The Rise of Video Mashups in the 2008 Election

This is a live-blog of today’s School of Informatics colloquium at 3p.

Notes:
Richard Edwards of the New Media Program at the IUPUI campus for the School of Informatics will be speaking on “Citizen-Generated Content: The Rise of Video Mashups in the 2008 Election”

lots of types of media (blogs, wikis, etc) that are out there – I’m concentrating on video mashups

showing the “change” video — compiling all Presidential candidates mentioning the word “change”
* if there is an “emerging auteur” of mashups, it may be Hugh Atkins

* combinatorial, collage artists, DJ and VJ culture (turntablism, remix … add unique spin to it)
* what are going to be the consequences of this particular media form – the mashup – and how we make up our minds about particular candidates

Example 2: “Vote Different” (Phil De Vellis as “parkridge47”)
* March 2007
* 1984 Mac commercial with Hilary Clinton playing the role of Big Brother
* “you’ll see why 2008 isn’t like 1984”
* close with an Apple logo shaped like an “O” (for Obama)
* pseudonym refers to Clinton’s address, implied Clinton’s role of Big Brother (spawned a search to identify the creator)
* media pundits thought this signified the start of the YouTube election (Phil De Vellis has as much power as James Carville) …
* never before did a video mashup matter

Example 3: Coldcut vs. TV Sheriff, remix of “World of Evil” (2004) from Revolution:USA website
Actually began 3 years early, in 2004
* first election in which video mashups mattered … trying to influence Bush-Kerry
* 10-second snippets uploaded to a web site – Cold Cut’s “World of Evil” as background
* done by local LA DJ (TV Sherriff)
* RUC instructions – prior to YouTube – had very easy-to-follow instructions on how to take video clips and mix into a video mashup

Types of political video mashups
From 2004 …

Parody/Satire
* sappy 70s love song duet soundtrack – video of Bush singing to Tony Blair
* taking existing genre, and edit existing video on top of audio

Intertextual, Political “camp”
* deals with intertextuality (requires understanding of something)
* “The Apprentice” – the ultimate job of president, with Donald Trump firing him
* by True Majority Action ( “showGeorgeTheDoor.org”) – “we’ll fire Bush together, and have some fun along the way” … sponsored by Ben Cohen (Ben & Jerry’s)
* you can participate, not just passively watch

Recombinatory, Reconstructed
* Bush State of the Union
* “By custom, we meet here to threaten the world.”
* “The American flag stands for corporate corruption, … etc. and rape”
* “Our first goal is to show contempt for the environment”
* There is a website that collects reconstructed State of the Union clips

Remix aesthetics & mashups:
* participatory
* activist
* collage/bricolage – some of the best mashups are doing it with 1-2 videos, very creative
* performative – type of performance art, demonstrating a process as well as a product
* DJ as media creator – not a lot of articles on video mashups, so much owes to recombinatory tradition of DJs, academics would need a foothold in that field

Changes to user-generated content:
* celebration of web 2.0 (Time Magazine Person of the Year = You)
* social networking
* DIY media – citizens on the bottom creating media on their own and sending it up (elicit tensions between that and top-down logics of traditional media)
* materials going through the Internet are low resolution, even as homes are upgrading to high definition

YouTube and CNN Debate – media flows and moderation
* “hybrid media ecology” – internet portal and established cable operator, produces novel media flows
* over 300 videos submitted to CNN
* if ask people under 30 if the right questions were chosen, they would say no … CNN chickened out
* at the last minute, CNN decided to assign the task of selection to a senior employee (cut for odd reasons of vulgarity, questions too outside the box)
* ended up encouraging citizen content, but in the end being afraid of it
* are authentic questions coming to the fore when our gatekeepers are so powerful

In hybrid media ecology,
* The Daily Show and Colbert Report
* growth of “power pop politics” (Obama Girl, Hilary Clinton on SNL, “Huck and Chuck”)
* Not new -> Bill Clinton proving his street cred on Arsenio Hall by blowing a sax
* Blurring boundaries

Web-based campaign media:
* Hilary Clinton at a cafe, Bill walks in, selecting some table jukebox music, ordering -> to pick her campaign theme song
* allegory to the Sopranos ending … complete with a staredown from a mobster

The celebrity-citizen:
* Obama’s speech, set to music by someone from Black Eyed Peas
* “Yes, we Can”

Participatory media: Andy Cobb’s “John.He.Is”
* many parodies of
* spoof with John McCain speech providing the lyrics to the song
* “Bomb, Bomb Iran”

paratexts and critical digital intertextuality
* Jonathan Gray, Edwards and Tryon
* on its own, it has no particular value … but it might solidify or push a certain notion of a candidate
* Reese Witherspoon from “Election” with Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama clips – with Hilary = Reese
* use of meaning of 1999 film “Election” to describe the 2008 Democratic campaign
* media has picked up on this as an interesting insight

Mashups as Rhizomatic texts:
* non-linear
* non-hierarchical
* anarchic
* networked
* ‘open’ texts – demands that someone takes work and remixes it

1000 Plateaus

1) Allegories of citizen empowerment (Edwards & Tryon, 2008) – do not want to deny that more citizens than ever before have had an impact

2) The need for new approaches to media literacy (Henry Jenkins, Howard Rheingold, et al) – can ask questions about how are we dealing with this type of participatory media culture

3) The role of mashups in deliberative democracy:
* the perpetual beta of political video – popular culture, social networking, civic engagement and political participation
* the limits of Eisensteinian intellectual montage (“montage should lead to the emergency of a new idea”) – we are seeing the limits of montage
* YouTube as knowledge space

Questions:
* Do mashups create “information cocoons?”
* Are mashups like “customized information?”
* More like propaganda or more like wikis? (Infotopia)

Abstract: From 2007’s Phil de Vellis’s “Vote Different” to 2008’s Will.i.am’s “Yes We Can,” video mashups—as a form of political discourse—have become extremely popular in this election cycle, and signal the rise of the “YouTube election.” The proliferation of video mashups relate to the growth of online video sharing, remix culture, social networking and DIY producers actively engaged in creating “citizen-generated content.” This talk examines the recombinatorial and generative logics behind video mashups and the discursive strategies utilized by remix artists to examine the effectiveness of political video mashups as tools for candidate advocacy and political change.

Biography: Dr. Edwards is an Assistant Professor of Media Arts and Science in the New Media Program in the School of Informatics at IUPUI. He received his Ph.D. in Critical Studies from USC’s School of Cinema-Television. From 2002-2004, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at USC’s Annenberg Center for Communication’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy. His scholarship focuses on social and political uses of new media and new technologies. He has published several articles on new media activism, and is currently working on a series of projects focused on exploring civic engagement in multi-user virtual environments