Week 5: Naming and Reality in the YouTube Network

(Image source http://www.bubblews.com/news/376457-the-other-side-of-reality)

"Naming is power- the creative power to call something into being, to render the invisible visible, to impart a certain character to things." (Tuan,1991, p.688) Throughout the YouTube social network this latter idea that naming creates a certain character is vividly expressed via channel names and uploader profiles. But as was said in the lecture last week on the 27th, our identity is formulated over time through our memories and ideas.

So how real are the identities in the YouTube network?

Unlike the other major social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, YouTubers create videos for their online audience. This seems obvious. But, unlike tweets and status updates, videos allow the YouTuber to broadcast themselves. Which I feel allows for more realistic identities to be created.

However, there is such a thing called acting which in the sense of YouTube is the evolution of "Learned self-surveillance" (Turkle, 1995, p.248) in the presence of the virtual panopticon. It is not just acting though it is creating a certain character to videos that make them popular, funny, informative and interesting. An example of how character has been created can be found in the YouTuber nigahiga, he has almost 10 million subscribers and has created for himself a unique broadcasting technique. His videos are essentially monologues and he uses humor to talk about, popular but inconsequential topics. To me this is an unreal persona, but there are others like vsauce who video blog about their views on certain topics, in this instance gaming. 

Therefore I would say that YouTube, as with any virtual network, allows us to be as "real" as we want inside our virtual networks. Though unlike other networks it allows us to be present in the network by videoing ourselves.


Other Discussions:

Please feel free to read this essay on the power of naming by Cherryl Armstrong and Sheryl I. Fountaine, it is very enlightening:

The Power Of Naming: Names that Create and Define the Discipline


Reference List:

Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York; America. Simon and Schuster Paperbacks.

Tuan, Y.-F. (1991). Language and the Making of Place: A Narrative Based Approach. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, pg 688.

 Image source 

 http://www.bubblews.com/news/376457-the-other-side-of-reality