YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture (Paperback)

~ (Author), Joshua Green (Author), Henry Jenkins (Contributor), John Hartley (Contributor)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Jean Burgess and Joshua Green insightfully weave together an engaging and much-needed cultural narrative of the astonishing new phenomenon that is YouTube with an incisive critique of its rapidly-mythologised yet deeply uncertain transformative potential."
Sonia Livingstone, London School of Economics and Political Science

"This book is an important and timely contribution to the literature on participatory culture and media. The analyses provide empirical bases for understanding the diversity of YouTube users' practices and sophisticated theoretical consideration of the social, cultural, political, historical and economic contexts in which these practices are situated and which they so often disrupt."
Nancy Baym, University of Kansas

Product Description

YouTube is one of the most well-known and widely discussed sites of participatory media in the contemporary online environment, and it is the first genuinely mass-popular platform for user-created video. In this timely and comprehensive introduction to how YouTube is being used and why it matters, Burgess and Green discuss the ways that it relates to wider transformations in culture, society and the economy.
The book critically examines the public debates surrounding the site, demonstrating how it is central to struggles for authority and control in the new media environment. Drawing on a range of theoretical sources and empirical research, the authors discuss how YouTube is being used by the media industries, by audiences and amateur producers, and by particular communities of interest, and the ways in which these uses challenge existing ideas about cultural ‘production’ and ‘consumption’.
Rich with both concrete examples and featuring specially commissioned chapters by Henry Jenkins and John Hartley, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in the contemporary and future implications of online media. It will be particularly valuable for students and scholars in media, communication and cultural studies.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 140 pages
• Publisher: Polity (August 17, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0745644791
• ISBN-13: 978-0745644790
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #70,583 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars YouTube Community Given Its Due, June 13, 2009

By	Robert S. Robbins (Williamsport, PA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Finally, a book about YouTube that shows a clear understanding of the web site's potential for social networking. The authors have really done their homework (or research) well and picked up on things that other writers have missed. For example, they noticed that YouTubers often extend their social interaction to other sites like Stickam. And they caught the controversy over the Partner program which served to divide the community.

I'm very invested in the YouTube community so I found it fascinating to read the observations of social scientists on this cultural phenomenon. The authors have done an excellent job of explicating the significance of YouTube as a creative community and cultural force.

In summary, this book is quite impressive. As an active participant on YouTube I can attest to its accuracy. I even found some insight into certain aspects of the online world through phrases like "attention economy". The YouTube community is certainly the biggest group of attention whores you'd ever meet and it is important to realize how much of their creative endeavors and drama is a fight for attention in a media economy driven by attention.

0 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another Book Too Far... for now, June 22, 2009

By	Bogdan Gamalet (Bucharest, Romania) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Same here as for "New Media: A Critical Introduction":
I afforded 4 stars, because I consider it useful. Unfortunately, I couldn't receive it directly to my address. I am from Romania, and when I ordered this book, the answer was it was not possible to deliver the book to my address, so I gave the address of a friend of mine in Germany. Now I have to go (during my holidays in Austria) to my friend's, in Munich, Germany, in order to get the book. Too bad, though... All the more I paid for the books in advance, so no opportunity not to pay for the merchandise. The fun part, because there is also a fun part, is that my friend is non allowed himself, I repeat, in Munich, Germany, to receive all the books I had in mind. I can understand Romania is somehow unreliable, but Germany???
Best regards,
Bogdan Gamalet - Bucharest, Romania

0 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The price is absurd for a paperback and what, I'm not in it?, June 14, 2009

By	Argent009 "Michael A. Smith" (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews

Seriously, $[...] for a paperback in this day and age and the fact that it's not immediately available for download onto my Kindle, these make me have to step back and wonder what in the world they're thinking and who they think they're marketing this to. Make it available as an affordable eBook and I'll buy it, make it an affordable analog book and I'll strongly consider it, but mention Renetto (the Whore of YouTubealon) and not certain actual key players in the whole revolution that is Viral Video and I have to say thanks but no thanks. Renetto is and was never anything more than a tag-along, me-too, jump on the bandwagon type of person. The man stole many of his so called "community" ideas and continues to do the same thing to this day. I also don't see that there's any mention of the real King of YouTube, Geriatric1927, who single handedly made YouTube and the internet accessible to thousands, if not millions of older people the world over. Tell you what, send me a free copy and I'll give it an honest review but from what I have heard and as someone who has been on the inside of the YouTube scene for a very long time and who knows a considerable amount of what really goes down on there, I'm suspicious that the author, who I have never heard of, could know much about OUR community.