Tag: youtube

Is Youtube Recommending Me to Me?

Screenshot of My Youtube Homepage

Let’s start in that top row. Youtube’s algorithms are moving in the right direction. I started this year with a yoga binge, and it’s not showing any signs of stopping. My musical tastes tend to follow the weather patterns. So, deep in the heart of winter, I’m likely to ask Sufjan to keep me company while I’m reading or writing. In those moments of sunshine (internally or climactically), watching the Tricia Miranda-choreographed video to Missy Elliot’s “WTF” is a definite bright spot. Youtube knows I’m going to watch this again because I’ve already watched it so many times.

In the recommended row, we jump all over the place. Yoga, sure. Stephen Colbert, Ze Frank, Lip Sync Battle, and Lianna LaHavas all make sense as well. I can only guess the Kimmel recommendation was inspired by Colbert. Similarly, the Tina Fey suggestions likely came from my searching for her cold open appearance on last week’s SNL. “Stop searching for your passion,” though? No real idea.

But that wasn’t the question. What do they say about me as a person? I appreciate talented, funny, thoughtful women who make unexpected choices. And, to a lesser extent, men who talk into cameras. They point to the idea that I like to laugh, and I enjoy music. When the two of them can happen together, all the better.

Interestingly, when you asked, I started to worry a bit. I’v enever thought about whether the person I am when I drop into a Youtube hole is the same person I am on Twitter, Instagram, or here. Those places are all productive. Even when I’m liking or retweeting, I’m they are making public acts of expression. They don’t let you know what tweets made me smile or think, but that I decided I didn’t want to share.

Youtube, on the other hand, is still a place of consumption for me. While I’ve a few videos posted there and on other sites, I’m more often searching than uploading. I was worried the questioner and the talker might not be the same person. They were.

Youtube is killing my students[‘] [work]

The Gist:

  • My students created some amazing pieces of scholarly analysis using youtube.
  • The wider audience can never see it because of poorly-thought restrictions our systems and youtube’s systems have put in place.
  • It’s time for us to stop choosing ignorance over what it possible.

The Whole Story:

I’m actually supposed to be grading right now, but I’m angry, so I’m stopping.
I’m not even angry for the usual reasons.
My seniors completed what was their ultimate project of their English Studies at SLA.
The assignment was easy to explain:

  • Choose one of the top 10 most viewed youtube videos of all time.
  • Choose one of the six critical literary lenses (reader-response, gender, socioeconomic, new historicist, postcolonial, deconstructionist) we’ve explored over the last four years.
  • Apply that lens to the video and post it to youtube as a critical literary analysis.
  • For the created product, work in iMovie or use the annotation function of youtube.

The full project description can be seen here.

The work required them to utilize skills as readers, writers, and thinkers.
The problem, youtube – the algorithm, not the people – sees the work as a violation of copyright.
You would too, if you weren’t actually watching the videos to see what they actually are.
I wanted to make certain my thinking on this lines up with the legal requirements, so I went to Kristin Hokanson.
She said it all came down to two questions:

  1. Did the unlicensed use “transform” the material taken from the copyrighted work by using it for a different purpose than the original, or did it just repeat the work for the same intent and value as the original?
  2. Was the amount and nature of material taken appropriate in light of the nature of the copyrighted work and of the use?

She followed up with:
Fair use considers FOUR factors:

  1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
  2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
  3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
  4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

In answer to the first question, yes. Rather than being a video for entertainment, the video is now a non-profit scholarly educational work. As for value, it’s the work of high school students. Some of the value is more, some of the value is less. Will any of these analyses break 1 million views? No.
In answer to the second question, yes. The students used all of the videos because they needed to show how the entirety of the text worked toward supporting their theses. In some cases, they augmented the work with outside slides in order to more fully make a point. Again, the idea here is for the viewer to experience the text concurrently with the analysis, pausing as needed to think more deeply. In the case of something like Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the U.S.A.,” I’m thinking this is a definite repurpose.
Realizing youtube would likely not discern between actual re-purposed non-profit educational work and a simple copy of the original work, I asked the students to submit their work as private videos and then share them with my account.
It was an attempt to keep their work authentic as well as alive.
For the most part, it worked. Then, students started coming in to class telling me their work had been taken down.
Let this be what I say:
For those who complain youtube is destroying culture or thought or any of the rest, this project re-purposed not only the videos, but the medium into a place for scholarly consideration of some of the most globally popular contemporary texts.
For those who argue the blocking of youtube in schools, look at this as a rudimentary example of what can happen when we empower students to think critically about and within online social spaces.
Many of the students worked diligently and thoughtfully on this assignment. If nothing else, they’re more thoughtful and aware of what they view and what it means for a text to be popular.
I’d show you this student work, but then youtube’d have to kill it.