Africa on youtube article week 5
Hello everyone… Happy Easter (monday)!
Well for week 5 presentation I talked about Africa on Youtube article by by Melissa Wall. I didn’t have much to talk about except about African stereotypes constructed by Westerners and the content of the Youtube clips.
So the main focus of the article is how citizen media might influence international communication flows by enabling new ways of representing Africa. In the literature review section of the article she discuses the two sides of Youtube.
The negative side argues that Youtube’s representation of Africa is controlled by a Western gaze. Images on Youtube consistently portrays Africa backward and violent, and extreme poverty. The positive side is that new communication technologies in Africa can enable African to construct their own identities and be connected to the world better.
She uses content analysis for her research of Youtube clips specifically on Ghana and Kenya and asks 4 questions:
- how long is the video?
- How many times has it been viewed
- what country does the person posting the video claim to be from?
- What is the focus (the main activity or theme) of the video?
Wall mention that the person who is posting the video is people with internet access, and because Africans have lower internet access the one who are posting the videos would be dominated by Westerners of African diaspora. In Ghana only 3%of the population have internet access and only 6% of Kenya’s population have internet access.
The content for Kenya and Ghana’s videos were entertainment focused and it clashes with the optimistic view that Youtube content will educate or inform viewers as has been claimed.
The second and third most popular content was tourist and aid work videos.
Conclusion of the article is that “Youtube enables the average Westerner in particular to become a chronicler of other peoples in faraway lands just as travelers and missionaries ‘discovered’ Africa in previous centuries.”(Hall 405)
In my opinion Youtube is strictly for entertainment and should never be the only or even a source of information. Is that too critical? But I still enjoy its content 
Hmm, I know where you’re coming from here but for my money it is too critical: I myself get an enormous amount of information (as well as entertainment) from YouTube. This ranges from, say, that Al Jazeera news channel through to snippets of interesting and well-made documentary. Admittedly, the fluffy stuff is in the majority!
Yeah after reading Carpenter I think I was too harsh… diversity is good! And for Youtube and that I guess the thing is that you have to search for the educational content that you want since the content is so diverse.