A blog about digital rhetoric that asks the burning questions about electronic bureaucracy and institutional subversion on the Internet.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Where Is Governor Moonbeam?
Last week California governor Jerry Brown announced his veto of the state budget in a "Budget Veto" YouTube video. The governor opens his direct address to the voter with a moment of flourishing penmanship before her pushes a document away to give some straight talk about the state's need to address its fiscal crisis responsibly. The camera then zooms in on the seventy-three-year-old politician during the entirety of the sixty-second clip.
Delivering this kind of stern talking-to can be politically disastrous, as it was for former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, after he gave his extremely unpopular 1977 Address to the Nation on Energy. But Brown now can refer to a number of rhetorical models, as legislators now speak directly to constituents frequently in the YouTube venue in carefully studied scenes of executive authority and public trust.
He probably should avoid the style of unpopular UC President Mark Yudof, whose UCofficeofpresident YouTube channel often garners far more "dislikes" than "likes" when Yudof takes a starring role, particularly when he spoke about state employee furloughs here and here. (Lately the channel features other spokespeople for the University of California system.) What's wrong exactly with Yudof's YouTube persona isn't entirely clear, but he does have a tendency to look down as he speaks, and he is likely perceived as a "fatcat" who fills up the frame with his bulk. Governor Brown chose not to emulate the Obama White House YouTube style that emanates cool and reserve. In these videos the U.S. president never appears behind a desk, and the luxurious domestic spaces of the White House are often noticeable in the background. Naturally, the famously frugal Brown could never highlight the opulence of the governor's mansion, and his desire to seem like a decisive chief executive probably makes the desk a necessary prop. Brown's handlers also decided to forgo achieving the intimacy of a close-up with an actual cut, a signature feature of Obama addresses; instead the governor seems to favor a continuous zoom that seems to emphasize Brown's relentless intensiveness and his unblinking engagement with the viewer.
At least Brown avoided the theatrics of his predecessor, now disgraced former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who actually brandished a knife in his budget-cutting online speech and appeared flanked by kitschy elephants to signify his loyalty to the machismo of the Republican party. In speaking to his Twitter followers and praising their input, Schwarzegger even used his dog as a prop once. It is worth noting that Schwarzenegger eventually approached the genre of the online address with more gravitas in imitation of the Obama style, as his farewell video indicates.
Although Brown has only posted six YouTube videos, he does seem to be aware of how the platform functions rhetorically. He has refined his style on GovernorBrown's YouTube channel, since he posted his first Governor Brown Checks In With the People of California video in which Brown seems to be burning the midnight oil in a scene shot in the dead of night in which his cluttered desk establishes his interest in researching the state's budget problems, which seems to be contained in large white binders. (There is also a weird outlier in this group of addresses that opens with Brown's disembodied head on a TV screen.)
It's important to remember that Brown announced his candidacy in a YouTube video that thematized his straightforward unvarnished rhetorical style with a wall of unfinished brick in an office that even lacked bookshelves.
Boy scout and local boy Jason Pitts has become the talk of Santa Monica with his video "Prom?" that has attracted over two hundred thousand views as the likeable teen seranades his potential date with his "Lianna, you're so beautiful refrain." Pitts, his date, and his backup singers were all flown to New York to be on this segment of Good Morning America.
Given that most viral videos that merit TV coverage have jumped over the million view mark, I was surprised to see Pitts recognized by ABC. It wasn't until the hosts mentioned corporate parent Disney and the upcoming release of the movie Prom that the media synergy made sense.
Of course, some might say that I'm likely to be cynical about teen festivities, given that my own prom date went on to direct Saw 3D, but it's far to say that network TV wants YouTube to follow more traditional story arcs.
It's noteworthy that Pitts doesn't actually use YouTube as a technology of distance to ask his date and eschews digital effects in favor of strolling into the classroom with an acoustic guitar.
UCLA Student Alexandra Wallace is all over Facebook today, but not for all the reasons that the buxom co-ed who created an anti-Asian YouTube video might desire. Despite the recentness of the hullaballoo over the weekend, coverage of Wallace's three-minute rant on "Asians in the Library" now ranges from the local LA Weekly blog to the global Daily Mail. The racism of her comments about diverse campuses and her insensitivity toward tsunami victims were particularly egregious. The video was such a black eye for UCLA that the chancellor of the campus has already issued both a text press release and a video statement at "Chancellor Block appalled by student video disparaging Asians."
Although the original video has already been pulled down, it has been mirrored and reposted in a number of places, including here. Asian male students have posted responses like White Girls in the Library and this spoof that emphasize both Wallace's foolishness and their own interest in interracial sexual dynamics on campus. Wallace has apparently complained of losing her privacy now that she has been named, and ad feminem attacks like this text-based video probably explain the Chancellor's call for civility in response.
Of course, like all viral videos, it has already been autotuned and dance remixed. What surprises me is that little has been said about the fact that the UCLA library also played a role in another YouTube controversy when a student of color was tasered on cell phone camera by campus police.
(Thanks to my wonderful CAT 125 students Nikita Shah and Jonathan Hu for their insights on the controversy. I now have 200+ people keeping me current on Virtualpolitik.)
Update: One of the most watched videos thus far is this one that mocks Wallace with declarations that "we grow our food!" and "there's a reason that you outsource your jobs!" Also worthy of note is this response from a self-described "gay Asian Jew" at my own institution, UC San Diego. And, yes, the dance remixes will be unstoppable, as this example demonstrates.
More Updates: This video of a digital one-man band song to Wallace has already earned hundreds of thousands of views. It points people back to the original video, the crooner's a capella Mario song and Britney covery, and an iTunes version of his serenade available for purchase.
Among feminist friends there has been a lot of talk about the valorization of so-called "Facebook stalking" in the Chevy Superbowl ad, talk that has even made it onto watercooler conversation websites like this one.
Now my fellow CAA New Media Caucus presenter Joseph DeLappe has created a delectable parody almost certain to be hit with a takedown notice in a matter of days. Check out what happens to our mixed reality Romeo in DeLappe's version of events.
I'd like to reflect on the differences between the video you made that is a more abstract data visualization and the mix tapes of live "realist" footage. I have written about how viral YouTube videos of protest move quickly because of their simplistic, iconic effect which is often easy to consume and as easy to misunderstand given that it flows without context and because of the strong associations linked to verite images. For this reason, I think your experimentation with non-verite renditions of revolution are really exciting (for communicating across difference, as well as to communicate more complex ideas then, say, "freedom," or "courage," or "arab" that iconic images can reduce themselves to)
(Juhasz was a guest in my online rhetoric class this week, and like me she seems to be struggling to keep up with fast changing social media events in the Middle East and North Africa.)
"When I Was One, I Learned to Smell for Explosives"
This blog began six years ago, when it was dedicated to analyzing the rhetoric of e-government, e-learning, and e-business and the inherent contradictions between digital regulation and digital content-creation from which institutional public relations must suffer. The daily stories here eventually formed the material for a scholarly monograph and then contributed to the creation of another book that is in process. But in the last several months the coverage has been much more sporadic, as its once diligent author adjusted to a new post directing the Culture, Art, and Technology program at Sixth College in UC San Diego and cranked out a number of articles more obviously valuable to her c.v.
However, since the very first postings of Virtualpolitik were devoted to mocking the awfulness of government websites under the Bush administration, it only seems appropriate to come out of hiatus by giving some column space to the stunning news that the CIA has a revamped official website that includes a YouTube channel and a Flickr stream. Over the years, the CIA's website has been a particularly spectacular example of good reasons for misgivings about the virtual state, like many secret agencies forced by the Internet to put forward a public face. It began with a fun-filled offering of virtual paper dolls to get tykes excited about both espionage and dress-up. Soon it featured a loveable mascot, Ginger the adorable blue cartoon bear.
In the past the CIA website was so consistently terrible that it won one of my coveted Foley awards in 2006, the "prizes" that I give for the worst examples of official online communication every year. Although it was spared such recognition in 2007, 2008, and 2009, it continued to be a regular runner-up in my mind.
Now that it is 2011, the CIA's revamped version certainly seems to merit a full return to the Foley hall of fame, since it manages to ignore almost every one of my "12 Don'ts."
Sure, you can find CIA Factbooks and Freedom of Information Act documents if you browse the site's "library," but the navigation largely directs citizens to whitewashed institutional advertising rather than serious resources for civic research.
The site includes a dreary Flickr stream of all the bad official photo ops on the director's calendar. Particularly dismal is the CIA YouTube video embedded below, which stars "Bradley" the bomb-sniffing dog, who is voiced by a perky, high-pitched voice actress imitating a pre-pubescent girl. This YouTube canine obviously cast in an attempt to get the views normally devoted to pet antics tells an incoherent version of his life story, which starts with a rushed mention of being raised by Puppies Behind Bars, before launching into an industrial tour of the Langley facility.
After the lights came up at the end of the screening, Henry Jenkins gave a talk about "How YouTube Became OurTube." (USC's Jenkins was accurately characterized as a "commentator," "participator," and "icon" in fan remix culture in an introduction by Mimi Ito that gave audience members a sense of his importance in media studies and the study of popular culture.)
I'll try to summarize Jenkins' argument for how to understand 24/7 DIY video and then offer a few thoughts of my own, by using my own wedding dance example.
Jenkins and I have differed before, but our exchanges are always friendly, collegial, and supportive. After all, we both ground our arguments in our own community membership, and we both share loyalties to DML Central, scouting, K-12 education, and urban Los Angeles.
I'm interested in potential shortcomings in Jenkins' arguments because I want him to be right not because I want him to be wrong.
(Another person who has been similarly generous in our exchanges is John Palfrey, who opens the "Afterward" of the new edition of Born Digital with a very kind mention of my work.)
Although Jenkins began by reminding the audience that the Google-owned company was controlled by a "proprietary interest," he noted that the "you" of YouTube seemed to be both singular and plural, much as the "you" in "DIY" and "broadcast youself"could refer to both self-branding and collective engagement with community.
He then showed a slide that he often shows to praise the virtues of "participatory culture." Jenkins defines this kind of cultural production by its low barriers to entry, focus on sharing and informal mentoring, and merit-system of contribution and opinion. He also noted that the slide itself was a product of user-generated content, although he didn't cite its precise origin in this presentation.
Then Jenkins granted that "ninety-five percent" of what is on YouTube is "crap," but described such "crap" as "glorious," because people "need a place to be bad and get better." He also showed another slide by Gary Hayes that often appears in talks and blog postings about Web 2.0, although he quibbled with 1995 date for the launch of the web and reminded the audience that his own history of participatory culture goes back to "Web Negative 10" and his interest in toy printing presses used during the Civil War.
Next Jenkins talked about the many fan responses to the Saturday Night Live digital short "I'm on a Boat" that opened the 24/7 DIY video program, which included a capella versions like this and the riding of other kinds of vehicles like Harry Potter-inspired brooms and Yu-Gi-Oh! parodying blimps. (I was sorry not to see my favorite "I Want a Goat" video in the program.)
In introducing "spreadable media," the subject of his forthcoming book, Jenkins explained his own antipathy to the label of "viral ideas" by quoting from Neal Stephenson'sSnow Crash and its explanation of the appeal of dehumanizing self-replicating information:
We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep on humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. Marxism. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information.
Jenkins similarly scoffed at using "memes" to describe these phenomena by citing the slavish imitation at work in how Richard Dawkins describes cultural ideas, symbols, or practices traveling from brain to brain. Overvaluing "fidelity," "fecundity," and "longevity" could cause critics to misunderstand the Internet events as they unfold onscreen and the potentially transformative power of seemingly trivial media-making in the moment. He referred members of the audience to Ethan Zuckerman's "Cute Cate Theory of Digital Activism" to support the thesis that "any medium sufficiently powerful to enable the distribution of cute cat pictures can also, under the right circumstances, be deployed to bring down a government."
In characterizing the line-up of videos, Jenkins insisted that they were less about individual expression and more about the collective ethos of participatory culture. After all, he asserted, even the hero of "Where the Hell is Matt" leaves the isolation of his early videos to become part of a gyrating crowd. (Creator Matt Harding was a no-show at the Hammer event, although organizers had hoped to shoot him dancing with audience members congregated around him on the stage.)
Online bystanders like this female vlogger collectively mourned the death of Derrion Albert and the urban violence that took his life with multiple response videos, and anti-homophobia activists generated "fuck you very much" collaborative videos like this one from France. Despite its slick information graphics and use of broadcast news video, Jenkins also thought that the citizen testimonies aggregated in "Why Would Anyone Stop You from Voting?" were also emblematic of this trend.
Jenkins lauded his mentor in the study of popular culture, John Fiske, the subject of a recent conference about his influence on cultural studies, but argued that his ideas about "cultural resources" were born out by Internet practices that he probably couldn't have forseen. At this point, Jenkins cited a few non-YouTube examples, such as the use of altered images of Dora the Explorer in the debate about immigration or depictions of superheroes doing jobs generally done by illegal aliens.
Having interviewed Jenkins in a discussion about the analogy between the online practices and democracy (and the limitations of that analogy), it was interesting to see the theme of "pluralism" being so central to his thought about civic participation. The videorecorded commentary I shot over a year ago mostly focused on the theme of "access."
It was also interesting to see Jenkins looking to film history in a way that he rarely does in his highly accessible public lectures. He noted that Eisenstein was interested in juxtaposition within shots as well as between shots and that fan vidders in the "Deconstructing Our Icons" portion of the program used similar techniques.
Over the course of what he described as thirty years of research on vidding, Jenkins said he had observed how political remix content-creators and fans were learning from each other. He did, however, express concern about the "flow of content," when video of Obama's pastor created for one purpose and audience migrate to use by oppositional camps. Yet in the era of "tactical consumption" Jenkins saw a more global participatory culture for whom the "hallmark is Iran." Even if calling Iranian online activism a "Twitter revolution" is a misnomer that omits certain facts about the role of other technologies and forms of political organization, he credited a culture highly literate in blogging and other diasporic forms of Internet communication.
In understanding what he called "new kinds of political speech" that include Avatar protests on the West Bank by Palestinian activist fans and the latest Glenn Beck Donald Duck mash-up.
Jenkins also used the work of Bolter and Grusin on "remediation" to point out forms of "hypermediation" at work in the DIY 24/7 program, whether it be created with Autotune or multiple windows. Such forms of software use "demystify broadcast media," according to Jenkins, even if the subjects of such videos may seem lowbrow icons like "drama hamster" and "keyboard kat."
Enter "lip dubs" or "lipdubs" into the YouTube search box and Jenkins argued that you would soon find hundreds of examples of "collective joy and mutual performance." With these one-take videos that can be almost as ambitious as the one-shot film Russian Ark, "every environment can become a performance space." (I have embedded a video that wasn't in the DIY 24/7 line-up.)
Jenkins pointed out that the changes wrought by this "OurTube" weren't just about user-generated content. As an example of "grassroots media circulation" of professionally produced broadcast media content, he pointed to Susan Boyle's performance in the same week of the finale of American Idol, which only garnered 40 million views in comparison to the 200 million who watched Boyle's performance on a similar English show online.
As "people sort through a sea" of cultural content, the battle over cultural resources could become complex. Jenkins emphasized two fundamental problems: 1) digital rights and 2) digital inclusion. For example, he noted the imitators of "Limelight" by Rush who jockeyed to get their fingering good enough to lead to an automated YouTube takedown by its matching algorithm until they became involved in a battle over copyright led by Kevin Driscoll (from whom it seems I have less than six degrees of separation) called "Tribute Is Not Theft." Jenkins also raised the question of what's not on YouTube in his conclusion and left the audience to think about a "participation gap" that results in "ideas and diversity we don't see" much like the "systemic bias" in Wikipedia articles where some topics get more digital print than others.
In the question-and-answer session afterward, he reiterated a narrative about the twentieth-century assault on folk culture, which is also familiar to readers of Lawrence Lessig. As Jenkins put it, "my grandmother was a remixer," because she was a quilter who actively participated in a folk culture of reuse and reappropriation. During the twentieth century he charactered fan cultures as "pockets of resistance." He also argued that because Latin America preserved its folk culture in samba schools and carnival traditions, they might embrace "different forms of digital creation" as they go online. He argued that "most artists" were "building on other people's stories" throughout literary history, and that the century which just passed was the exception rather than the rule.
There were also a number of questions about current events and upcoming policy decisions involving cameras in courtroom and net neutrality, which Jenkins saw as critical in "struggles over rights and liberties" that were central to his civic concerns. However, he argued that free and open access to video wasn't always desirable as Sam Gregory of WITNESS has pointed out when the pain of a victim becomes "comedy" or "pornography."
The last word went to a question about remixes out of China and highly coded or indirect forms of political speech that involve Kung Fu Panda material.
There was a video camera recording events at my own wedding, as The Del Rubio Triplets and King Cotton played live music, but the moving images were never digitized much less put online.
I'm a fan of the vast human archive of vernacular dancing on YouTube, but I wonder what it might mean for our celebrations and rituals if everything is to be choreographed for display and replay on the web.
The people dancing with me in this photograph are not looking at the camera; the action is meaningful because it is not synchronized; they don't need to be part of a collective. What possibilities for interaction and intimacy would have been foreclosed by enforcing an elaborate choreographed routine? What romance and wistfulness would have been refused?
What if those lip dubs aren't always just about "collective joy and mutual performance"? In what ways are interactions in call centers, chain stores, hospitals, laboratories, schools, military bases and prisons constrained by the rules of neoliberalism and the membership economy and new schemes for scientific management?
For more about Henry Jenkins on this blog and his sparring with Virtualpolitik friend Bogost, see "Who Will Be Voted Off the Island?" For more about the conference in 2008, go here and scroll down.
At my university the big campus story today made it all the way to the Los Angeles Times. Thus "UC Irvine seeks to suspend Muslim student union" describes how what has become an extremely controversial student organization is facing discipline as a result of disrupting a speech by Israeli ambassador Michael Oren.
In a fourteen-page disciplinary letter, campus officials detail their case against the organization as a whole and draw on digital evidence from a Google Group, an online video, and the group's pro-demonstration blog, "Stand With The Eleven," to make the argument that MSU members collectively had engaged in an orchestrated obstruction of a core campus activity comparable to "teaching, research, administration" when they prevented an invited speaker from speaking.
Of course, I can't help wondering if the case would have been handled differently had it not been publicized by the viral video below, which received some three-quarters of a million views: "Uncivilized Tactics at UC Irvine."
This nearly identical version of the event received over 350,000 views, and there are many other similar videos with the same footage on YouTube, some of which are retitled with names like "Muslims Try To Silence Israeli Ambassador at UC Irvine" and "Jew Haters Protest Israeli Ambassador" and "Muslim Students Union at UC Irvine act like terrorst fascists - against free speech." All of these videos create a negative impression of the campus community, which was picked up by conservative media outlets arguing that colleges teach radical politics not constructive subject matter.
Since I am working on a new book about universities and digital content-creation, I have been thinking about this incident a lot, as I consider what to say about student activism and new media representations of it online. Looking at images of student protests from the past that have used conventional techniques for composition and editing in photography and film, my main question is how contemporary online images of student unrest are different. Certainly, they often aren't as artfully and professionally produced in the conventional journalistic sense, as the aestheticized iconography of campus demonstrations of the sixties certainly was. In other words, how do new ubiquitous recording devices make chaotic scenes seem even more chaotic?
Granted, in the case of the MSU heckling, the most watched clips aren't from cell phone footage and aren't shot without a tripod. However, the viral video frequently pans and zooms in ways that suggest amateur videography that is both more "true" and more difficult to watch and make sense of.
Despite what Ito calls the "happy opening video" for the conference, she cautioned that "opportunities and risks are inexticably linked," as Sonia Livingstone and Leslie Haddon articulately argued in Kids Online. The "collapse of treasured gatekeepers" might have many unintended consequences, and the "constant allures" of social contact with remote others may lead to checked out behavior at both the dinner table and in the lecture hall and dinner. For Ito, the benefits of learning that is personalized and social make developing new educational models promising, but she argued that it was a mistake to "hold on to old boundaries," particularly those between work and life and between different generations. She admitted that not all learning practices fostered by peer and friendship networks were laudatory in a world of Sparknotes, ratemyprofessors,com, and Cheathouse, but she also argued that educators shouldn't be too punitive about Facebook study groups and other examples of "lateral flows of knowledge."
To make her larger point about evolving networked practices and peer reputation networks, she drew the audience's attention to the genre of the amateur webcam lip synch video. First she showed the pre-YouTube classic Numa Numa video. Then she played an example of the transnational dual efforts of the Back Dorm Boys. Finally, she screened "A Day at the Office," shown below, which was recommended to her by YouTube ethnographer Michael Wesch.
This video documents a particular form of subversion of the workplace through collaborative media-making that demonstrates what Ito called the "ecology of Internet video." She also pointed to more explicitly political remixes by Jonathan McIntosh, who curated the political remix sessions at the 24/7 DIY Video Summit and had come to embrace the "identity correction" style of The Yes Men in works such as "H2: Bummer," which Ito showed.
Although less obviously formulated as a critique, McIntosh's "Buffy vs Edward," shown above, was for Ito an interesting test case of fair use that also pushed limits. (At this point, she briefly returned to remind audience members of the social dynamics of a WiFi enabled lecture hall that supports "new mechanisms for filter and focus" that might even affect audience members checking e-mail or web surfing during her talk.)
However, Ito insisted that such opportunistic learning always came with a "social wrapper." She pointed to the case of Snafu Dave and his journey as a college student from Math to Computer Science to Design in an educational trajectory that never quite addressed his passion for comics. She also highlighted projects like p2pu and Howard Rheingold's Social Media Classroom, as well as Wesch's digital ethnography group Mediated Cultures, as exemplary programs. All of these examples provide "reciprocity and feedback" to teachers and learners together.
Ito also emphasized the issue of reputation and alluded to her own work and the work of others on AMVs or "animated music videos" in which "all are learners and teachers," and certain conventions provide opportunities for recognition, which one AMV maker compared to the "AcademyAward for best picture." Because online learning is about embodied selves not "a brain interacting with technology," Ito argued that it was important to understand "sites for publicity and competition." For Ito, it is "not enough to be open and welcoming."
In closing, Ito recognized danah boyd in the audience and credited her for work done in graduate student blogging that created a career for herself in a burgeoning field. (In workshops like this one that I have given to graduate students about creating an online presence, I have argued that boyd might be an examplar that is too difficult to emulate, because dissertation blogging and frank talk about academic procedures is more likely to be punished rather than rewarded.)
Ito concluded by saying that we were still in the "early days" of these cultural shifts and that her "examples may seem trivial" and her plans might seem unrealistic for educational systems driven by an "insistence on individualized assessment." Her final words were devoted to a plug for dmlcentral, where I have served as a blogger this year.
The Israeli Defense Force's latest posting on their YouTube channel is something of a mystery when it comes to its digital rhetoric . . . that is unless you play through the to very end, which few YouTube viewers would normally be likely to do.
In the video we see passengers disembarking from the Rachel Corrie ship, named after the deceased anti-Israeli American peace activist. These people, who include old women, pregnant women, frail men, and others who certainly don't fit the image of jihadist radicalism that the IDF has associated with other participants in the flotilla attempting to cross the Gaza blockade. Actually, the message is really in the applause at the end, which reinforces the idea that the soldiers are behaving chivalrously and courteously in their interactions. The sad irony is that this video represents a kind of alternative reality for which the crowd is clapping, in which the interaction between Israelis and Palestinian sympathizers never turned violent.
In an essay called "Official Channels" in the Video Vortex Reader, I wrote about the use of YouTube by national governments and the way that footage of dramatic scenes of conflict might be retasked and reevaluated by different parties. Now the Israeli government, known for imitating American web campaigns, is taking another page from the U.S. But in a recent talk I argued that it's a mistake to assume that "a picture is worth a thousand words," because images and video clips are inherently ambiguous and posting visual content always invites skeptical scrutiny by those searching for clues or conspiracies.
Obviously, the YouTube channel for the Israeli Defense Forces would like to prohibit what they consider to be misreadings and have added text and graphic elements that emphasize their rhetorical position. However, the mere fact of having so apparently edited the footage is now calling its authenticity into doubt, particularly since the Israeli commandos who stormed the Mavi Marmar, a Turkish ship attempting to charge through the Israeli blockage of Gaza, also seized digital photos and videos created by witnesses from the other side. As The Lede notes in Complete Video of Israeli Raid Still Missing, subsequent postings to the IDF channel continued to raise questions.
An article in the New York Times, "Videos Carry On the Fight Over Sea Raid," discusses how pro-Palestinian activists used a Livestream channel to show the convoy's progress. Right now the channel is largely devoted to news coverage about the aftermath in which nine activists were killed.
Of course, I have argued that there is a technique in digital rhetoric called "mediated transparency," which draws attention to shooting and editing in order to grant footage more transparency. However, Israeli message manages seem to be doing something very different. Perhaps the most noticeable cut in the "rioters" video is between 21:36 and 22:04, where it seems that the activists may have been gathered for prayer. What is striking is that the videos either use moving images alone, or they only feature sound, which gives a strange otherworldly effect to many of their videos. For example, this video with soundclips, which may have indeed included real dialogue, given the inflammatory speech habits of some political extremists, sounds like an unlikely assortment of accents that is badly edited together and does little for the credibility of the Israeli side.
Check out the revamped version of Bag News Notes, where those seeking a "progressive site dedicated to visual politics and the analysis of news images" can find a number of new features. I have followed the Bag for years, so it is interesting to see them branch out into new areas of digital rhetoric in their new "Salon" section.
As a rhetorician, I find this talk a bit difficult to watch, and the words "rhetorician, heal thyself" did occur to me at one point. (Note to self: look to camera not to monitor.) But I do think I at least covered more ground in more areas of criticism than I thought I could in five minutes.
I'm had some unkind things to say about the YouTube performances of UC President Mark Yudof in the past, but I honestly think that his digital rhetoric is getting better at using online video as a potentially persuasive tool, thanks perhaps to media consultants who have chunked his arguments into discrete points that punctuated with stock footage.
But I do wonder about his "decider" reference about twelve seconds in, a phrase perhaps permanently associated in online discourses with previous U.S. president George W. Bush and his attitude about executive authority. As if that weren't enough, three seconds later he uses another Bushism with his mention of "heck of a job" in connection with the U.C. mission.
The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Map allows users to add YouTube videos of the unfolding disaster or Twitter postings describing the scene to a map with environmental information. It's an interesting example of digital rhetoric that combines GIS with social media data to personalize the consequences of the spill.
On YouTube there are a number of much-watched videos of people being tased by police -- including a particularly famous one of a UCLA student being tased in a library -- and a number of videos of fans running out onto playing fields during games. (Many of the fan-on-the-field videos feature exuberant displays of nudity.) Now video of a seventeen-year-old fan being tasered at a Phillies game is creating controversy about the use of this restraint technique by law enforcement. Numerous versions of the event shot by witnesses with video cameras are now posted on YouTube, although the television network cut away during the event.
What I find interesting from a rhetorical standpoint is the way that the event is perceived from the stands. Some versions seem to celebrate the event with spectatorial glee, while others emphasize the boos at an appalling abuse of police power. Compare these two hundred-thousand plus viewed examples to see.
This is difficult viewing, which is prefaced by two and a half minutes of text. The video comes from the U.S. military and shows the shooting of two Reuters employees and two Iraqi children in a van that has come to rescue them.
In the Virtualpolitik book I wrote about the WikiLeaks website, which is now hosting a site exclusively devoted to the shootings, Collateral Murder. For more about the incident, see coverage here on Bag News Notes.
I've been writing and presenting a lot of material about Obama's online video presence and they ways that he uses platforms like YouTube for public diplomacy purposes. As this chronological montage of his YouTube performances shows, he has made separate videos addressing Muslim and Jewish audiences on particular holidays, but this one addresses all three faith traditions, before abruptly switching to a fireside track about the economy.
I've also been thinking about the domestic cinema that his administration presents and the role of the White House furnishings in authenticating his Internet address. In some cases I have actually taken the Commander in Chief out of the frame, in order to better see the lamps, flowers, flags, and decor that also serves as characters in the scene.
Although it has received hundreds of thousands of views and even a few mentions in the news media, I'd give low marks to this political remix of a political remix, which takes the will.i.am "Yes We Can" video and mashes it up with Congressman John Boehner's angry "Hell No You Can't." It gets repetitive quickly. The content on Boehner's own YouTube channel shows a little more remix artistry and includes the video below.
There have been other Google infographics films like this before that address how the search engine company may have a conspiratorial interest in violating user's privacy. This one made with graphics by Patrick Clair, which was written by Elmo Keep and Jon Casimir, was recently featured on Osocio. This video includes information about Google's newer efforts in mobile communication, Eric Schmidt's recent comments, and litigation in the last few years.
Last week California governor Jerry Brown announced his veto of the state budget in a "Budget Veto" YouTube video. The governor opens his direct address to the voter with a moment of flourishing penmanship before her pushes a document away to give some straight talk about the state's need to address its fiscal crisis responsibly. The camera then zooms in on the seventy-three-year-old politician during the entirety of the sixty-second clip.
Governor Brown chose not to emulate the Obama White House YouTube style that emanates cool and reserve. In these videos the U.S. president never appears behind a desk, and the luxurious domestic spaces of the White House are often noticeable in the background. Naturally, the famously frugal Brown could never highlight the opulence of the governor's mansion, and his desire to seem like a decisive chief executive probably makes the desk a necessary prop. Brown's handlers also decided to forgo achieving the intimacy of a close-up with an actual cut, a signature feature of Obama addresses; instead the governor seems to favor a continuous zoom that seems to emphasize Brown's relentless intensiveness and his unblinking engagement with the viewer.
At least Brown avoided the theatrics of his predecessor, now disgraced former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who actually brandished a knife in his budget-cutting online speech and appeared flanked by kitschy elephants to signify his loyalty to the machismo of the Republican party. In speaking to his Twitter followers and praising their input, Schwarzegger even used his dog as a prop once. It is worth noting that Schwarzenegger eventually approached the genre of the online address with more gravitas in imitation of the Obama style, as his farewell video indicates.
Although Brown has only posted six YouTube videos, he does seem to be aware of how the platform functions rhetorically. He has refined his style on GovernorBrown's YouTube channel, since he posted his first Governor Brown Checks In With the People of California video in which Brown seems to be burning the midnight oil in a scene shot in the dead of night in which his cluttered desk establishes his interest in researching the state's budget problems, which seems to be contained in large white binders. (There is also a weird outlier in this group of addresses that opens with Brown's disembodied head on a TV screen.)
It's important to remember that Brown announced his candidacy in a YouTube video that thematized his straightforward unvarnished rhetorical style with a wall of unfinished brick in an office that even lacked bookshelves.
