YouTube, Critical Pedagogy, and Media Activism: An Articulation

48 Pages·2009·0.25 MB·English

by  Eric Rosenfeld

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YouTube, Critical Pedagogy, and Media Activism: An Articulation
Douglas Kellner and Gooyong Kim

A main goal of critical pedagogy is to facilitate simultaneously individual development
and social transformation for a more egalitarian and just society. As opposed to the reproductive
role of education, critical pedagogy strives for the “action of dialogical Subjects upon reality in
order to transform it…. [by] posing reality as a problem” (Freire, 1970, p. 168). In other words,
critical pedagogy believes education to be a form of cultural politics that is fundamental to social
transformation aiming to cultivate human agency and transformative activity. With the firm
belief in the “potentiality of the people,” critical pedagogy equips individuals with opportunities
to expose, develop and realize their human capacities through “participating in the pursuit of
liberation” of themselves and society at the same time (Freire, 1970, p. 169). Therefore, due to
individual differences in development and abilities, genuine education is never just a matter of a
homogenized schooling during a certain time period. Essentially, education is a life-long process
and search for self-fulfillment. As Dewey and Freire note, with critical perspectives on
education’s role in societal as well as individual developments, it can also be a democratizing
force and promote cultural revolution and social transformation.
However, education today tends to be confined to schooling, that is, getting instruction as
job-training, or indoctrination into established value-systems and practices. Education in a
capitalist society is a kind of voucher for politico-economic success or, at least, subsistence.
Furthermore, the hidden curriculum of mass media’s popular pedagogy, such as advertising,
media socialization, and political propaganda, means that education in the United States, as a
life-time process, tends to be controlled by dominant economic and political institutions. In other
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words, education is no longer primarily a matter of self-development, critical thought, and social
progress, but is a mere matter of financial investment or ideological inculcation. Tragically,
school is often no longer a live forum for liberating dialogue, but tends to be a warehouse for
knowledge and skills as a matter of transmission in which “teaching for testing” becomes the
norm under the banner of No Child Left Behind.1 In terms of the Enlightenment project of
Western civilization which promised individual freedom, social prosperity, and universal
progress, an enlightened modernity has not been achieved because of education’s failure to
cultivate critical human agency with rationality and autonomy. Rather, schooling has promoted
social conformity and striving for success in the competitive rat race.
As a chief reason for the failure of the Enlightenment project, the monopoly of
knowledge and the institutionalization of education have played a major role in strengthening
conservative hegemony by eradicating critical consciousness, as well as by making school a
crucial field for social, political, and ideological reproduction. With regard to the interconnection
of power and knowledge (Foucault, 1980), schooling has become a quasi-monopoly control and
dissemination of knowledge by established powers as a form of cultural and ideological
domination, which controls knowledge to strengthen the interests of the dominant class.
Consequently, Althusser (1971) correctly identifies education as a part of the Ideological State
Apparatus to produce/reproduce ruling ideologies in capitalist societies.
However, the innovation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has
provided ordinary people with unprecedented opportunities to take on the ruling educational
power structure and pedagogy. The uncontested monopoly of knowledge and the
institutionalization of education can now be challenged by new media technologies, which make
possible decentralized and interactive communication and a participatory model of culture and
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democracy, with multiple voices and an expanded flow of information, thus creating a new field
for the conjuncture of education and democracy. In particular, dialogical two-way
communication and collective “many-to-many” communication have been widely implemented
with the emergence of the Internet and social networking sites. This technological development
has amplified individual, voluntary participation in mutual education through proliferating new
voices and visions, making possible the democratization of knowledge. In other words,
conventional relationships between the producers and the consumers of knowledge have been
productively challenged. Thus, the Internet has opened a space for individuals to realize
Benjamin’s (1934) belief that a “reader is at all times ready to become a writer,” suggesting a
new space to realize the civic engagement of modern citizens (p. 225). Consequently, individuals
can become more deeply involved in the democratization of knowledge and mutual pedagogy as
autonomous rational beings, thus helping to realize the dreams of the Enlightenment.
With regard to the potential of ICTs for reviving a more pedagogically participatory
democracy, Habermas’s (1989) notion of the “public sphere” is an important resource to examine
the significance of voluntary individuals’ active engagement with the dominant reproductive
model of education. Grounded in an ideal of “communicative rationality” which is based on
mutual understanding and persuasion,2 Habermas (1989) believes that individuals should strive
for personal autonomy and to exchange their ideas openly and reach consensus in the “universal
speech situation” of the public sphere, in which there is minimum domination or manipulation
and the force of the better argument prevails. Individuals can exercise mutual pedagogical
practices when the ideal notion of the public sphere is embodied in their autonomous
participation in discussions of their own interests, as well as by undistorted communication
among themselves. In this ideal space of pedagogical interaction, any attempt to dominate or
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regulate a free flow of knowledge and information is difficult, if not impossible, thus helping to
realize Enlightenment goals.3 From this idealized and normative perspective, interactive and
decentralized communication on the Internet can invigorate the potential of pedagogic
democratization in the “public sphere.” However, leaving aside problems of the “digital divide”
among class, gender and race, Habermas (1989)’s notion of the public sphere is strictly confined
to the bourgeois model of liberal capitalism which does not explain social problems caused by
class conflicts, the fragmented public by competing interests, and the massive intervention of
governments and corporations into social formation of public opinion (Fraser, 1992; Kellner
2000). Nevertheless, Habermas’s ideal of the public sphere is still a powerful concept to examine
the Internet’s potential for democratization. For, in contrast to rigid notions of schooling, the
Internet can provide individuals with the occasion to reclaim education as a space for self-
fulfillment and personal autonomy without any restrictions of institutional control and
standardized curricula.
Yet, we must conceptualize the Internet and new media in terms of the “embededness in
the political economy, social relations, and political environment within which they are
produced, circulated, and received” for a more correct understanding about its socio/political
potential as well as its limitations (Kellner, 1995, p. 2). While emergent technologies provide the
potential that individuals can “empower themselves in relation to dominant media and culture”
(Kellner, 1995, p. 2) and can provide the oppressed with ever more liberating forum for the
counter-hegemonic politics of culture, there are also limitations that must be confronted
concerning the political economy of the media and technology, their imbrications in the
dominant social and political system, and the ways that media and technology generate social
reproduction and can be part of an apparatus of social domination. In this article, we argue that
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new media like YouTube (hereafter, UT), combined with a transformative critical pedagogy, can
help realize the Internet’s potential for democratization and transformative pedagogy.
To be sure, while new media technologies allow individuals to secure unprecedented
space for an alternative/counter-hegemonic politics, they also face the risks of ensnaring
established social constituencies in the tentacles of the dominant culture and ideology.
Emancipatory, politically progressive, and socially transformative uses of the media and
technology should thus be informed by a critical pedagogy to produce a viable counter-
hegemonic cultural politics and pedagogy of the Internet. This requires insight into the important
role of narrative in pedagogy. Critical pedagogy offers a “discourse of plurality, difference, and
multinarratives ….in order to explain either the mechanics of domination or the dynamic of
emancipation” (Giroux, 1992, p. 51). Giroux calls critical pedagogy to help traditionally
oppressed people to acquire their voices in culture and politics as the prerequisite of developing
critical human agency and a more democratic society. Therefore, by acknowledging a cultural
politics of critical media pedagogy, individuals can critically confront the hegemonic power of
domination and pursue counter-hegemonic politics of alternative pedagogy and culture. By
taking over opportunities offered by novel Internet media such as UT, individuals can organize
and deploy novel strategies of self-education and social transformation.
More importantly, with pervasive distribution of Internet communication infrastructures
throughout the globe providing universal access, new media can help the oppressed to exercise
“praxis [with] reflection and action which [can] truly transform reality” in their everyday lives
(Freire, 1970, p. 100). When they have an occasion and competence to raise their authentic
voices based on their own lived experiences of social oppression, marginalized people are likely
to augment their counter-hegemonic struggle by consolidating solidarity with other critical social
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constituencies.4 Equipped with crucial sociopolitical consciousness and competency to make
uses of the Internet, individuals can realize what Giroux (2001, p. 13) calls the “reconstruction of
democratic public life.” In other words, a critical media pedagogy can provide the oppressed
with the revolutionary power of “praxis” by providing virtually universal points of intervention
into the cultural politics of the new media. In this regard, believing that “public pedagogy
represents a moral and political practice rather than merely a technical procedure” (p. 9), Giroux
(2001) affirms the progressive, transformative potential of critical new media pedagogy by
stressing:
[T]he performative as a transitive act, a work in progress informed by a cultural politics
that translates knowledge back into practice, places theory in the political space of the
performative, and invigorates the pedagogical as a practice through which collective
struggles can be waged to revive and maintain the fabric of democratic institutions. (p.
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From this point of view, to examine the pedagogic implications and power of UT is
important because successful implementation of critical media pedagogy for social
transformation requires that individuals make use of the potentially democratizing and
transformative opportunities made available by emergent technologies like UT. Stated
differently, it is important to examine how individual UTers make use of opportunities to
implement a “performative pedagogy” (Giroux, 2001, p. 7) of the new media by infusing theory
and practice. On the other hand, so far, there is little academic research to investigate the
transformative roles of UT in terms of its pedagogical as well as political potentials. Even though
there is some research, it is essentially confined in the functionalist/instrumental paradigm to
review UT’s usability.5 Consequently, this study will contribute to developing a critical and
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transformative pedagogy of new media technologies, as it examines the dialectical relationship
between UT and individuals’ employment of it as potential forms of critical pedagogy and
democratic social transformation that highlights both its potential contributions and limitations.
YouTube as a Cutting Edge of ICTs
UT has been immensely popular and influential since its inception in February 2005.
Time magazine awarded UT the Best Invention of 2006, and Grossman (2006) describes UT’s
enormous impact on contemporary society:
One year ago, this would not have been possible, but the world has changed. In the past
12 months, thousands of ordinary people have become famous. Famous people have been
embarrassed…The rules are different now, and one website changed them: YouTube.
Nielson/Net Ratings reported that users of UT grew from 7.3 million to 12.8 million by the end
of July 2006. Since January, 2006, traffic to UT almost tripled, 297% (O'Malley, 2006).
According to USA Today, UT comprises 60% of online-served videos and 29% of market share
in multimedia entertainment in the United States. As of March 2008, there are more than 78. 3
million video uploaded, constituting over 200,000 videos uploads and 100 million videos
watched daily on UT.6
UT has already had significant cultural, social, and political impact, beginning with
producing a new form of Internet celebrity. Ordinary people can get significant attention from
others in the world of the Internet and UT. For example, Geriatric1927, in his eighties, has been
enjoying late-life fame as no. 6 in the “Most Subscribed Directors of All Time” list on UT.
Enjoying UT fandom, Brookers ultimately signed with a conventional mainstream medium,
Carson Daly Productions, that “calls for her to help create and act in programs for television, the
Internet, and portable devices” (Hardy, 2006). UT has further circulated the media contents from
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such conventional broadcasting companies as NBC, CBS and Fox to increase their viewership
and recently, the BBC announced a deal to post its video clips on UT. Even an elite orchestra
utilizes UT as an auditioning means.7 Based on a four-minute piece by the composer of YouTube
Symphony Orchestra summit, Tan Dum, UT users record their performances and upload them on
UT, and then, judges will decide finalists, who will play at Carnegie Hall in April, 2009.
In terms of UT’s social influences, several police departments have taken advantage of
UT as a kind of press-release while investigating crimes. In Massachusetts, Patrolman Brian
Johnson was able to pinpoint criminal suspects through circulating a surveillance video clip on
UT (Tucker, 2007). Other police departments have used UT in criminal investigations in Florida,
Rhode Island and California. For more efficient religious information sharing, Jewish Rabbi
Shalom Adler started to post video clips on UT. There are 7,280 Jewish-related videos, 53,000
Christian videos and 15,700 Muslim-related videos on UT (Schulte, 2007). Universities have
provided virtually any audiences at any time with their lectures by posting online version of
lectures on UT.8 Students increasingly depend on UT as a reference tool for their assignment
research as well. People made 2.8 billion searches on UT, that is, about 200 million more than on
Yahoo, which is the second popular search engine (Helft, 2009).
UT’s impressive popularity has created a new space for laymen to participate in
traditionally restricted areas of politics. For example, Senator George Allen (R-Va) was heavily
favored to win re-election to the Senate and was being touted as a 2008 Republican presidential
candidate when he fell afoul of the ubiquity of digital media on the campaign trail. Baiting a
young man of color doing oppositional video who Allen called “macaca,” the event was captured
on video, put on UT, and then sent through the Internet, eventually emerging on network
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television. The UT footage became part of a spectacle that coded Allen as a racist and he
eventually lost his re-election bid.
Furthermore, politicians have started to employ UT as a strategy to approach undecided
and disinterested U.S. voters. Since the 2004 election, there have been studies to explore the
practical viability of the Internet as a novel method of political campaigning.9 Several studies
show that more than half of UTers are between thirty-five and sixty-four years old and consist of
a more active voting population than other voting groups (Gueorguieva, 2007). Since Obama got
66% of votes from the 18-to-29 age group and 52% from the 30-to-44 in the 2008 election (Pew
Research Center for the People & the Press, 2008b) and younger adults are more active on these
websites, grassroots campaign materials’ impact on the 2008 election is obvious.
A significant increase of Internet uses indicates the accelerating role of UT videos as a
venue of campaign advertisements for the campaigns. While 10% of Americans consulted the
Internet for political news during the entire 2004 campaign season, 33% of them depended on the
Internet for campaign-related information for the 2008 election as of October, 2008 (Pew
Research Center for the People & the Press, 2008a). What is more, 35% of adult Web users have
watched some form of political online videos as of June 15, 2008 (Pew Internet & American Life
Project, 2008). Specifically, “more than 146 million people watched an average of 86 videos”
during September 2008 (Eisenberg, 2008, n.p.). With this pervasive Internet presence and an
uprising of UT’s share of political/ campaign communication, 7 of out 16 potential presidential
candidates announced their races for parties’ nomination on UT. Most of them created their
accounts on the site You Choose '08 on UT. What is more, as a means of grassroots participation
by producing UT videos, ordinary UT users had the opportunity to address their political
concerns to parties’ nomination candidates. Eight Democratic nomination candidates and eight
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Republican candidates answered voters’ questions in UT video clips hosted by CNN/UT on July
23, 2007 and November 28, 2007 respectively.10
There was also an impressive Internet spectacle in support of Obama’s presidency.
Obama raised an unprecedented amount money on the Internet; he signed up over one million
friends on MySpace, and mobilized youth and others through text-messaging and emails. The
YouTube music video “Obama Girl,” which features a young woman singing about why she
supports Obama with images of his speeches interspersed, has gotten over thirteen million hits
and is one of the most seen and discussed videos in history.
Hence, the Obama phenomenon is a major indicator of the complex interconnections
between UT, mutual pedagogy, and grassroots political participation. Arguably, a key dynamic
for Obama’s election as the Democratic Party’s candidate and the 44th president of the United
States came from varieties of online multi-media materials produced by ordinary people, which
boosted the number of small donations and the amount of grassroots participation.11
In addition, grassroots campaigns for Obama illustrate the vast potential impact of UT.
On behalf of Senator Obama, traditionally underrepresented youth and people of color have
vigorously utilized UT and UT-style self-made videos as an innovative platform for grassroots
political mobilization which contain their personal narratives and reasons they support Obama
for President in order to inspire and consolidate potential Obama supporters on and offline.
Among the enormous numbers of alternative media artifacts for the Obama campaign,
will.i.am’s Yes, We Can music video manifests how grassroots-initiated alternative media
artifacts can mobilize individuals to support Obama as the next president.12 This MTV style UT
music video breaks with conventional ways of producing music video, as will.i.am assembled a
variety of artists’ grassroots participation in its production. In his words: