By Stella Ahn
Vlogging; video blogging is one of the most common types of user-generated content in social media, especially in YouTube. Increasing attention toward Vlog and Vlogger have made another kind of celebrities. YouTube celebrities make revenue from various sources based on their contents and fame such as advertisement and sponsorship. As they became rich and popular, they have huge impact on their followers. Their contents can encourage social movement and people in minor community. On the other hand, growing trend of Vlogging also can cause negative effect. Therefore, this post will discuss about how Vlogging effect for both producer and consumer.
Vloggers have advantages in terms of communication and interaction, because they can communicate directly with their followers via contents and comments. This characteristic of social media made Vlog celebrities be able to have influence among social movements and communities. Arthurs take an example of vlogger Julie Van Vu, who is a YouTube celebrity subscribed by 493,646 people (2018). She uploads not only beauty and fashion tips, but also transition videos specifically describing her transition process on YouTube. She made her YouTube channel as a place for transgender community by sharing her experience as a transgender woman. People who is already the part of transgender community or who wants to have transition can get information from Vu’s videos and communicate with each other. Also, her video takes a role of raising activist discussion about gender and sexuality issues because her contents are interpreted differently, even though beauty and fashion are already an ordinary topic of Vlog. Apparently, the fact that she is a transgender woman make different context and bring more attention.
However, Vlogging is not the only way to bring about people’s attention on social movement. Also, at some point, it puts both creator and follower in a vulnerable position. Vlog contents are based on reality. Most contents deal with Vlogger’s real life and it often set in their personal places. It creates ambiguity between vlogger’s private life and public life, especially when it comes to contents showing creator’s daily life. For the contents, their private life is exposed to public. In addition, these days many of Vloggers are high school students or even younger students. As Vlogger’s privacy is in vulnerable position, they can easily be targeted by cyber-bullying. Followers cannot be an exception. Their subscription records can be under surveillance by market and even interpersonally.
In conclusion, Vlogging allow social media users to share their experience and have intimate communication. Vlog celebrities make money and have influence among subscribers based on their contents. Subscribers are also benefit from Vlog contents in terms of getting information and building community. Therefore, Vlogging can have impact on social movement and have positive effects. On the other hand, as it deals with personal experience and life, it poses negative impact for both creator and consumer.
References
Arthurs, J.(2018). Researching YouTube. Convergence, 24(1), 3–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856517737222
Kidd, D. (2017). Social media freaks: digital identity in the network society. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
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Stella,
ReplyDeleteApart from issues of grammar, punctuation and formatting, this is a fine post.
As you note, vlogging is enormously popular with social media users. In addition to the commercial possibilities, the genre also plays an important role in community building and social movements.
Your attention to these qualities of vlogging make a welcome and important contribution to our class discussion. What's more, you've offered a nuanced discussion that highlights the benefits as well as the negative consequences of this form of online interaction.
That said, your discussion of the "downside" isn't as clearly stated as your clear appreciation for vlogging's pro-social benefits. Moreover, you don't make the most of your scholarly source (Arthur) and only make passing reference to Kidd. Since techno-ambivalence is one of your keywords/labels, why not use this concept more concretely throughout your post?
In short, I appreciate your balanced approach to this topic and would encourage you to continue examining this form of social media. In the meantime, I suggest you take this essay to the Writing center as you continue to refine your written expression.
With a bit more effort, you'll have made productive use of this class assignment as you move forward in your course work.
26 pts.
Stella,
ReplyDeleteI thought this was a really interesting look at blogging. I think when most people think of blogging they think of a very informal way to share what's happening in a person's life. Vlogging can very much be that, but by sharing experiences and elements of one's life that relate to a greater social cause, people have the power to change someone's life. This can be seen with the transgender vlogger you mentioned. The vlogger is seemly simply video taping her life, but by doing this she is significantly helping her viewers who look to her as a guiding light. This post highlights the importance of social media, and I enjoyed reading it :)