Facebook VS Google

Google’s ex-CEO Eric Schmidt laid out his “gang of four”  of the high-tech global conglomerates – Facebook, Amazon, Apple and of course his very own Google, or at least it WAS his own.

Surprisingly, the older generation of silicon valley giants such as Microsoft and IBM have been left out of this list, with the exception of Apple, paving a way for a new technological revolution, where google wants to organise information about you and where Facebook wants to share this information with other friends. Google and Facebook then have become the face of digital capitalism, paying tribute to the rising realisation of information as the prime commodity of the 21st century.

It is no surprise then, noting Schmidt’s previous involvement with Apple, and Facebook’s previous partnerships with Microsoft, that the two media giants aren’t exactly on the friendliest of terms to put it lightly. Actually let’s just get this straight, Google doesn’t like Facebook…at all.Recently, Facebook escalated the drama by hiring a PR company to defame and demonise Google (dog move Zuckerberg…).

Image can be found at: http://www.kidsil.net/tag/google-social-center/

Despite this drama, Schmidt admitted that the primary failure, and the ultimate success of Facebook was attributed to the case of the online identity, and the power this had in linking the needs and wants of the unaware consumer, to the services of the provider. The Social networks “identity link structure” was enhanced by the use of powerful tools such as the “like” button.

Google wants to copy this now.

To quote Swisher: “It seems like Google is chasing Facebook on a lot of things”.

Amidst all the mess and confusion of a technological age which is increasingly focusing on the paradigm between identity and social networking, google has decided to add a button to “enhance user experience”, but more likely to find a stronger way of correlating, storing and organising data about the user.

This button, the “+1” button, lets you share your search results with your friends, while you are looking at it, rather than sending an inpersonal little blue link.

Remind you of anything? Oh yeah that’s right, Facebook’s “like” button, where it allows your friends to like things that you have liked yourself.

Given the animosity between the two personalities, it’s not surprise that the attempted partnership between Google and Facebook ended in shambles. Schmidt pointed out that a partnership could improve Google’s dominance as a search engine, when it was able to access the amount of data and interpersonal information which was stored on the social networking site Facebook. Facebook’s reward from this deal seemed less promising and beneficial, and the substantial growth of Facebook doesn’t look like it’s going to slow down either.

Google is now chasing Facebook in a game of tag, and until Facebook decides to slow down, Google is hoping for an alternative social networking site who are actually willing to collaborate with Google.

So, what’s next?

Image can be found at:  computer.howstuffworks.com/web-303.htm

So we had web 1.0, we live in a modern culture which is predominantly governed and lived through web 2.0, what’s next for the world wide web.

Well, if you are able to work out the arithmetic pattern, then yes! you’ve guessed it. Web 3.0

It may be a bit hard to think of how we can use the internet to further our daily experience, but web 3.0 pushes technology, and the integration of the cyber with the natural, to a new heightened level.

The concept of the Semantic web, which was coined by Tim Berners-Lee, is often a defining factor in the attribution to web 3.0. This concept parallels closely with that of artificial intelligence, whereby a machine or the world wide web in this case, is able to interpret information and actually understand what this information is emblematic of. This would bridge the technological gap between man and machine, creating an interpersonal bond between the web and the user.

Let’s put this into action.

So i boot up my computer and open my firefox version 99999999999, allowing me to access web 3.0. I type in the search bar: I’m hungry and i want to watch a funny movie.

My friend mr web 3.0 is able to compile a list of places that i have been to and select a place which is closest to the cinema, and then also compile a list of movies that i would like, based on the personality built upon the information that i have sent to the internet (eg. search terms).

In other words, web 3.0 is someone that knows you, and can offer services specific to you by actually interpreting data and organising it in a friendly, compatible manner.

This might seem pretty sweet, it’s like having an extra brain to decide something for you. Way better than flipping a coin, pfft! However it means the exacerbation of controversial issues already starting to emerge as web 2.0 reaches maturity. Privacy and security is of primary concern, as it is actively being monitored and processed in order to fulfill it’s role as a “semantic web”, and compilations of data which may very well provide an accurate profile of the user are unavoidable in this process. This semantic web then often requires a forfeiting of a degree of online privacy, or at least calls for the redefinition of privacy in relation to the world wide web.

Be careful!

The prominence of Facebook is truly shown when we assess how integrated our social lives are with this network.

I’m mainly talking about social events, where the majority of events we know about are often posted online rather than the traditional physical invite letter.

With this features on Facebook you can actually invite people much more easier with less hassle, and you can be sure they will get the event info too.

This girl in Germany though, accidentally felt the full brunt of a public Facebook event when she forgot to tag it as private instead of public.

She actually had to flee her own house, which was meant to be the site of a few close friends gathering. A few friends quickly turned into 15,000 people confirming they were attending, with 1500 actually committing to their word and showing up.

100 police officers, some on horses and some on foot were required to keep the crowd under control, while dozens were arrested for rowdy behaviour.

Next time you post an event or picture on Facebook, just check who is going to see it, or you might have 1500 people showing up at your front door.

Wikipedia – why do teachers hate it?

Image can be found at: www.brisbanegrammar.com/blogs/library/?p=290

Referencing wikipedia, or throwing it down into your bibliography section is a no-go zone for teachers and tutors as they constantly hammer home the apparent fact that wikipedia is prone to unreliability and false information. Yet for some reason it is often the basis or the starting point of our research.

This reason is very apparent. Information is structured cohesively, often in a chronological order, while utilising indexicality through the use of hyperlinks. Material on wikipedia is generally very relevant, and provide a very clear and somewhat overall picture of what the user is trying to understand, although quite often this material can be explored very deeply and involves a strong degree of complexity.

For me, a student, Wikipedia is the academics dream resource. One that is readily accessible and contains a plethora of viewpoints and pieces of miscellaneous information, structured and assembled into a nice piece of literature which i can read and utilise in my studies.

Although Wikipedia is truly a platform for user-generated material, it is not, contrary to popular material, a platform where anyone can post anything and get away with it. While users may offer new pieces of information, the information which is added is also under the scrutiny of an entire population of users. While it is understandable to distrust the material on wikipedia due to it’s freedom, this freedom is constantly under surveillance, providing security to the material which is already uploaded, and ensuring the integrity of such material.

While i was studying the French Lieutenant’s Woman in literature, our teacher sought to study the reliability of wikipedia as a source, so we altered the information on the birthplace of the author, John Fowles. Our intentionally misleading “fact” was corrected within three minutes. While you may question the nature of the experiment as it was done by a bunch of high school boys, this notion of security is enhanced by a study done by IBM, which concludes that “vandalism is usually repaired extremely quickly — so quickly that most users will never see its effects” and that Wikipedia had “surprisingly effective self-healing capabilities”.Studies have shown that Wikipedia has roughly the same level of accuracy as Encyclopaedia Britannica, while Wikipedia has already started to be cited in journal articles, particularly in the fields of medicine and cancer research.

Wikipedia, it seems, is a congregation of many sources, into a single and easily accessible website, and while it may be a new development in the world of research, more credit should be given to it as a point of information reference.

Piracy, we all do it

Medosch argues that: “piracy, despite being an entirely commercially motivated activity carried out in black or grey markets, fulfills culturally important functions” (Reader, page 318).

Discuss ONE of these arguments while giving an example online.

 

Image by koenmasgurl88, can be found at: http://media.photobucket.com/image/piracy+/koenmasgurl88/motivational%2520posters/piracy-1.jpg

In 1997, Tim Berners-Lee released the following statement that “The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect”. However it seems as the online community shifts closer and closer to the political realm of cyber-democracy, and the global economy pushed capitalism to higher levels, the universality and the accessibility of the internet has somehow shrunken and diminished. The liberal and sovereign nature of the internet, and the material that is found on it no longer resides in the quarrel between artists and writers, but between lawyers and radicals, as Medosch(2008, p.73) argues, and thus has taken a tangent turn into a debate fuelled by monetary interest in the capitalist society.

Medosch (2008, p.79) argues that the seller of pirated movie CD’s in China, is in fact the “good” pirate, and thus implies that the notion of piracy can have positive effects in the culturalisation of the masses. Pirated material provides an easier much more universal way of accessing the material, which would previously be either unaffordable, or simply unavailable to a large portion of the public. In this respect, piracy and illegal distribution by “anarchist entrepreneurs” serve to bridge the distance between the “digital divide” which exists between richer nations such as the U.S and poorer ones such as China. In the latter case, Medosch (2008, p.81) points out that due to the nations political stance of closed-off communism and limited range of civil freedoms, pirated material “serves to provide access to the products of mainstream commercial movie industries, may it be Hollywood, Bollywood or Korea, it also fills gaps in provision and provides access to art movies and more difficult fare which does not get official distribution for whichever reasons”. Piracy then can be traced back to earlier times,  be attributed to the spread of political ideology through the print production of pamphlets, broadcasting the revolutionary ideas of Rousseau and Marx, liberating the people from an oppressive authority. Both examples highlight how piracy can be a benefactor in the educating of the people. This notion is enhanced by Medosch’s (2008, 0.81) propagation that piracy acts as a “counter-hegemonic force by giving them [the people] a chance to empower themselves through obtaining information, knowledge and sophisticated cultural productions”.

A key concept I think which must be addressed is the association between works of art and the monetary value it holds, in  what Medosch (2008, p.81) describes as a “grossly distorted world of global ‘free trade’”. While she confesses herself that the link between finance and ownership is something that is inalienable, she discards it as something of minimal and basic importance, highlighting that work, under ideal conditions, should exist in the public domain subject to what she jokingly calls the “free and creative Armin license”. The obsession between money and ownership then arises from the “neo-liberal revolution of Reagan and Thatcher [where] the financial value has become the single dominant one, with increasing disregard for all other values”(Medosch, 2008). Rather she corrects this by highlighting the non-aligning correlation between the use-value of a good and its monetary value. My views strongly concur with those of Medosch, as cultural and artistic value cannot be owned, rather these values must be shared within the public domain, in contrary to the belief of radical copyrights.

Piracy for me is something that represents the achievement of the utopian ideals of Tim Berners-Lee and his vision for the world wide web to be a public arena for the sharing of information with minimal, if not any cost. If indeed piracy does serve the functions of education, empowering through information and the distribution of knowledge to create more culturally aware citizens, this service shouldn’t be mandatorily bought, but should be part of the basic human rights, and the basic conditions of the world wide web to create a more educated and egalitarian society.

References:

Medosch. A, 2008, ‘Paid in full: Copyright, piracy and real currency of cultural production’ in Deptforth Tv Diaries II: Pirate Strategies”, London, Deptforth TV

The Wikipedia game – a tribute to web 2.0

Now back in my wasted youth, high school education wasn’t really one of my prime priorities.

Subsequently, classes in the computer labs were dubbed “bludge periods”.

One of the games i liked to play on the computer was, as i’m sure you have all heard of, the “Wikipedia game”. This was not only a game of wit and intelligence of the highest level, but also had it’s beauty embedded in the fact that you actually looked like you were doing research.

My friends and i would play this game right in front of the teacher. The perfect crime.

However, due to the study of net communications, upon some deep and insightful pondering of this game, i realise that it is truly a tribute to the interconnectivity and the non-linearity of the internet. The game reflected the indexicality and the flexibility of one of the worlds biggest user-generated information providers, while providing a great way to procrastinate during time which could be spend productively.

Video can be found at www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIbSmKLT7wY

For those who do not know how to play, the instructions are simple.

1. Open wikipedia and select a language of your choice

2. Click on random page

3. Pick a topic/object/anything that comes to mind

4. Try and get onto that wikipedia page, only through access of the links (typing or using the search option is cheating)

The person who gets onto the page of that topic/object/anything that came to mind first, wins.

The Fame Game

Week 9:

 

A) Burgess and Green argue that: ordinary people who become celebrities through their own creative efforts “remain within the system of celebrity native to, and controlled by, the mass media” (Reader, page 269).

Stardom, popularity, fame and money. Albeit quite materialistic, these terms represent a lifestyle that many of us dreamt of, but until the emergence of YouTube, had little realistic hope that we would achieve them. YouTube and online broadcasting of material that is both audio and visual, bridges that gap exists between the ordinary citizen and that of the “celebrity”, quite literally translating to the eased accessibility of fame due to the broadcasting power of the Internet. However, Couldry(2003, p.86) agues that in this dichotomy can only be achieved when the ordinary citizen gains access to the modes of representation of the mass media, making the transition from what Couldry calls “ordinary worlds” to what he refers as “media worlds”. This view, supported by Burgess and Green(2009, p.269) are suggestive that the system of celebrity within YouTube, a seemingly alternative platform for the media, is submissive and ultimately determined by the mainstream media.

While the mainstream media does play a limited role in the formation of the celebrity on the online culture that is YouTube, to submit to this viewpoint would be to ignore YouTube’s core essence as a platform for the amateur and the egalitarian ideals of accessibility to create material which is made available and broadcasted on a wide scale. Avid and culturally aware users of YouTube would agree that the YouTube culture and the mainstream culture of celebrity are vastly separated and distinguished, and although both embody the same concepts of “popularity” and “fame”, the idea of celebrity is very much based on divergent streams of merit (or demerit).

To highlight the clarification between YouTube and the mainstream media, and thus undermine Burgess and Greene’s argument that YouTube and mainstream media are explicitly intertwined, one must examine the very nature of the two. YouTube made it possible for anyone with an Internet connection to upload and distribute video’s on a scale which transcended the boundaries of mainstream media, where a worldwide audience could watch it within a few minutes. The concept of celebrity then, for a Youtuber, was redefined by this notion of accessibility. Where mainstream media celebrity status typically thrives on the fusion of sensationalism, scandal, and talent, the YouTube notion of celebrity became a much more “homegrown” and unspectacular one, where “its own, internal system of celebrity [are] based on and reflecting values that don’t necessarily match up neatly with those of the ‘dominant’ media”(Lanham 2006, pp. 56-57). For example whereas mainstream media would define someone like John Mayer as a celebrity, the YouTube notion of celebrity could be applied to the example of Chris Crocker (the “leave Britney alone!” guy). In Chris Crocker’s case, the lack of mass media influence on the notion of celebrity is extremely noticeable.

Video can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kHmvkRoEowc

This pays tribute to Lanham’s(2006, p.134) findings that “it is not self-evident that these initiatives have as much impact on the Youtube ‘economy of attention’”, signifying that YouTube is very much a media community of it’s own, with stray and limited similarities with that of the mainstream media. The clear distinction between a YouTube celebrity, and the mainstream celebrity can be manifested in the general publics “paparazzi” kind of obsession/attitude to certain individuals. Where a mainstream celebrity such as Brad Pitt is constantly under media scrutiny based on the label of “celebrity”, a YouTube celebrity is rarely ever under the same amount of attention. You never see someone like Gabe Bondoc on the headlines of a major tabloid magazine, yet his music channel is one of the most subscribed to in the world.

Video can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPTI97FEFns

References:

Burgess.J and Green.J, 2009,YouTube and the mainstream media’ in YouTube: Online and Participatory Culture, Cambridge, Polity Press

Lanham. R, 2006, The economics of attention: style and substance in the age of information, Chicago, University of Chicago press

Couldry. N, 2003, Media Rituals: a critical approach, London, Routledge

Is sharing caring?

Analyse critically the following statement by Mark Zuckerberg while comparing it to privacy issues raised by online social networking collaborative practices:

When people have control of what they share, they are comfortable sharing more.

When people share more, the world becomes more open and connected.

In a more opened and connected world, many of the problems we face together will become easier to solve.

Video can be found at www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWDneu_w_HQ&feature=player_embedded

The popularization of the social network phenomenon Facebook has manifested the current generation of the youth, where our social lives are integrated into the world wide web, and are increasingly becoming more detatched from the physical world where our degree of control and sustainability are more familiarized (Beniger, 1986).  However the paradox that exists between social networking and the concepts of privacy have not been adequately addressed. While social networking requires the user to share information about themselves to promote interest and material, the concepts of privacy demands the autonomous and sovereign control of private information, which may only be accessed at the users discretion. On the platform of the World Wide Web and the unprecedented level of accessibility, the ability of “control” is ultimately compromised.

Information that we share on the Internet, ranging from search terms to actual pictures, are permanent stains on the fabric that is web 2.0. This information cannot be deleted and is stored up by servers despite any means you take, which pertains to the idea that in the hyper-mediated techno-age we live in today, information is the prime commodity (Gane and Beer, 2008, p.100). While I do agree with Zuckerberg’s controversial claim that the rise of facebook parallels with the erosion and ultimately, the destruction of privacy, I do not sympathize with Zuckerberg’s utopian vision of an open society where the private is immersed within the public.

In a study conducted on 64 undergraduate students (who are the prime market of Facebook), it was found that there was a neutral response to the questions “I like to reveal information about myself to others through Facebook;
I trust the people I interact with on Facebook”, however there was a strong disagreement to the claim that “everybody should know everything about everyone else.”(Barnes, 2006) – a vision which is certainly propelled by Zuckerberg.  Where Zuckerberg views privacy as a hindrance or a limitation to the emancipation of the human condition on the world wide web, I tend to agree with Garfinkel’s idea that “Privacy isn’t just about hiding things. It’s about self–possession, autonomy, and integrity” (Garfinkel, 2000, p.4). From this perspective then, there is a limitation of what people are willing to share on social networking sites, and despite Zuckerberg’s claim, sites like Facebook are continuously pushing and digging into area’s of privacy which are deeply and intensely uncomfortable. Information glitches such as mobile phone numbers, current locations, email addresses and residential addresses are pieces of information that we share to others on a social contract of familiarity. The idea that we can be tracked and monitored through the Internet, by the anonymous user is greatly troubling, and parallels to a totalitarian authority on the scale of extremity.

Further thought regarding Zuckerberg’s claim questions how lessened privacy would serve for the creation from a society that is:

a)    More open and connected

And

b)   creating easier resolutions to current problems we face in society

The sharing of private information, in the way that social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace like to exploit for marketing agencies does not make me feel connected anymore to any other user. Rather, the openness that Zuckerberg refers to, increasingly feels like the intrusion of the commercial world on my private world. User-to-user connectivity is not improved in any shape or form, conversely the information we share is subservient on fuelling the gargantuan beast that is the commercial and business industries, and their obsession with materialistic profit.

Moreover, say I was wrong, and that the liberation of private information leads to an open, connected society, I seriously question how such a society would create easier solutions to the problems we face in society. Rather I see this increased accessibility to the most intimate details of ones life as a perversion and invasion of personal space, and aids the direct threat of notions such as cyber-stalking and children being exposed to pedophiles.

References:

Barnes.S, 2006, A privacy paradox: Social networking in the United States, First Monday, [online]. Available at: <http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/1394/1312/#note27&gt; (Accessed 29/04/2011)

Beniger, J.R, 1986. The control revolution: Technological and economic origins of the information society. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Gane.N and Beer.D, ‘Interactivity’, in New Media: The key concepts, Oxford: Berg, 2008

Garfinkel. S, 2000. Database nation: The death of privacy in the 21st century. Sebastopol, Calif.: O’Reilly

Bloggers Vs Mainstream media

Week 4:

Russell (et al.) compares elite media and institutions with bloggers and ponders the following question: “Do bloggers, with their editorial independence, collaborative structure and merit-based popularity more effectively inform the public?” (Reader, page 136). Do you agree? Use examples to illustrate your point of view.

Russell (2008, p.111) argues correctly that the shift into web 2.0 challenges the social paradigm that exists between producers and consumers of the mass media, as consumers quite suddenly find themselves in a position of power. This emergence of the produser drastically alters the course of media theory, as the audience has the potential to become the actor. This movement is summed up by Benkler (2006, p.94) as “the beginning of a shift away from commercial media and centrally organized knowledge production toward non-market and distributed production”. While I tend to agree with this claim, I find that Hagel and Browns (2005, p.10) contention that “user-generated culture draws from and threatens commercial media” to be a simplification and a demonizing way of characterizing this current media phenomenon. Conversely, I would argue that instead of posing a structural threat to mainstream media in terms of news distribution, UGC compliments it by offering a plethora of viewpoints and opinions. Think of user-generated information as op-eds or opinion sections of a newspaper, which provide a vacuous space in which questioning, reflection and argument is encouraged. This vast expanse of viewpoints then liberates news content, ranging from the mainstream to the alternative. Thus, rather than “the edge becoming the core”, as Brown (2005, p.10) puts it, I would argue that the edge is integrated into the core to form a new media entity.

A key aspect and an integral foundation stone of Russell’s glorification of the triumph of online blogs over traditional mainstream media outlets is the phenomenon of “participation” and the “interactive” nature of the blogs and web 2.0 itself. The average user, Russell (2008 p.66), argues, are “actively resisting the content and practices of mainstream news, partly by using it as a launching pad to offer contesting points of view and alternative practices”. While this claim may be true, Russell only manages to capture a small percentage of the online community, and creates a greatly misleading generalization of the masses to be active, and culturally aware participants on the web. This can be summed by my Van Djick, (2009, p.44) who corrects Russell by pointing out that “it’s a great leap to presume that the availability of the digital networked technologies turns everyone into active participants”. As a Guardian reporter observes, the general rule of them suggests that ‘if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will “interact” with it and the other 89 will just view it (Van Djick, 2009, p.44). This elitist and selective nature of “participation” on the Internet means that blogs or any other user generated material mimics the original top-to-down, centralized convoluted power flow of information of the mainstream media. As Clay Shirley (2003) put’s it, “these inequalities are not a failure of the system but rather an inevitable side effect of freedom of choice”, that is to say that “while new media networks may well provide a platform where all voices can be heard, not all voices attract equal amounts of attention”.

Most importantly perhaps, is the efficiency and the accessibility of mainstream media which promotes it as a dominant force in news and information distribution. While Russell (2008, p.123) provides the example of the French riots and the speed at which blogs can transfer this information, there are always questions of authenticity, legitimacy and personal bias. Similarly the events of the French riot highlight the fragmented and incoherent nature of news blogging, whereby the elements previously mentioned are interwoven into a variety of stories that are told at different times and from different perspectives. This pays testament to the notion that “the individualized new-media environment will serve less to weave society together than to break it apart”. While Benkler (2006, p.95) suggests that the “variation and diversity of knowledge, time, availability, insight and experience as well as vast communications and information resources” make peer-to-peer news blogging a dominant form of news distribution, aren’t these qualities already possessed and refined by mainstream media institutions already, except that they are more developed and shaped in a coherent structure?

References

Shirky. C, 2003, Power laws, weblogs and inequality in Networks, economics and culture, [online] available at < http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html> [accessed 19/05/2011]

Benkler. Y, 2006, The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom, New Haven , Yale University Press

Hagel. J and Brown J.S,  2005, The only sustainable edge: Why business strategy depends on productive friction and dynamic specialization, Cambridge, Harvard Business School Press

Russel. A, Ito. M, Richmond. T, Tuters. M, 2008, ‘Culture: Media convergence and networked culture’, in Kazys Varnelis (ed.) Networked Publics, MA, MIT Press

Van Djick, 2009, ‘Users Like You? Theorising Agency in User-Generated Content’, Media Culture and Society, Sage publications

Youtube, Metube

While discussing YouTube, José van Dijck argues that the site’s interface influences the popularity of videos through ranking tactics that promote popular favourites (Reader, page 94). How do ranking tactics impact on the formation online ‘communities’?

The emergence of web 2.0, the platform on which Youtube runs, ushers in an unprecedented convulsion of anarchy, chaos and violent revolution with regards to previous forms of one-dimensional power distributions within the cyber space. Hierarchy and all it stands for, is replaced with heterarchy, while the foundations of traditional structures of producer-to-consumer have been destroyed and replaced with an architecture that is scalable and egalitarian (O’Shaughnessy and Stadler, p.117). Jenkins (2006, p.24) is correct in highlighting the sudden adjacent shift in audience perception and action, “empowered by these new technologies, occupying a space at the intersection between old and new media, are demanding the right to participate within the culture”. While the variance and definition of such “participation” can be further scrutinized and questioned, no doubt can be cast on our participatory presence on the world wide web. In fact, participation and “interactivity” within the context of web 2.0 is perhaps the key driver and fuel which propels and perpetuates the existence of user-generated sites such as Youtube and Facebook (O’Shaughnessy and Stadler, p.115).

Van Djick (2009)  questions the democratic nature of Youtube, arguing that it does not stay true to the utopian ideals of new media and new technology which Berners-Lee heavily accentuates. Rather than being allowed the freedoms of choice, “Youtube users are steered toward a particular video by means of coded mechanism which heavily rely on promotion and ranking tactics”(Djick, 2009, p.45). That is to say, rather than allowing user freedom, the ranking system of Youtube is emblematic of the remnants of the rigid and strict conformities of the old media, that is the arbitrary and “unwittingly” absolute enforcement of control of what the public are able to access. For Djick this is a perversion of the users rights, and while such ranking tactics may be employed for financial and profitable purposes, the psychological and sociological ramifications are detrimental, whereby communities are artificially created, rather than it being a natural creation of shared interests and tastes.

While there are certainly some unquestionable truths to his claim, I pertain to believe that the ranking system cannot be scrutinized and demonized so far as to say it is a forceful control mechanism in our online social community, rather it serves a much more simpler purpose in regards to the question of “relevance”. While it is true that the ranking system may coerce us to follow a certain path into a certain community, more often users will follow through with the most popular link because it is the most relevant and accurate in identifying their search terms. Much like Google’s search algorithm provides users with the most appropriate of information, the same concept can be applied to Youtube, yet there are no accusations over the Google search engine’s role as an enforcer of community and culture, nor is this algorithm complained about as an arbitrary enforcer of our membership within niche communities. Youtube’s ranking system is thus a means of providing user-compatibility on a user-friendly platform, in which we are linked to the most appropriate and relevant material we searched for.

While the Youtube ranking system may be guilty of narrowing our participation in a varietal cornucopian of online communities, it us up to the user whether they want to follow Youtube’s suggestions. Claims that YouTube is unquestionably guilty of such stifling of our online freedom are then illegitimate, as they do consider the factors of optionality and choice.

References:

 

Jenkins. H, 1992, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Van Djick, 2009, ‘Users Like You? Theorising Agency in User-Generated Content’, Media Culture and Society, Sage publications

O’Shaughnessy. M and Stadler. J, 2008, Media and Society, South Melbourne, Oxford University Press