Video Cultures Media Technology and Everyday Creativity

Buckingham, David & Willette, Rebekah. (2009). Basingstoke, UK : Palgrave Macmillan

Web introduction---
Over the past decade, the video camcorder has become a commonplace household object. The rise of YouTube and other video sharing sites has made it significantly easier to distribute amateur video productions, and national broadcasters are increasingly interested in 'user-generated content' and the work of so-called 'citizen journalists'. For some, this growth in access to video production is part of a wider democratisation of media, and the emergence of a much more participatory media culture. However, others argue that such practices amount to little more than a trivial family pastime, that does little if anything to challenge the power of the established mass media. This book explores the diversity of 'video cultures' in contemporary Britain through a series of case studies ranging from citizen journalists to amateur pornographers, and from teenage pranksters to elderly members of video-making clubs. Through its discussion of specific video-making practices, the book raises broader issues about key themes in contemporary cultural studies, including creativity, social capital, identity and technology.

A Commonplace Art? Understanding Amateur Media Production (Buckingham, David, 23-50)

Buckingham rightly pointed out that the growing popularity of amateur video-making has been generally neglected by academic researchers. More recent research trend is focused on the 'domestication' of technology (p. 23), which is inclusion of technology in the fabric of domestic life, yet the focus is placed on equipment, but not what people do with video cameras in the home, Buckingham argued.

In his review, studies around amateur-filmmaking took the form of home mode production, yet Buckingham pointed out that home mode video has not been explored in it own rights.

Buckingham looked at Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller's The Pro-Am Revolution (2004), discussing a productive blurring of boundaries and a new breed of amateurs nowadays. On the other hand, Andrew Keen (2007) attributed the proliferation of participatory media (such as blogs, wikis) to the 'death of culture', in which nothing can be trusted and everything is left in the 'digital forest of mediocrity' influenced by the internet.

** Keen, A. (2007) The Cult of the Amateur. London: Nicholas Brealey.

Concerning the development of participatory media, Buckingham finds the notion of vernacular creativity central to the development, arguing for the connections of creativity and everyday life.

Buckingham discussed multiple video cultures; home mode is one of them. In some cases, quality matters, while others prioritize contents; to some, public exhibition and dialogue is important, others , irrelevant. [Buckingham does not limit home mode strictly to the home movies.

Buckingham pointed out the potential for empowerment of ordinary people as a recurring feature of popular discourse about amateur filmmaking. But sharply wrote, "Yet, until fairly recently, there has been little evidence that any such democratisation has transpired" (p. 41). In this light, Laurie Ouellette (1995) stated that ‘the people’ are anything but free to create their own programming.

*Ouellette, L. (1995) ‘Camcorder dos and don’ts: popular discourses on amateur
video and participatory television’. The Velvet Light Trap. 36: 33–44.

Reading Jenkins (2006), who argued DIY vernacular culture is pushing mainstream media in new directions and through the network, people create new forms of collective intelligence and access greater collective power to media producers, Buckingham astutely argued:

"[C]ontemporary media often depend upon ‘activity’ on the part of consumers, but that does not necessarily mean that consumers are more powerful: activity should not be confused with agency. . . . Furthermore, since such activities are commercially driven, there are likely to be significant inequalities in the extent to which people are able to participate in them – inequalities which, as Jenkins acknowledges, are not simply to do with access to equipment, but also to do with cultural capital and expertise." (p. 43) (see also Jenkins 2007)

Also, Buckingham asserted that Jenkins focused on highly dedicated groups of people, leaving behind the more banal, every day use of media.

*Jenkins, H. (2006) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York:
New York University Press.
Jenkins, H., Clinton, K., Purushotma, R., Robison, A. J. and Weigel, M. (2007) Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. MacArthur Foundation.

Buckingham argued:

"Even so, the political implications of these developments remain to be seen. On one level, it is undoubtedly the case that ‘Web 2.0’ technologies have offered significant new opportunities for communication among already-established radical groups (Clark, 2007) – although one would have to acknowledge that they have also served this function for extreme right-wing groups, and indeed conspiracy theorists and lunatics of all kinds. The case that remains to be made here is whether such technologies are genuinely ‘empowering’, and in what ways. . . . It is likely that
those who make the most use of such facilities are also well provided with other such opportunities in other areas of their lives; and so these technologies might in fact serve to widen the gaps between participants and non-participants rather than to reduce them. Furthermore, it is entirely possible that the apparent enthusiasm for ‘user-generated content’ in the contemporary media industries is little more than tokenistic and superficial." (p. 44)

[THIS IS IMPORTANT. PV delves into the area in which 'ordinary' people lack such facilities, not responding to the participatory culture that emerge among certain group of people. 'Participation divide' ]

*Clark, J. (2007) Big Dreams, Small Screens: Online Video for Public Knowledge and
Action. Washington, D.C.: Center for Social Media, American University.


Power to the People? The Past and Future of Amateur Video (D. Buckingham, 230-238)

"Indeed, one inevitable consequence of the growing accessibility of video technology (as described in our first chapter) is that video is rapidly becoming a mundane, even banal medium. As video camera phones become as ubiquitous as snapshot cameras, and as video is routinely distributed online, the sense of video-making and appearing on video as special experiences – even as in some way glamorous or empowering – is bound to disappear." (p. 237)

In short, for Buckingham, amateur video-making is a form of popular representation and he called for sustained attention to its complex and sometimes paradoxical practice.