Evidence 2: Interaction with Mainstream Media

With its’ emergence into participatory culture, YouTube is regularly reported about by the mainstream media.  Burguss and Green use the interactions between TV /print media and YouTube to further their claim that YouTube is necessary to facilitate the relationship of media and the public.  Media is a powerful tool in any society and at its core, can be both a medium of communication and a source of change.  In his book, Digital Disconnect (2013), McChesney also explains the importance of media, “Media are at the venter of struggles for power and control in any society, and this is arguably even more often the case in democratic nations.”(p.65).  Media has an extremely influential power and currently, the mainstream media is at the forefront of that influence.  However, with the emergence of YouTube, and its’ own influence through participatory culture, Burguss and Green claim that mainstream media has had trouble defining its power.  Burguss and Green (2014) specifically talk about the conflicting nature of media’s reports of YouTube – from describing in as a platform of new stars and education to a place of embarrassing and dangerous moments.  The latter come in the form of moral panic, “Some new stores about YouTube follow the pattern of the ‘moral panic” – a term which has now passed into everyday language but which in cultural studies is used to describe a cycle of con-influence between media representation and social reality around issues of public concern.”(Burguss and Green, p.18).  Mainstream media’s inability to describe YouTube properly is key in the shifting of mainstream to alternative media power.

In McChesney’s article, he talks about critical junctures in explain how social change works.  These critical junctures become important in terms of where the power of control and authority lie.  McChesney (2013) states that, “Today we are in the midst of another profound critical juncture for communication.  Two of the conditions are already in place: the digital revolution is overturning all existing media industries and business models, and journalism is at its lowest ebb since the Progressive Era.”(p.68).  McChesney, himself, notices that shift in media power to the digital realm, and so do Burguss and Green.  This shifts gives more power to YouTube in terms of combating struggles of control and authority.  Burguss and Green (2014) state, “In YouTube, new business models and more accessible tools alter provoking new and uncertain articulations between alternative media and the mainstream, and throwing up anxieties about issues of media authority and control.”(p.36).   This shift in business and accessibility are making YouTube a go-to media outlet.  Mainstream media is continuing to fall behind this rapid change and may continue to treat YouTube as a secondary source, but YouTube is gaining more power over control and media authority