<videovortex> Liz Losh @ VV 5: "Official Channels: Government Rhetoric and Online Video"

[Geert Lovink]

> From: "Elizabeth Losh" <lizlosh at uci.edu>
>
> Hi,
>
> for VV 5 in Brussels I've put my slides here:
> http://eee.uci.edu/faculty/losh/Official_Channels.ppt
>
> I've also tried to post my Obama YouTube montage at
> https://eee.uci.edu/faculty/losh/Obama_YouTube.mov but there seem to  
> be
> problems with it so you can also access a lower rez version here:
> http://www.archive.org/details/ObamaYoutubeMontage
>
> Do you still need a short description.  It could read:
>
> Many heads of state are looking to the United States and to the Obama
> administration to imitate the specific rhetorical techniques of the
> current American president and to YouTube as a mode for broadcasting
> state-sanctioned video messages.  In retasking a platform generally
> associated with a fragmented politics of personal liberty and  
> rhizomatic
> modes of resistance, Obama both borrows from the conventions of  
> vernacular
> video and also adapts those conventions to established methods of  
> standard
> official persuasion.  He also presents a model of computer use and  
> online
> interaction that draws attention to the limits of the participatory
> culture model as he inhabits the domestic spaces of the White House.
>
> Liz
>
> Video Vortex Conference
>
> "Official Channels: Government Rhetoric and Online Video"
>
> Elizabeth Losh, University of California, Irivne
>
> Throughout the world, government agencies have adopted YouTube as a  
> mode
> for broadcasting state-sanctioned video messages.  Now many heads of  
> state
> are looking to the United States and to the Obama administration to
> imitate the specific rhetorical techniques of the current American
> president.  In retasking a YouTube platform generally associated  
> with a
> fragmented politics of personal liberty and rhizomatic modes of
> resistance, Obama both borrows from the conventions of vernacular  
> video
> and also adapts those conventions to established methods of standard
> official persuasion.  In particular, Obama is situated in the domestic
> spaces of the White House in ways that might be familiar to YouTube
> viewers who are accustomed to a webcam cinema oriented around private
> homes.
>
> Obama’s direct address to the YouTube viewer references the  
> rhetorics of
> many other U.S. presidents.  A montage of clips from the White House
> official YouTube channel shows several allusions to his historical
> predecessors.  Like Franklin Roosevelt Obama uses the pedagogical  
> pose of
> the “fireside chat,” like Kennedy he attempts to conduct public  
> diplomacy
> efforts and speak to citizens abroad in their own languages, and like
> Reagan he consoles the nation in times of tragedy.
>
> However, his YouTube performances as the nation’s patriarch also draw
> attention to what could be called “mediated transparency.”  Unlike his
> Republican opponent who was mocked for his use of green screen
> technologies that digitally effaced the physical background of a  
> shot in
> favor of a virtual backdrop, the images of Obama chosen as the icons  
> of
> many of his YouTube Weekly Addresses display lights, camera viewers,  
> and
> computer monitors prominently.
>
> YouTube also gives the viewer lessons about how to be an ideal  
> computer
> user, but the official message coming from the White House’s visual
> rhetoric seems to be that to be wired is to be unpresidential.  The  
> Obama
> official Flickr photo stream never shows him on his famous
> Commander-in-Chief Blackberry.  Like the cigarettes he smokes, the
> ubiquitous computing devices that he uses must be indulged in only
> secretly.  A phone with a traditional cord that tethers him to his  
> desk is
> clearly deemed much more presidential.  On the rare occasions when  
> he is
> posed in front of someone else’s computer screen for the launch of a  
> new
> government website, Obama appears uncomfortable in front of the  
> monitor,
> usually at a woman’s desk.  Thus, a president may create content for
> YouTube, but – of course – he would never actually watch it.  Since  
> the
> White House allows text comments on its official channel, but response
> videos are prohibited, the inconvenient possibility that citizens  
> might be
> viewed as well as view is eliminated.
>
> These limitations on Obama’s engagement with the political feedback  
> loop
> has often been highlighted in his so-called “Town Hall” performances  
> with
> YouTube, which began before he took office with the CNN-YouTube  
> Democratic
> Party debates in July of 2007, where Obama famously answered a  
> question
> from a YouTube viewer by promising to talk directly to “foreign  
> leaders”
> of countries with which the United States had no diplomatic relations.
> Although Obama publicized the use of “Open for Questions” derived  
> from the
> Internet in one of his YouTube messages, he often avoided answering  
> the
> most popular questions and instead focused on responding to  
> specifically
> selected questions from webcam viewers who presented a YouTube  
> political
> spectacle that was deemed more appropriate.
>
> Often the constraints placed by networks that censor content from  
> YouTube
> are assumed to exist only in totalitarian regimes that might want to  
> block
> the U.S. message of democratic neoliberalism.  Yet there was some  
> irony
> this September when Obama created a YouTube back-to-school message
> intended for children in public school classrooms to inspire them to  
> work
> hard and show respect for the institutions of learning, because most
> schools in the United States block YouTube, and even teachers cannot
> access such video-sharing sites on school networks when needed for  
> obvious
> pedagogical uses.
>
> As privacy advocate Christopher Soghoian points out, what is most
> disturbing about the official sanctioning of YouTube by the White  
> House is
> that it subjects citizens who visit the website of a public  
> institution to
> YouTube’s surveillance, tracking, and data mining without their  
> knowledge
> or explicit consent.  Although the White House has experimented with  
> other
> players that do not have the proprietary software or policies on  
> copyright
> that advocates for public property might find repugnant, YouTube  
> continues
> to be the chosen third-party video player.  As the language of  
> different
> privacy policies is finessed, the company itself is never named.
> Furthermore, the close personal and financial relationship between the
> interests of Obama and the CEO of YouTube’s parent company, Google’s  
> Eric
> Schmidt, is also certainly a cause for concern, given that American
> presidents since Teddy Roosevelt have been expected to break up  
> corporate
> monopolies not legitimate them.
>
> The use of YouTube by official agencies that are pursuing e-government
> agendas for the United States demonstrates the distinctive way that  
> state
> authority is represented in distributed digital video in modes that  
> mimic
> one-to-one communication and yet reinforce the one-to-many structure  
> by
> which liberal representative democracies have traditionally  
> functioned in
> the mass media era. With the expanding use of commercial Web 2.0
> technologies by government agencies, critics and activists are finally
> expressing concern that in the name of “participatory culture” the
> government may risk compelling its citizens to participate in  
> particular
> copyright regimes that constrain speech, to submit to corporate user
> agreements that rewrite the social contract, and to divulge private
> information to commercial vendors without their consent.
>
> Elizabeth Losh
> Writing Director
> Humanities Core Course
> HIB 188, U.C. Irvine
> Irvine, CA 92697
> 949-824-8130
> http://eee.uci.edu/faculty/losh