I realize in my last YouTube research post, I didn't focus too much on the academics behind it or curation and how the video site integrates that. I guess that's an example of posting our drafts and research while in progress - my post wasn't really about curation, even though that's what I said I did in my title! So here I'm going to look at the use of playlists and how that curates content.
YouTube adds a visual to the literal. There's a difference between reading a "how to" book or Wikihow and watching a "how to" video (what's more fun when learning to tie a tie, this guy with nice music in the background or pictures that look like they were drawn in the 90s?).There's something more than just reading about Marshall McLuhan and watching his interviews and see him talking about what he's writing (I say Marshall McLuhan because I've been researching him for our book project). As a visual learner, I think that's why YouTube not only has success in the pop culture aspect of the digital world, but the academic world as well.
I just want to point out quickly some different ways Youtube curates content before talking about playlists and academics: the suggested videos on the side about what you're interested in, tags on videos, annotations that include links in videos to related topics, and view count (including likes and dislikes) all curate content. MarketingProf’s Chief Content Officer Ann Handley said "content curation is the act of continually identifying, selecting and sharing the best and most relevant online content and other online resources (and by that I mean articles, blog posts, videos, photos [etc]) on a specific subject to match the needs of a specific audience." So for YouTube, we find reliable sources based on us watching certain videos, the cookies of our searches on the computer that websites analyze to help suggest content to view, the tags we search and the YouTubers we deem reliable after giving them our attention.
So what are the good ways in which YouTube has promoted academic content, or at least authoritative content? It preserves content, for one thing. When I was searching Marshall McLuhan, one of the first things that popped up were playlists made by random people (without lots of subscribers or views) collecting his interviews and putting them all into one list. So how did I pick one playlist over another? And what gives these YouTubers with hardly any views or followers rights over another? Well for one thing - these playlist creators spent enough free time to make a playlist on their own about Marshall McLuhan. If they didn't care, do you think they'd waste time putting a playlist together? I wouldn't. Also: by looking at the titles and video icons, I can tell which interviews are actually about the subject I'm researching and which aren't. Plus all these videos are interviews and content right from television or radio stations and put right into a video. Can't get more reliable than a video of the actual author himself. So what improvements can be made to create reliability behind curation and content?
I'm not really sure I have an answer to that yet. I had a brief thought that if profiles on YouTube were more important to look at than the actual videos, the people behind the uploads would be more reliable. But you know...I don't think that's true. Part of this class is about finding what's on the internet and deciding what's good content vs the anthologies the rest of our classes require us to read because that's "reliable and scholarly." I don't know anything about the three or five or ten anthology writers with expertise and doctorates to make them more reliable than the video upload or blog post. And to be honest, I'd much prefer to spend my time reading something that motivates people enough to create a video response to a book or write a blog post or create a playlist of everything their favorite author has made an appearance in. There is something raw and real about people with pure intent and interest in something. It's more personal to research the every day person writing/vlogging/etc about something that interests them than reading a 5000 paged book with big words and a hundred patents and twelve editions. And in the end, one person making a video or post about something they care about makes them more than ordinary. It makes them an active participant in something greater. It involves them in a community of learning that unfortunately many universities and schools are too scared to find useful yet.
But times are changing just as the digital world is. Maybe we'll stop being book snobs and be all-media-accepting some day.
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