meta-data. In a database filled with millions of videos, one would think it’d be hard to organise videos in order to cater them efficiently towards the viewer. However, using data algorithms and video tags, YouTube offers a system that streamlines the choice of what to watch for the user. The digital landscape allowed for personalized viewing schedules and content projected to be interesting towards individual consumers (and in turn tailoring advertisements to the individual) (Van Dijck 2013, 149). By liking videos, subscribing to channels or plainly just watching a couple of videos, YouTube associates your account with different tags. With this data, YouTube offers the user a share of recommended videos, based upon your subscriptions and viewing habits. YouTube processes the users’ interests into an algorithm and based upon that algorithm, provides similar experiences. This is what David Beer calls 'power through the algorithm'. Beer states that through interaction with a database, it creates user specific tags that when combined, create correlations and thus new knowledge (Beer 2009, 989). These correlations can be used to cater specific products and content to the individual user. In interaction with media such as YouTube, generative rules are being created as the viewer uses the medium. Through these rules the software can predict interests, it empowers the medium to choose for the user and because of that these generative rules increasingly control our lives (Beer 2009, 994). YouTube uses these generative rules to provide content specific to its users, creating a highly individualized viewing experience. Meta-data is being used to project individual interests, which are then being shown on the viewer’s homepage or alongside the video-viewer.

(27)

The infrastructure of YouTube makes it easier for the viewer to watch videos that would interest him/her, which in turn has a positive effect on how many videos viewers watch and how long they watch the videos. This watch-time is the commodity that is being used in YouTube, each video is accompanied by how many views it has had, and each channel is accompanied by how many subscribers it has. These units measure how popular videos and creators are within the medium. More views also mean more exposure to the advertisements that accompany the videos, which directly affect the revenue of the video. While I will focus more deeply onto the industrial behavior of YouTube in the next chapter, this practice provides a reason why YouTube has adopted several aesthetics practices that lengthen the viewers time on the website. One of these strategies is the idea of ‘binge-watching’. The term binge-watching has been derived from the verb ‘binging’, which stands for overindulgence and self-harming behavior, such as binge-drinking and binge-eating (Jenner 2015, 3). Binging is a deviation from the socially and culturally accepted norm, and something can be called binging when a person goes beyond this norm. The idea of binge-watching derives from this idea of overindulgence, and is used in contemporary media culture when describing a particular viewing practice in which a spectator watches multiple episodes of a specific drama or comedy serial (Jenner 2015, 3). Some forms of media, such as Netflix, encourage binge-watching with tiny additions to their interface (Netflix starts the next episode of a serial 15 seconds after an episode has ended). The contemporary interface of YouTube is also geared towards watching. One of the major examples of

binge-watching on YouTube is given by the list of suggested videos next to each video, the contents of which are based upon your individual preferences and relatable content to the content you are watching now, your meta-data. This list allows viewers to move from interesting video to the next interesting video, an incentive to keep watching (and thus keep selling

advertisements). Another obvious addition is the Autoplay function, which serves a similar purpose as the example of Netflix, automatically playing a new related video after the watched video has ended. A final example of binge-watching on YouTube is the integration of playlists. Playlists can be created and shared or put together by the viewers themselves, allowing for either a flexible stream of content or a list of thematically connected videos not dissimilar to serialized content on television.

The aesthetic form of the infrastructure of YouTube ensures that viewers get to the content that they want to see, while it ensures creators and the medium itself that interested and dedicated viewers will keep using the medium. This highlights another important part of

(28)

YouTube, namely the viewer/user. YouTube allows for participation in watching videos, they are meant to be watched, shared and discussed. Every video has a comment section (unless disabled by the creator) and the video can be liked or disliked, and with a click of the mouse, can be shared on different forms of social media and forums. This social engagement with the content is a key aesthetic of YouTube, one that Van Dijck refers to as ‘video-sharing’. Video-sharing (obviously) encompasses the Video-sharing of the video, but is generally speaking a term for the entire social use of the YouTube:

“Video-sharing also means quoting, favoriting, commenting, responding, posting,

downloading, viewing, archiving and curating videos on this platform – activities that are all equally fundamental to the site’s prolific usage, even if not all users engage in all these activities.”

(Van Dijck 2013, 151). According to Van Dijck, there are fundamental similarities between the ideas of ‘watching television’ and video-sharing. ‘Watching television’ is connected to gaining knowledge, information or cultural experiences that are intended for a broad audience (broadcasting), whilst video-sharing on YouTube is either designated for the showing to a particular group of people, a like-minded community (narrowcasting) (Van Dijck 2013, 151). Video-sharing morphs watching videos online into a social practice, one that is being accommodated for by YouTube’s form.

The You in the Tube: content on YouTube

The core defining character of YouTube is that it offers streaming of online videos. Unlike other streaming ventures, the content on YouTube is wholly created by users themselves in what we earlier referred to as a participatory culture. Everyone can upload a video on YouTube, as long as it upholds to the regulations regarding copyrighted property (and looking at the vast amounts of clips from movies, serials and animated series that can be found in YouTube’s database, even then that is not always a problem). Videos can be watched in different scales, ranging from a small viewing screen to a full screen cinematic mode, whilst the viewer also has control over the speed and resolution of the video (with the most professional content usually being available in 1080p). Content on YouTube is very varied, from sports to gaming to video blogs to music to cooking shows and so much more, the choice of genre is huge, even more so than in contemporary television or cinema

(29)

(Snickars & Vonderau 2009, 11). However, there are significant differences between content created for television and content created for YouTube. The offered content is usually very short, an uploaded video on YouTube averages a running time of about three minutes (Van Dijck 2013, 153). Also, the kind of content on YouTube moves towards a peculiar list of categories, it usually gears towards “original creations, transformative derivatives, and copied or ripped content” (Van Dijck 2013, 153). Van Dijck offers a term that describes the content found on YouTube, calling it ‘snippets’, as fragments or clips have their own culturally embedded meanings that do not fully fit with the aura of the content. Snippets are mostly singular installations but they can also be serialized through a thematic or narrative

connection. The term covers the short duration of most of the videos, usually ranging from several seconds to a little more than ten minutes (Van Dijcks article mentions that the length of a YouTube video is allowed no longer than ten minutes, but in its most contemporary form this restriction has been lifted). The most important aspect of the term ‘snippets’ however, is the fact that they are meant not as a product, but as a recyclable, meant to be shared, reused or altered (Van Dijck 2013, 153-154).

Most content created by content producers on YouTube is inherently personal. Within every genre offered in YouTube, most content creators gain popularity because of their individual personality (or the personality they portray on camera). Looking at the most subscribed channels on YouTube (disregarding music channels), the most subscribed channels are the ones that offer individuals a place to portray themselves or a character. Two examples are the Swede PewDiePie and the American Markiplier, as they put themselves in front of a camera whilst playing games, showing their reactions and emotions while they banter with their audience. Because of the personal value of the posted content, the content is intrinsically linked to the individual(s) posting his/her/their self-made content. The posting of content on YouTube is a marriage union between the private life of the uploader and the public sphere (Van Dijck 2013, 151). Glen Creeber argues that television's more classical characteristics, liveness, intimacy and hybridity, can now be attributed to a different medium, that of the Internet (Creeber 2011, 596). The aesthetics of the Internet allow for a live connection with people all around the globe, providing a look into their lives, while the aesthetics also allow for a whole range of multitasking across many different media forms such as video, music and news. He argues that the webcam was a tool for intimacy, with its raw capture and its connection to the personal space of the ones being watched. It showed the viewer a depiction of something that felt more real and personal than the cinematic drama of television and film,

(30)

allowing the viewer to watch a "a lone individual in the comfort of his own (generally unobserved) private environment." (Creeber 2011, 597).

The aesthetics of the webcam that Creeber describes have evolved into something Creeber calls the online drama. Offering examples of online drama such as the stories of Emokid21 and Lonelygirl15, he argues that the power of the webcam and the online drama lie in the essential characteristics of the Internet. As described earlier, the webcam aesthetic offers a close and personal feeling of intimacy, a connection with the person being watched, but where the online drama excelled was the active incorporation of intimacy, creating a community that felt engaged with the person while also having the feeling they could influence the story, to get involved (Creeber 2011, 600). While the format of the online drama has become more sophisticated, it still relies heavily on the sense of intimacy, emphasizing on the close-up, the direct address and intimate revelation while focusing on dialogue and the domestic, everyday space over visual spectacle (Creeber 2011, 602-603).

Creeber positions the online drama as a face for the online video aesthetic, where it combines new aesthetics, such as increased participation and interaction, and old aesthetics, such as a sense of liveness and intimacy, into a complex mixture that can be seen as a new page in the history of television (Creeber 2011, 603). In more contemporary forms, platforms such as YouTube are being driven by intimacy, where creators not only provide a source of entertainment, but also show off their 'unique' personality to engage with viewers.

A final important part of content is, naturally, the quality of the content. Throughout the years, content created by users specifically for YouTube has been referred to as low-quality, as amateur, with low aesthetic quality and an irregular theme or format (Müller 2009, 126). While the argument can be made that quality is not the defining aspect of online video, a discourse on the quality of YouTube content definitely exists, as not only participating viewers and fans, but also professionals in the field of media-production discuss what quality means concerning YouTube clips and how that kind of quality is achieved. Quality video-making on YouTube has become a field of its own, fueled by educative endeavors by industry-professionals, the wishes of the viewing mass and the aesthetic form of YouTube that promotes discussion and grading (liking/disliking) (Müller 2009, 129-130). Content creators should be aware of traditional media mechanics, such as proper lighting, audio, clear video, whilst their video should be short, entertaining and from a personal perspective

(Müller 2009, 131-134). What Müller’s article makes clear is that quality has become more and more important concerning YouTubian content, because quality attracts views. Because

Audiovisions: YouTube as a new page in the evolution of audio-visual media.