video247

Up Close: Why Obama?

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

hjenkins.png

Yesterday Sen. Obama knocked down the so-called Potomac Primary— that is, the combined primaries of Virginia, Maryland and Washington DC. Basically, the man lofted a long three-pointer and swished without even so much as a hand in his face. Voting statistics suggest the victory came as a result of Obama’s widest demographic appeal to date. In addition to his usual coalition of young people, well-educated people and young and well-educated and every other kind of black people, he drew the support of folks across all income brackets. White women as a group reportedly remain the last bloc of Hillary supporters, although that may be changing.

Henry Jenkins, the guy in the suspenders at the top of the post, is a professor at MIT and co-director of the university’s comparative media studies program. In addition to writing great forward-thinking books on media and popular culture, he is a persuasive public advocate for the rights of digital-era fans, gamers, bloggers. He defended gamers against legislative backlash after the Columbine school shootings, for example, made calls for increased media literacy with the Federal Communications Commission, and has made the case repeatedly in various settings for a more consumer-oriented approach to intellectual property. He is, as Mimi Ito put it this past weekend at the USC 24/7 DIY Video Summit, one of the “superheroes of the internet” whose work in championing the tastes, activities, and intelligence of everyday people is an inspiration.

It came out at the Summit that Jenkins is, in his words, “an Obama boy.” He explained why in a way that reflects his thinking about how society has changed in the network era. “Adult leaders tend to talk about ‘I’ but young people online talk about ‘we’ … The difference between the ‘I’ campaign based on experience, a la Hillary, and the ‘we’ campaign based on bottom-up energy, a la Obama, speaks to two different models of what political change might look like… We don’t want to go back to the centralized mindset… I don’t want a president who feels my pain. I want someone who will get us to work together to solve the problem.”

Click on the image above to watch the video.

DIY video dispatch

Monday, February 11th, 2008

diydispatch.png

A the USC 24/7 DIY Summit this weekend, the speakers managed overwhelmingly not to be academic droners. Mike Wesch, one of an increasing number of internet-famous professors (The Machine is Us/ing Us and more recently A Vision of Students Today), presented some of the YouTube ethnographic research he and his students at Kansas State University are conducting. The students, in journeying like artery cameras through the digi-spaghetti of YouTubes, have sent back a revealing trail of footage that documents the awkward process they went through as participant-observers— grappling, for example, with how best to address the camera, convey authenticity and construct identities that they could bear to circulate online. Their final projects are available for sampling here.

Alexandra Juhasz, who also studies YouTube, presented a video tour of the site that she created with her Pitzer College students. Some of her findings underlined what most users know instinctively: that YouTube isn’t really designed to facilitate productive discussion, that it can be a time waster, and that “its corporate imperative forecloses democracy in the name of freedom.” Translation: on YouTube, anarchy pays better than democracy. Juhasz vlogged her conclusions, of course, because vlogging is immediate and because immediate video is what she studies. She’s a vlogger professor, a vloggessor!

(more…)

DIY video summitting

Thursday, February 7th, 2008

247diy.png

Readers in L.A.-Land should check out “24/7: a DIY Video Summit” this weekend (Feb 8th thru 10th) at USC. The Summit will showcase some amazing new digital video work and will include screenings, workshops, formal talks, informal talks, overall general creative engagement and tasty drinks of some sort I’m sure. Notice to fans of smart people: Larry Lessig will be there. So will Yochai Benkler. So will Henry Jenkins.

The public is invited to attend programs on design video, activist documentary, youth media, machinima, music video, political remix and video blogging. Also on the program: hands-on workshops lead by the Summit-invitee DIY video creators. The full schedule and details available at the website.

If you’re not within geographical striking distance, much of the Summit will be webcast and the Friday happenings will also be streamed live into Second Life. Hey, as a sign of great things to come, you just know this Summit is gonna be hella better than the Academy Awards this year.

Note: Okay, so, yes, I am one of the Summit organizers.