This content analysis explores how often implicit brand integrations occur in YouTube videos that were created for child viewers. The study also investigates how often advertising disclosures appear along with the videos that include brand integration. Results indicate that brand integration occur the most often as a branded product becomes a prop or in the background (i.e. product placement), and this type of brand integration tends to have the least advertising disclosure. Brand integration with influencers actively using/interacting (...) with the branded products in the video (i.e. product integration) followed the official advertising disclosure policy the most. Moreover, product integration was more likely to show the disclosure of advertising at the beginning and the end of the videos than product placement. The blind spot in advertising disclosure policy for implicit brand integration techniques on child-friendly YouTube channels should be reconsidered. (shrink)

This article explores the nature and consequences of being a successful child YouTuber as a new form of both child labor and play in the social media era. This new child activity can in principle act as an enhancer of child autonomy, creativity, and some specific goods of childhood, such as play, and exploration. However, the impact of becoming a micro-celebrity as a video blogger at a young age is to some extent underexplored. Thereby, I bring into the ethical discussion (...) the specific conditions of this activity, such as overexposure, and adultization. By doing so, I show how it can turn out to be a threat to child’s well-being and well-becoming, especially in relation to the identity construction and intrafamily dynamics. I highlight its double role as both an enhancer of childhood’s specific goods and child vulnerability, especially when it becomes a silent form of subjugation. Thereby, I suggest that the strong version of the precautionary principle could be a normative guide to balance the children’s need to explore and autonomy without jeopardizing other specific goods of childhood and their well-becoming. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the data collected about 5,388 videos from the 15 leading channels from Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States focusing on toys and in which the protagonists are children under 14 years of age. It aims to determine whether there are common patterns of use, production, and activity in videos by kid YouTubers. Specific software was developed to enable information to be gathered from the YouTube platform through the YouTube Data API by (...) analyzing the date on which the video was published, length, number of visits, likes, dislikes, and visits/vote. The main conclusions drawn are that a channel’s success is not dependent on a pattern or specific characteristics, although an impulse pattern has been detected; participation by children who consume content in the United States differs significantly from participation by those in Europe; and certain similarities based on video length and production frequency can be observed between channels. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:iPod, YouTube, Wii Play: Theological Engagements with Entertainment by D. Brent Laytham, and: If These Walls Could Talk: Community Muralism and the Beauty of Justice by Maureen H. O’ConnellJoel WardeniPod, YouTube, Wii Play: Theological Engagements with Entertainment By D. Brent Laytham EUGENE, OR: CASCADE, 2012. 209 PP. $24.00If These Walls Could Talk: Community Muralism and the Beauty of Justice By Maureen H. O’Connell COLLEGEVILLE, MN: LITURGICAL (...) PRESS, 2012. 319 PP. $39.95Although, in the Republic, Plato discussed the usefulness (and danger!) of having artists practicing within the civic community, from his time forward, social philosophers, moral theologians, and religious ethicists have tended to avoid [End Page 199] probing too much into the relationship between the aesthetic and the ethical. To be sure, as organized academic philosophy developed, especially after the Enlightenment, the separate intellectual bailiwick of aesthetics left ethical considerations of what is morally (as opposed to artistically) good to the domain of ethics. The result of such segmentation was to keep both interests’ discussions of “the good” significantly apart.The two books reviewed here represent new (and, hopefully, now less uncommon) attempts to find the correspondence between beauty and goodness. Because both authors think and write specifically from the perspective of Christian ethics, these attempts make use of the resources of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, the sometimes contrasting traditions of Protestant and Catholic spiritual reflection, and the authors’ own personal engagement with sources of beauty or entertainment. Both authors argue in some way that the pursuit of the beautiful (or the enjoyable) bears a relation to goodness. They both also argue that our use of technology and our making of art ought to attend to the building of justice.In his book iPod, YouTube, Wii Play: Theological Engagements with Entertainment, D. Brent Laytham investigates varied forms of contemporary entertainment activities and technologies (e.g., the media-sharing website YouTube, video games, fashion magazines, sporting events) and unearths the ways in which these contemporary and technologically facilitated pastimes both support and endanger human social interaction. In particular, he pays close attention to how entertainment(s) help or hinder the drive of a community of believers into lives of discipleship.The thirteen chapters of the book are each organized around a particular technological theme and make good use of sociological reflection on media, as well as some Christian reflection on games, the communal pursuit of fun, and festivity. Laytham, a Methodist, takes a sympathetic stance toward modes of entertainment in how they function, at times, as legitimate means of communication between persons. But he also warns that they can, if used without an understanding of their effects on the inner lives of the persons involved, be damaging. The author often demonstrates remarkable psychological insight, such as when he discusses the pressures put upon teenagers’ sense of physical self-image when based on the values of fashion magazines (140), the spiritual dangers of any kind of escapism (118), and the complicated motivations underlying petty gambling (107). And though reflection questions that are scattered throughout the body of the text are sometimes distracting from the arguments he puts forward (and so maybe would be better placed at the end of each chapter), he clearly wants his critique of media and entertainment to lead to a fuller, better enjoyment of them, a proper enjoyment possible when they are understood in relation to what should be their ultimate purpose: the drawing together of communities of persons. [End Page 200]Moving from a consideration of entertainment to art, properly speaking, Maureen O’Connell’s If These Walls Could Talk: Community Muralism and the Beauty of Justice is a number of things. It is a narrative description of what has happened in one urban environment in the United States, where socioeconomic decline, street violence, and crushing poverty produce needful places for transformative grace; a theological-aesthetic analysis of a genre of fine art, peculiar for the materials used and the venues in which it is displayed; a moral-ethical project inspired by familial ties to a particular city, as well as the fruit of continued interest (and, one might even say, pastoral zeal) on the author’s... (shrink)

In 2008, Dutch anti-Islam Member of Parliament Geert Wilders produced a short video called Fitna to visualize his argument that Islam is a dangerous religion. Thousands of men and women across the globe uploaded their own videos to YouTube to criticize or support the film. In this article, we look at these alternative videos from a feminist perspective, contrasting the gender portrayal and narratives in Fitna with those in the alternative videos. We contend that Fitna expressed (...) an extremist Orientalist discourse, in which women are presented as the current and future victims of the oppression of Muslim men and Islam. In contrast, the YouTube videos give voice to women themselves who come from across the globe, are relatively young and often active Muslims. Second, they express different view points in generically new ways, criticizing and ridiculing Wilders or producing serious and committed explanations of their own understanding of Islam. Third, although relatively few women appeared in the videos, those that did speak for themselves, not only take on Wilders, but also claim their right to speak within Islam. We propose to understand these videos as acts of citizenships through which women constitute themselves as global citizens, in some cases by engaging in ‘deliberation’ as it is understood in feminist political theory, in other cases by taking a ‘voice’ that can be responded to. (shrink)

The paper focuses on processes of normalization through which dis/ability is simultaneously produced in specific collectives, networks, and socio-technological systems that enable the construction of such demarcations. Our point of departure is the cochlear implant, a neuroprosthetic device intended to replace and/or augment the function of the damaged inner ear. Unlike hearing aids, which amplify sounds, the CI does the work of damaged hair cells in the inner ear by providing sound signals to the brain. We examine the processes of (...) the CI’s genesis as well as its specific uses by and interrelations to the different and divergent actors that the CI assembles. We argue that the technological device and the implicated normalization process mobilize complex effects in varying socio-technical arrangements. The CI is conceived as a “boundary object” [89] or a “quasi-object” [49, 83], i.e., a metastabilized medium of translation that coordinates social, cultural, and technological action. Although intended to transform non-hearing or hard of hearing people into competent and “normal” hearing subjects, the CI system reproduces the asymmetrical structures of the disability discourse [14] through its function of “developing and maintaining coherence between intersecting social worlds” [89, 393]. Additionally, it initiates controversial discourses that have resulted in new forms of biosocial collectivities ranging from cochlear implantees with normal human hearing to human configurations who have passed through human enhancement. Our approach is thus situated at the intersection of disability and media studies and tackles the particular conditions technological media configurations impose upon the production of dis/ability. (shrink)

Why would anyone purchase expensive, natural resource-intensive, and seemingly obsolete material carriers of music when streaming providers provide unlimited access to over 40 million songs for a small monthly fee? As I will show, we can no longer assume that contemporary interest is driven solely by a collector’s market or because of the audible qualities of the vinyl listening experience, and must attend to the many ways people engage with record objects today – and by extension, the vinyl record as (...) an ontological multiple. Through an analysis of Record Store Day 2015 and affiliated phenomena including YouTube unboxing videos, other social media activity and the Discogs resale market, I will demonstrate that the vinyl record gains value when the lived experience of materiality becomes an event and enables the performance of self in social contexts. As I will show, while certain types of actors have appreciably benefitted from the recent revival of interest in vinyl (e.g. brick and mortar stores, mastering engineers, manufacturing plants, and ancillary service industries), others have not to the same extent (e.g. musicians, independent record labels). (shrink)

This paper analyses video recorded interactions between police officers and drivers in traffic stops in Russia. The interactions were recorded via cameras installed on the drivers’ car dashboards, and subsequently uploaded to YouTube; a practice to which over one million Russian motorists have resorted to counterbalance perceived high levels of bribery and corruption. The analysis focuses on responses to opening requests for identification in five different encounters. These show that the drivers repeatedly engage in potentially interpersonally sensitive activities in (...) which the vulnerability of face, especially that of the police officer, is interactionally manifested by launching counter requests in return. The organisation of the request–counter request sequences highlights how face and identity related concerns are interwoven in the participants’ attempts to contest each other’s authority. (shrink)

(The Kindle book can be ordered for $3.21 from Amazon) -/- Thinking is a fundamental activity of our species – those that give names to other creatures and call themselves humans. Textbooks tell us that there is about 1.2 kg of matter called the brain inside the human body. It sounds small but actually is proportionally the biggest among all animals on Earth. -/- I became more aware of thinking at around 5th grade upon hearing about an ancient paradox. It (...) can be summarized as follows. -/- ¤ -/- Once upon a time, there was a stupid king. In his kingdom lived a sage who was highly respected for his intelligence. The King did not appreciate this fact. Maybe the Sage made fun of the King’s intellect, but I am not so sure. Anyway, one day, the King summoned the Sage, intending to kill him. -/- The King said, “Wise man, I heard you earn a living by thinking and arguing. Now I give you two options to die.” -/- The Sage said, “Please tell me the choices, Your Majesty.” -/- The King continued, “You live by your tongue, so I will let you say one sentence before you die. If what you say is true, you will die by hanging. If what you say is false, you will die by beheading.” -/- Little did the King know that this was a stupid order. After a short while, the Sage confidently spoke his “last words”, which actually were what saved his life: -/- “Your Majesty, I am about to be beheaded!” -/- ¤ -/- As a “wild animal” going out into life from a young age, my brain spent a lot of time and energy looking for food. Now that I have become older, my body no longer needs so much sustenance. However, my mind craves a different type of nourishment: food for thought. -/- Food for thought can directly lead to food (on the table). My main job as a scientist exemplifies what I have just stated. Maybe we were wrong. Maybe it has been “thought for food” all along, like in such a sequence as TFFTTTFTFFTTFFFT... -/- In the hyper-chaotic infosphere today, we are surrounded by the noises of information, not only as wavy shores or waterfalls but also mega-tsunamis, through Twitter, Facebook, Tiktok, Instagram, Youtube, etc. More than ever, tranquility and calmness are necessary. Like what you have seen in wilderness video clips, predators such as lions, bears, and alligators act lightning-fast when catching prey. But when food is served, the natural world returns to its peaceful, soothing silence. -/- This short book is in its own tidy infosphere, where each little story is also brief and self-contained. Despite this small appearance, I hope the content inside carries the value of tranquility and life observation. The book is petite, but pretty sure not malnourished. A not-too-small detail is that the way the content was shaped and distilled reflects some innovations of mine and my research team: the mindsponge theory, a new theory of serendipity, the bayesvl R package, the BMF analytics, as well as other experiences from working in the field of science. After all, scientific works were my main source of food (before this book sells well – if it does). -/- Welcome to the priceless sober moments – with a chicken-burger price tag! -/- I hope this book will bring readers some moments of calmness, peaceful smiles, and maybe a couple of good laughs too. -/- ~~~ -/- *This update: December 12, 2023 (Third edition, with additions). (shrink)

i was 76 when the pandemic began. I'm 78 now; I'll be 79 when, God willing, it officially ends. I was a practicing, practical, pragmatic musician; the pandemic forced the adoption of a new identity. And that identity was younger than the last.How can that be? At a superficial level, it came about because I was forced into modes of behavior that are commonplace among persons born after, say, 1980, but were utterly new to me. I activated a Twitter account, (...) I started watching videos on YouTube, I listened to music online, and more. Previously, I had unwittingly endorsed a narrow definition of artistic experience—one that I had cultivated through many years of devoted attention to embodied... (shrink)

In today’s global higher education environment, international students represent not only an important source of external income for universities: the degree of cross-border student mobility also reflects the internationalization of higher education sector. Universities have engaged in efforts to sell themselves to prospective students and promotional videos are among the most widely used marketing tools for this purpose. This study reports the results of a study analyzing the content of 140 higher education promotional videos from 14 countries available (...) on YouTube. The results reveal that while the pattern of use of YouTube for two-waycommunication with viewers, information contents and appeal messages among sampled universities is fairly homogenous, some marked differences emerge when cultural background and global position ranking of the university are taken into account. The implications of these findings are that, although, transnational higher education has been profoundly globalized, culture still plays a significant role in marketing practice for the recruitment of mobile students. In addition, different universities have various student-targeted segments. These findings provide the basis of a series of recommendations for universities looking to optimize their use of YouTube and promotional video design to market to international students. (shrink)

Music plagiarism is defined as using tune, or melody that would closely imitate with another author’s music without proper attributions. It may occur either by stealing a musical idea or sampling. Unlike the traditional music, the Indian cinematic music is extremely popular amongst the public. Since the expectations of the public for songs that are enjoyable are high, many music directors are seeking elsewhere to “borrow” tunes. Whilst a vast majority of Indian cinemagoers may not have noticed these plagiarised tunes, (...) some journalists and vigilant music lovers have noticed these activities. This study has taken the initiative to investigate the extent of plagiaristic activities within one Indian cinematic music industry. A list of plagiarised songs was produced by using YouTube® searches for “comparative videos” made by the vigilant music lovers about accused/detected music plagiarism. Some of these individuals were also interviewed to understand their views on this. During the investigation, it was possible to identify a vast number of plagiarised tunes, snippets, or even the full songs. In fact, some of these examples’ dates to 1954, during the era when no one would have noticed plagiarism. The paper would highlight the similarities of these music files. It will also show some examples of the excuses/denial given by the composers and would try to highlight the attitudes of general public towards these types of activities. (shrink)

The aim in this chapter is to explore the similarities and differences between the city symphony film genre of the 1920s and 1930s and the contemporary virtual city walking tours that are popular on YouTube these days, eventually discussing the change in representation of the individual in daily life over a century. The city symphony was born with modernism in the early 20th century initially to present an interpretation of the city with daily activities, human beings, their interaction with (...) industrial technology and the urban environment. A significant and pioneering film of the genre is by Walter Ruttmann titled Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (1927) which I will try to analyze its filmic elements in order to draft a summary of the style and vision of the director and his contemporaries. On the other hand, the virtual city walking tours on YouTube represent a very different representation of urban exploration. These videos show various cities through the act of simple walking recorded in a long one-take POV shot with a gimbal-camera. Despite minor differences in terms of commentary and music use, these videos are quite similar to each other when compared to city symphony films in general. The methodological approach for analyzing and interpreting these films and videos is guided by the neoformalist approach proposed by Bordwell and Thompson in the 1980s, along with Noël Carroll’s view on critical evaluation. Since this post-theoretical approach is non-formulaic in terms of its methodology, it fits the two examples I will provide that are stylistically very distant. After establishing the form and style of the works, I will try to follow Carroll’s suggestions in order to critically interpret, analyze and evaluate the works. The comparison between the city symphony film and virtual city walking tour reveals a complex interplay between continuity and change in regards to the individual. While both share a rather common goal of capturing the essence of urban life their differences are to be found in their stylistic choices and their interpretations of the goal itself. The city films of the 1920s and 30s were avant-garde expressions that combined artistic innovation with socio-political commentary. They were often experimental, using montage sequences, juxtaposition and abstract imagery to convey the ever changing industrialized modern city life. Ruttmann’s Berlin is emblematic of this approach, offering a poetic and critical reflection on urban existence. In contrast, the virtual city walking tours on YouTube are more accessible and immediate. They provide a first-person perspective that allows viewers to virtually traverse different cities, experiencing sights and sounds without the mediation of artistic abstraction. The similarity in these videos suggests a standardized format that prioritizes immersion over critique. This article offers a valuable contribution to the understanding of urban representation of the individual in film and digital media. By comparing the city symphony film with virtual city walking tours, I try to illuminate the evolving relationship between art, technology and urban life. I argue that not only is there a completely different representation of the individual within the frame, but there is also ethical considerations to be put forth regarding the one that makes the frame, or the camera. In the end I argue that the human-ness of a work of art or any type of video is more important than immersiveness. (shrink)

This renin‐angiotensin system (RAS) interpretation is focused on differences in tissue dependence on RAS and on the topological hierarchy that allows mediators to act only on downstream tissues.Dependence of tissues on RAS: Tested by expectation maximization clustering of the RNA human tissue expression (https://biogps.org/). ACE and vasoconstrictive AT1R clustered with the prorenin receptor. ACE2 and dilatory MAS1 clustered with nine RAS‐related genes, highly expressed in: Liver; Cardiac_Myocytes; Skeletal_Muscle; Uterus; Kidney; Lung; Small_Intestine; Smooth_Muscle.RAS and stress accumulation: While prorenin is active after (...) binding to its receptor, binding of soluble renin increases its enzymatic activity several times. Increased renin secretion multiplies the overall capacity for producing Ang I, leading to hypertension and increased vascular resistance.Coronavirus infection and comorbidities: Cardiorespiratory failure during infection is linked to the previously altered RAS role in lungs and myocardium. Reduced vasodilation by ACE2 lead to vasoconstriction and suboptimal tissue perfusion patterns. Also see the video abstract here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf0Iped-Mws. (shrink)

This article is based on an online ethnographic study of Dutch women who use YouTube as a medium to document their contested illness experiences. During 13 months of observations between 2017 and 2019, we followed a sample of 16 YouTubers, and conducted an in-depth analysis of 30 YouTube videos and of 7 interviews. By adopting a ‘praxiographic’ approach to social media, and by utilising insights from phenomenological theory, this study teases out how bodies are ‘done’ in (the (...) making of) these YouTube videos. We describe three types of bodies: (1) inert bodies, (2) experienced bodies, and (3) authentic bodies. Ultimately, this study shows how vlogging about contested illness is a practice in which bodies are continually (re)configured, and through which the ‘invisibility’ of a sufferer’s condition can obtain social visibility. (shrink)

Este artículo explora a YouTube como una infraestructura de conocimiento y analiza cómo estudiantes y docentes usan los videos de la plataforma con fines de estudio en dos escuelas secundarias argentinas. Los hallazgos muestran que las prácticas estudiantes se alinean con los algoritmos de la plataforma, que privilegian interacciones veloces, vínculos basados en gustos personales y la búsqueda de información.

This article explores how the Crash Course video series are being used as a content-focused resource in the social studies classroom. It argues that the Crash Course series, alongside its YouTube competitors, has significantly stepped in to fill a vacuum left by criticisms and the unpopularity of lectures, textbooks, and feature films. With over 15 million subscribers and accumulated views over 1.9 billion, Crash Course has become an important and ubiquitous force in history and social studies classrooms and represents (...) a new genre of educational media found on YouTube. However, the dramatic rise in the popularity of educational videos online has not coincided with a growth in educational research, particularly in social studies and history education. This article explores the findings of a mixed-methods study that examines how and why history and social studies teachers are using Crash Course videos in their teaching and planning. In particular, it analyses descriptive statistics derived from the results of a teacher survey ( n = 181) and semi-structured interviews with seven social studies teachers who have used Crash Course in their classrooms. The authors found that teachers in the study are regularly using the Crash Course video series to deliver content which is clearly meeting a need many social studies teachers have. The videos–short, easily accessible, and fun–fit nicely with demands to keep students engaged, reduce reliance on textbooks, and explore new content that teachers have little time to learn themselves. This study also found that rarely, if ever, are teachers inviting students to evaluate or assess the content, trustworthiness, or perspective of Crash Course videos. This article discusses what is gained and what are the risks of embracing Crash Course in the social studies and history classroom. (shrink)

The Western school classroom can no longer remain a secluded and impermeable space in a world that is increasingly hyperconnected through dynamic flows of capital, technologies, populations, media images and ideas. Books brought to the school by diverse students, narratives from far-away countries and YouTube tunes from different cultures can become powerful teaching and learning tools in this frame. Such tools enable multiple metaphors and connections between various life spheres, diverse cultural and socio-economic milieus, and different times and places, (...) as manifested in the thought-provoking ethnographic observation on ‘The book and the author’s reading’ by Elise v. Bernstorff and Carla J. Maier. (shrink)

Many artists and music labels rely on partnerships with brands to pay for the production costs of their music videos. In exchange, the brands are featured in those videos. To enhance the transparency of these embedded forms of advertising, sponsorship disclosures are required. However, it remains unknown what the content of these disclosures in music videos should be to enhance sponsor transparency for adolescents. We examined how disclosure type affected adolescents’ conceptual and attitudinal persuasion knowledge. In addition, (...) effects on responses toward the brand, music video, and artist were examined. An experiment showed that none of the tested disclosures enhanced adolescents’ conceptual persuasion knowledge. However, disclosures explaining that the embedded brand helped pay for the production cost of the video led to lower attitudinal persuasion knowledge and, consequently, to more positive attitudes toward the brand, video, and artist, and to increased intentions to purchase the brand. (shrink)

Accounts of video game play developed from an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic perspective remain relatively scarce. This study collects together an emerging, if scattered, body of research which focuses on the material, practical “work” of video game players. The study offers an example-driven explication of an EMCA perspective on video game play phenomena. The materials are arranged as a “tactical zoom.” We start very much “outside” the game, beginning with a wide view of how massive-multiplayer online games are played within (...) dedicated gaming spaces; here, we find multiple players, machines, and many different sorts of activities going on. Still remaining somewhat distanced from the play of the game itself, we then take a closer look at the players themselves by examining a notionally simpler setting involving pairs taking part in a football game at a games console. As we draw closer to the technical details of play, we narrow our focus further still to examine a player and spectator situated “at the screen” but jointly analyzing play as the player competes in an online first-person shooter. Finally, we go “inside” the game entirely and look at the conduct of avatars on-screen via screen recordings of a massively multiplayer online game. Having worked through specific examples, we provide an elaboration of a selection of core topics of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis that is used to situate some of the unstated orientations in the presentation of data fragments. In this way, recurrent issues raised in the fragments are shown as coherent, interconnected phenomena. In closing, we suggest caution regarding the way game play phenomena have been analyzed in this study, while remarking on challenges present for the development of further EMCA-oriented research on video game play. (shrink)

Researchers in the area of children and advertising have been working for decades to determine exactly how children process commercial messages. While a great deal of work has focused on cognitive advertising literacy, research regarding the development of children’s moral advertising literacy is lacking. Given the popularity of social media platforms among youth today, this study examined age differences in children’s moral evaluations of product placement in a YouTube video displaying various forms of disclosures. Results revealed that more prominent (...) disclosures are associated with greater judgments of the appropriateness of the advertising tactic, which in turn is associated with more positive evaluations of the promoted brand. While the former relationship was particularly strong among younger children, older children were more likely to consider how others and society broadly are impacted by covert advertising, resulting in more negative evaluations of the promoted brand. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es realizar una revisión sistemática de la literatura científica sobre el estado de la cuestión del uso de YouTube como herramienta de aprendizaje musical informal por parte de usuarios adolescentes. En la actualidad, los jóvenes, nativos digitales y usuarios avanzados de redes sociales y plataformas de audio y vídeo online, recurren constantemente a YouTube como recurso lúdico para su aprendizaje. Sin embargo, habiendo utilizado los parámetros de la revisión sistemática PRISMA, nuestro estudio demuestra (...) que existe una reducida literatura específica que aborde el tema en cuestión. (shrink)

Birth, in many societies, is considered to be a private affair. Although health and medical professionals usually assist, the only other people who share the birth process with mothers are their nearest and dearest. With the rise of information communication technologies, however, birth is no longer an exclusively private event. Some women are now sharing their birthing experiences with millions of viewers who are part of the online video ‘community’ YouTube Broadcast Yourself. Searching the word ‘birth’ on YouTube (...) results in close to one million ‘hits’. This article is based on a small-scale, qualitative research project, which involved viewing and making notes on several hundred online videos of birth on YouTube and the accompanying posts and commentaries about the videos. These data were analysed through a feminist, poststructuralist and geographical lens. Throughout the article the term ‘cyber/space’ is used to highlight the mutually constituted nature of ‘real’ and virtual spaces. The article concludes that although YouTube has the potential to open up new windows on birth, this potential is not yet being realized. YouTube does not overcome or render insignificant material expressions of power, instead it typically privileges US experiences of birth, reiterates discourses of ‘good’ mothering and censors particular (mainly vaginal) representations of birth. (shrink)

O YouTube é um dos sites mais acessados do mundo, a plataforma conta com diversas ferramentas de interatividade e compartilhamento de informações, heranças do surgimento da Web 2.0. O cyberespaço permitiu com que questões sociais ganhassem mais visibilidade, assim como, as relações étnico-raciais, um dos principais assunto discutidos neste trabalho. Nesta perspectiva, a seguinte pesquisa se propôs a investigar o YouTube como ferramenta no auxílio aos/as estudantes enquanto fonte de informação para uma educação antirracista. Tendo em vista que, (...) a educação é um dos caminhos para combater mazelas sociais, como o racismo, o estudo tem como objetivo geral analisar a plataforma YouTube como fonte de informação educacional na promoção de uma educação antirracista nas bibliotecas escolares. Estabelece como metodologia, uma pesquisa bibliográfica com abordagem qualitativa e de natureza básica. Entende que a biblioteca escolar pode ser um espaço que promova a diversidade e uma educação mais democrática. Com isso, a plataforma YouTube, a partir de seus vídeos, é uma fonte informacional que pode auxiliar bibliotecárias/os neste sentido. Indica o levantamento de 9 canais apresentados pelo Fundo Vozes Negras do YouTube, como fonte de informação antirracista para bibliotecas escolares. Defende, a importância da utilização destes canais em ambiente escolar, por meio da amostra de vídeos definida no corpo deste trabalho. Conclui que os conteúdos aqui apresentados, mostram que as reflexões sociais, em espaços de destaque como o YouTube, são importantes para a reconstrução de uma identidade negra positiva, negada a população negra ao longo da história. (shrink)

Fracking or the extraction of shale gas through hydraulic fracturing of rock has become a contested topic, especially in the United States, where it has been deployed on a large scale, and in Europe where it is still largely speculative. Research is beginning to investigate the environmental and economic costs and benefits as well as public perceptions of this new energy technology. However, so far the social and psychological impact of fracking on those involved in it, such as gas workers, (...) or those living in the vicinity of fracking sites, has escaped the attention of the social science research community. In this article we begin to fill this gap through a small-scale thematic analysis of representations of fracking in fifty YouTube videos, where the trailer of a controversial film, Gasland (Fox, 2010), has had a marked impact. Results show that the videos discuss not only environmental and economic costs and benefits of fracking but also social and psychological impacts on individuals and communities. These videos reveal a human face of fracking that remains all too often hidden from view. (shrink)

This article describes an artwork in progress; a digital video of synchronized visual patterns based in part on rhythmic practices that are said to reliably lead to a shifted state of consciousness. The artwork is being developed to further understand the correlation of rhythm and consciousness. The investigation is based on a comparative study of the following practices: ‘The Art of Memory’ and Raymon Llull’s thirteenth-century diagrammatic mnemonics, the Lucid Dreaming exercises developed at Stanford University and the African Yoruba rhythms (...) of ritualized possession. Throughout history, states of extreme lucidity, whether described as ‘ah-ha’ moments or life-transforming epiphanies, have been described with striking consistently and with such frequency that, rather than extraordinary, they seem to be fundamental to the human condition. The paradoxical state of lucid dreaming has been scientifically identified at Stanford University as a state of wakeful awareness that occurs during REM sleep, while dreaming. We might anticipate in the near future, the identification of a wakeful state of lucidity, a state as distinct from normal wakeful awareness as the state of dreaming. Those who have experienced altered states of consciousness can lend unique perspective and insight into the nature of consciousness. Analysis of practices that lead to such states add further insight. From running, to rhythmic breathing, to the circular movement of pilgrims at Mecca, to circular mosh pits, rhythmic activity is prevalent among practices that are said to lead to a shifted state of consciousness. The research suggests that in addition to rhythm itself, the relationship between rhythms is a significant factor corresponding to shifted states of consciousness. The digital video artwork discussed in this article might be thought of as a visualization of such rhythmic sequencing, and its development a creative method of inquiry. (shrink)

In their reply to my recent paper on Munchausen's syndrome by proxy, Professor Southall and Dr. Samuels concede that some things may be learned from my observations. They do not attend to the main argument of the paper, however, that the proportion of research interest in their use of covert video surveillance merits consideration of the research protocol by an independent research ethics committee. It will not do simply to assert that the use of this technology for the purposes outlined (...) in their accounts is not research. I formulated arguments based on facts divulged in those published accounts for regarding their work as containing a considerable proportion of research activity. Unfortunately their reply did not address these arguments. Until such points are adequately answered the protection of patients calls for satisfactory judgments to be made on certain important issues which any research ethics committee would be obliged to consider in an evaluation of their activities. I suggest that some of these features will create more difficulties for approval of such a protocol than others. (shrink)

Since the 2010s, popular YouTube channels have used derogatory humour at the expense of gendered and racialised others. Founded upon the perception of an influx of ‘wokeness’ in comedy, these videos mock the mythologised ‘unfunny, angry SJW’ and teach the audience to laugh at enemies of the alt-right. Although empirical research has analysed the algorithmic radicalisation of viewers, few have addressed the role of cultural discourses in disseminating alt-right ideology through online media. Here, the right-wing ‘pipeline’ is understood (...) as a tool of radicalisation that weaponises laughter as a tool of regulations and oppression. This paper analyzes the production of derogatory laughter by studying a network of North American content creators including Russell Peters, Lilly Singh, Jordan Peterson, Steven Crowder, and Matt Walsh, using critical tools from psychoanalysis, social psychology, and critical humour studies. Contrary to the alt-right rhetoric that ‘edgy’ humour is harmless, this paper posits derogatory humour as a tool of marginalisation and domination that reinforces white supremacist and cisnormative patriarchal value systems. (shrink)

YouTube has been implicated in the transformation of users into extremists and conspiracy theorists. The alleged mechanism for this radicalizing process is YouTube’s recommender system, which is optimized to amplify and promote clips that users are likely to watch through to the end. YouTube optimizes for watch-through for economic reasons: people who watch a video through to the end are likely to then watch the next recommended video as well, which means that more advertisements can be served (...) to them. This is a seemingly innocuous design choice, but it has a troubling side-effect. Critics of YouTube have alleged that the recommender system tends to recommend extremist content and conspiracy theories, as such videos are especially likely to capture and keep users’ attention. To date, the problem of radicalization via the YouTube recommender system has been a matter of speculation. The current study represents the first systematic, pre-registered attempt to establish whether and to what extent the recommender system tends to promote such content. We begin by contextualizing our study in the framework of technological seduction. Next, we explain our methodology. After that, we present our results, which are consistent with the radicalization hypothesis. Finally, we discuss our findings, as well as directions for future research and recommendations for users, industry, and policy-makers. (shrink)

IntroductionThe idea of video recording in the operating room with panoramic cameras and microphones is a new concept that is changing the approach to medical activities in the OR. However, VR in the OR has brought up many concerns regarding patient privacy and has highlighted legal and ethical issues that were never previously exposed.AimTo review the literature concerning these aspects and provide a better ethical and legal understanding of the new challenges concerning VR in the OR.ConclusionsThere is a disparity between (...) the two main legal models concerning VR in the OR, namely the European legal system ) and the American legal framework ). This difference mainly deals with two distinct bioethical paradigms: GDPR places a strong emphasis on protecting patients’ privacy to improve the public health system, whereas HIPAA indicates the need to generate protocols to safeguard the risks connected to medical activity and patient privacy. Following from this point, we may argue that, at the ethical and bioethical level, GDPR and HIPAA depend mainly on two different ethical models: a perspective based on moral acquaintances and weak proceduralism, respectively. It is worth noting the importance of developing additional guidelines concerning different world regions to avoid the ethical problems that may emerge when simply applying a foreign paradigm to a very different culture. (shrink)

The objective of this study is to analyze the relationship between views and social interaction generated by YouTuber videos in Spanish. A quali-quantitative analysis is conducted on a sample of 100 videos, 10 YouTube channels, 997 minutes of video, with 116,934,321 views, 12,297,021 likes/dislikes, and 1,041,191 comments on YT, 306,000 retweets/favorites on TW and 140,852 comments, shares, and reactions on FB. The existence of social media tools on YouTube does not in itself guarantee interaction by users (...) who prefer to watch videos and adopt a passive attitude. In this analysis, we propose a social interaction indicator that takes into account the total number of social media reactions made on social networks and the age of the video. Cultivating realistic conversation and interaction on platforms with audiences numbering in the millions represents a serious challenge for YouTubers. (shrink)

This article discusses the [development and] use of a video life-world schema to explore alternative orientations to the shared health consultation. It is anticipated that this schema can be used by practitioners and consumers alike to understand the dynamics of videoed health consultations, the role of the participants within it and the potential to consciously alter the outcome by altering behaviour during the process of interaction. The study examines health consultation participation and develops an interpretative method of analysis that includes (...) image elicitation (via videos), phenomenology (to identify the components of the analytic framework), narrative (to depict the stories of interactions) and a reflexive mode (to develop shared meaning through a conceptual framework for analysis). The analytic framework is derived from a life-world conception of human mutual shared interaction which is presented here as a novel approach to understanding patient-centred care. The video materials used in this study were derived from consultations in a Walk-in Centre (WiC) in East London. The conceptual framework produced through the process of video analysis is comprised of different combinations of movement, knowledge and emotional conversations that are used to classify objective or engaged WiC health care interactions. The videoed interactions organise along an active or passive, facilitative or directive typical situation continuum illustrating different kinds of textual approaches to practice that are in tension or harmony. The schema demonstrates how practitioners and consumers interact to produce these outcomes and indicates the potential for both consumers and practitioners to be educated to develop practice dynamics that support patient-centred care and impact on health outcomes. (shrink)

Digital video and photography are becoming aspects of everyday business activities, allowing for the quick modification and distribution of images. From development of websites to the editing of a single photograph on a desktop PC, people are using digital images in many business contexts. However, important business ethics issues are emerging concerning the malleability and veracity of digital images as well as their rapid dissemination on the Internet. Activities with digital video and photography in business ethics classrooms can underscore a (...) number of philosophical and moral concerns involving the nature of perception and documentation as well as surveillance. The era of video and photography as reliable “witnesses” to human interaction is gradually passing; they are becoming recognized as highly malleable media that give photographers wide leeway in modification, leading to issues involving the trustworthiness of photographic documentation in business contexts. Various exercises and scenarios that explore image modification issues are included in this article. Hands-on exercises can also be effective; students who create and subsequently edit digital portraits of themselves in the context of a business ethics class can gain valuable perspectives on role-taking and the ethical implications of deceptive communications. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to develop and describe the author's model of teaching foreign language listening using authentic video content. As a result, the author presents a six-stage model, which includes content-goal-setting, two activity-technological, two control-evaluative and revising-target stages, concretized through the system of communicative tasks. The novelty of the study lies in the identification of the linguo-methodological potential of authentic video content for teaching foreign language listening and modeling this process on the basis of the corresponding principles (...) – main and specific. (shrink)

The main implication of the scientific consensus on human causality of climate change is the need to implement urgent and transformative policies. However, inaction remains. Much of the academic research has concentrated on discourses that question the evidence of climate science under the umbrella term "climate change denial", but the focus has recently started to shift to the arguments of those who, while accepting the evidence, criticize the processes by which it is obtained and, especially, oppose ambitious measures, in many (...) cases using misinformation. In this article, we will present a taxonomy of such arguments, categorized under the concept of "climate action obstructionism", and we will analyze how this discourse is "amplified" through the Internet; specifically, as an example, we will examine a YouTube video posted on Dalas Review’s channel. (shrink)

This article aims to explain the behaviour of public intellectuals, celebrities, and media audiences in the construction of anti-emotional narratives in the online culture wars. In the investigation of how these narratives are constructed on YouTube, the article focuses on the rhetorical juxtaposition of rationality and emotionality surrounding the viral argument between public intellectual Sam Harris and Hollywood star Ben Affleck on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, uploaded to YouTube. The video is an apt example of the (...) positioning dynamics on YouTube, where an increased integration of media content with its context of reception unsettles the positioning process by which the authority of both intellectuals and celebrities is negotiated and culture war narratives constructed. In conclusion, the article reflects on the relationship between the increasingly affective nature of online communication and the simultaneous emergence of a strict dichotomy between rationality and emotionality in anti-woke culture war narratives. (shrink)

Der Beitrag demonstriert, wie YouTube-Kanäle produktiv in die digitale und analoge Lehre integriert werden können. Verschiedene Videoformate werden vorgestellt und die jeweiligen didaktischen und technischen Herausforderungen skizziert. Statistiken werden präsentiert, die Aufschluss über die Chancen, Probleme und Potenziale von YouTube-Kanälen in der Hochschullehre geben. Abschließend werden Erfahrungen geschildert, die ganz allgemein das Kanal-Design und die Werbung neuer Abonnenten betreffen. Dabei werden folgende Fragen und Themen diskutiert: Wie können Studierende durch das Rezipieren von Videos aktiviert werden? Wie sollten (...) Lehrvideos produziert werden? Welche Rolle spielen technische und dramaturgische Faktoren in der philosophischen Lehre? (shrink)

This article considers the significance of YouTube as a pedagogical space from which young people can play participatory roles as theorists in their own constructions as popular cultural subjects. Drawing upon the public profile of ?KevJumba,? a teenager who makes videos of himself on YouTube, the article suggests that representational practices of adolescents on YouTube can serve an important educative function. They can do the work of disrupting conventional constructions of adolescence in popular culture, of demonstrating (...) that adolescents can be savvy critics and skillful negotiators of the social constructions made of them, and of highlighting how external controls inform the presumed autonomy that online practices self-expression offer young people. Paying attention to the popular cultural practices of adolescents on spaces like YouTube can offer a contemporary educative venue from which to contemplate how young people do the work of defining and contesting their place in the popular imagination. (shrink)

If he were alive today, what might Heidegger say about _Halo, _the popular video game franchise? What would Augustine think about _Assassin’s Creed _? What could Maimonides teach us about Nintendo’s eponymous hero, Mario? While some critics might dismiss such inquiries outright, protesting that these great thinkers would never concern themselves with a medium so crude and mindless as video games, it is impor­tant to recognize that games like these are, in fact, becoming the defining medium of our time. We (...) spend more time and money on video games than on books, television, or film, and any serious thinker of our age should be concerned with these games, what they are saying about us, and what we are learning from them. Yet video games still remain relatively unexplored by both scholars and pundits alike. Few have advanced beyond out­moded and futile attempts to tie gameplay to violent behavior. With this canard now thoroughly and repeatedly disproven, it is time to delve deeper. Just as the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan recently acquired fourteen games as part of its permanent collection, so too must we seek to add a serious consideration of virtual worlds to the pantheon of philoso-phical inquiry. In _God in the Machine, _author Liel Leibovitz leads a fas­cinating tour of the emerging virtual landscape and its many dazzling vistas from which we are offered new vantage points on age-old theological and philosophical questions. Free will vs. determinism, the importance of ritual, transcendence through mastery, notions of the self, justice and sin, life, death, and resurrection—these all come into play in the video games that some critics so easily write off as mind-numbing wastes of time. When one looks closely at how these games are designed, at their inherent logic, and at the cognitive effects they have on players, it becomes clear that playing these games creates a state of awareness vastly different from that which occurs when we watch television or read a book. Indeed, gameplay is a far more engaged process—one that draws on various faculties of mind and body to evoke sensa­tions that might more commonly be associated with religious experience. Getting swept away in an engrossing game can be a profoundly spiritual activity. It is not _to think_, but rather simply _to be_, a logic that sustained our ancestors for millennia as they looked heavenward for answers. Today, as more and more of us look screenward, it is important to investigate these games for their vast potential as fine instruments of moral training. Anyone seeking a concise and well-reasoned introduction to the subject would do well to start with _God in the Machine_. By illuminating both where video game storytelling is now and where it currently butts up against certain inherent limitations, Liebovitz intriguingly implies how the field and, in turn, our experiences might continue to evolve and advance in the coming years. (shrink)