Main Blog Post 4: Week 9 Question A

Burgess and Green argue that: ordinary people who become celebrities through their own creative efforts “remain within the system of celebrity native to, and controlled by, the mass media”, give an example of a YouTube video.

Burgess and Green have argued that the emergence of YouTube represents a disruption to existing media business models, and a new media power is emerging with it (2009:14). YouTube launches a platform for many amateur videos, while there are many ‘stars’ emerging with their talent and creative videos. As a result, many analysts compare these YouTube ‘stars’ to celebrities, but Burgess and Green still argue that “ordinary people who become celebrities through their own creative efforts remain controlled by the mass media” (2009:23). I agree with Burgess and Green’s argument since these citizen celebrities still unable to “pass through the gate-keeping mechanisms of old media” (Burgess & Green, 2009:24).

Celebrities are often famous for famous. They attract the public media attention basically through the mass media, in the form of TV, radio, and the coverage of newspaper, even in this computerization era, celebrities owns their own blogs to self-promote their selves, in this way, celebrities are inevitable controlled by the mainstream media. According to Nick Couldry (2003:37), in the mainstream media, for ordinary people, there is inequality to “gain access to the modes of representation of the mass media”, although the “ordinary world” are disguise and reproduce the “media world”, to pursue the same attention that celebrities get. Grossman explains the meaning of amateur video as “a common assumption underlying the most celebratory accounts of the democratization of cultural production is that raw talent combined with digital distribution can convert directly to legitimate success and media fame” (2006a,2006b). However, in Burgess and Green’s view, they see these potential celebrities represent as ‘demoticization’ rather than ‘democratization’ (2009:23), which means that ‘ordinary celebrities’ just relies on the existing structures of celebrities in media culture, in another words, they can’t be ‘famous’ in an alternative way, they are produced and captured by the mainstream media, just like celebrities native to play to mass market interests (Burgess & Green, 2009: 23).

The example I choose from YouTube video is “Leave Britney Alone”, this video achieve a huge success in YouTube which gains nearly forty million hits by now. Burgess and Green argue that there are YouTube celebrities who are famous for being “notorious, obnoxious, or annoying” (2009:24), the creator Chris Crocker is certainly one of them. Throughout his video, I hear nothing important except his annoying crying voices, and I couldn’t recognize his gender when I first watch the video, and I also found there are many people asking about his gender in their comments. If Chris Crocker would be considered as a ‘celebrity’, he will only achieved by ongoing status keep participating in YouTube. As a result, YouTubers who own ‘celebrities dream’ like Chris will hardly to achieve, since the mainstream media won’t recognize such unvalued person. Chris Croker will only be mentioned by the public when they need funny materials.

Bibliography:

1. Jean Burgess and Joshua Green, ‘YouTube and The Mainstream Media’ in YouTube: Online and Participatory Culture, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009, pp.15-37
2. 2.      Nick Couldry and James Curran Contesting Media Power: Alternative Media in a Networked World, Rowman & Littlefield Publish, 2003, pp. 37.
3. Grossman, L. (2006a, Times best inventions. [Electronic version]. Times Magazine, Retrieved November 21, 2007.
4. Grossman, L. (2006b). Time’s person of the year: You. Times Magazine, (December 13, 2006) Retrieved November 21, 2007.
5. Chris Crocker, “Leave Britney Alone”, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHmvkRoEowc  accessed 30 May 2011, dated 10 September 2007.