Diversity and Cultural Citizenship
Because of the extensive commercialization done by mainstream media networks on the video sharing platform in recent years, it’s easy to forget that Youtube was first created as a place where regular people could just share their videos with other regular people. Despite this charmingly simple concept, Youtube has proven to be a monumental force in the world of media in the fairly short amount of time it has been around. One of the largest and arguably most important impacts of Youtube on the media world is that it gave diverse groups of people a safe place to use their voices, as many of them didn’t have one before. This has proven particularly beneficial to minority groups like women, religious minorities, ethnic minorities, and LGBTQ people. By giving them a place to share their individualistic lives, experiences and cultures, Youtube has helped these minorities connect with one another and form communities, which for many, has changed the way we define our cultural citizenship. Essentially, the individualistic/personalized experience that Youtube offers has in turn allowed people to connect with those similar to them, whether that be through identification with a specific religion, culture, or sexuality, or even something as simple as a shared hobby. Nowadays people can define their cultural citizenship through almost any characteristic, and with Youtube’s personalized algorithms bringing people with similar characteristics together, it enables almost anyone to experience a shared sense of collectivism regarding their cultural identity, which is beneficial to them. There is still more to be said regarding the diversity that Youtube enables by encouraging anyone and everyone to express themselves on the video sharing site. By doing so, Youtube has allowed a diverse array of ideas, opinions, and cultures to enter the wider public discourse, and it exposes many people to new ones for the first time. This has many positive impacts, for example it has enabled healthy discussion regarding political and social issues on an unprecedented scale, and has also helped previously taboo topics enter the mainstream of civil discourse. However, due to the plethora of ideas being presented on the website, it is often the most radical and controversial ones that gain the most attention. This has led to a radicalization in the opinions of many Youtube creators, as they are rewarded for these opinions through views and engagement, which can in turn rub-off on the Youtuber’s audiences. If left unchecked this can have dangerous repercussions, and perhaps Youtube needs to rethink its approach regarding its encouragement of radicalism and controversy. Regardless though, the countless positive impacts that Youtube has on encouraging diversity and influencing/transforming cultural citizenship cannot be ignored. Globalisation and Localisation When used accordingly, Youtube has the potential to aid globalisation and the subsequent interaction of different cultures, countries, and peoples in a truly unprecedented way. The globally reaching website can dissolve national borders, allowing the interaction and fusion of different people in a way not possible until recently. For example, while silly, the “Gangnam Style” dance that went viral on Youtube about a decade ago managed to peak many Americans’ interest in Asian culture by giving them their first taste of it, and a lot of American content has proven to be popular overseas as well. This globalisation and cultural fusion was much more normal in the early days of the website, however, due to Youtube’s recent efforts to provide a personalized/localized experience for its users, as well as pressure to appease foreign governments that are hesitant to adopt the American website, the site is not living up to its true potential as a tool for globalisation. To elaborate, Youtube has utilized a lot of localized geo-filters to give foreign users an experience that is tailored to their specific country. Youtube’s implementation of this feature is very understandable, as a user is more likely to watch and enjoy content that features their specific language and culture. There are definitely positive effects to the use of geo-filters, however, problems arise when they prove to be a hindrance to the globalized potential of Youtube to its users. This is because the geo-filters often lock users in localized “filter bubbles”, in which they are only shown content from their specific country/area. Similarly, Youtube has been known to block/censor videos to appease the governments of countries with more strict censorship laws. This vastly limits the globalised potential of Youtube as a tool for the spread of information and interaction of different countries on a global scale, and Youtube needs to be held accountable when it chooses to do such things, because as of now the company is not required to provide any explanation for its censorship actions. Youtube as Cultural Archive One of the many unintended impacts of Youtube is that it has come to serve as a very important cultural archive for contemporary history. Amateur archivists have worked tirelessly to recover and restore decades-old footage, and make it available for anyone to easily watch on the platform. This has had many positive impacts, for example older people being able to relive the nostalgia of their youth by watching footage they thought had been lost forever with time. Similarly, because Youtube has been around for the vast majority of the 21st century, it has come to serve as an immensely important cultural archive that documents pop culture and historical events over recent years. Also, the nature of Youtube provides for a unique mix of historical footage that is from a more broad perspective (i.e. historical footage uploaded by archivists), and a more personal one (i.e. footage uploaded by regular people like home videos or vlogs). It is worth noting that the creators of Youtube never intended for or expected their video sharing platform to become the valuable cultural archive that it is. This raises the question of whether or not Youtube has the moral responsibility to honor its place as a cultural archive, regardless of whether the videos on the platform go against the company’s personal interests. To elaborate, Youtube has been known to take down videos of archive footage because other companies that originally owned the footage claim those videos are copyright infringements. Youtube also tends to remove videos of historical current events if they contain sensitive or violent subject matter. While this is a reasonable response for a company, it can be argued that at this point Youtube is more than just a company, as its importance as a cultural archive has already been established. Because of all this, the answer to whether or not Youtube has a moral responsibility to serve as a cultural archive is less clear, and it also opens up the question of why we’ve become so reliant on a simple video sharing website for archiving our culture and history.
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