Underline
Clay Shirky states “The future presented by the internet is the mass amateurization of publishing and a switch from 'Why publish this?' to 'Why not?”. To what extent is this concept of 'amateurization' applicable to Zoella and Attitude, and to what extent can audiences meaningfully interact with these products?
Plan/discussion
Amateurization - the process of making something that was once professional the domain of amateurs and those who are inexperienced
Online media is prone to the notion of amateurization, as it is an open platform resource, both universal and inclusive and DEMOCRATIC
Zoella presents herself as a relatable amateur for her target audience
However Attitude Online is a carefully curated and maintained website serving a valuable purpose
Zoella and Attitude both sell an ideology and a LIFESTYLE to their specific target audiences
Comments, response videos, (PO Box), email, Instagram, Twitter, subscriptions
Reception theory
Rather than being a shining light of an alternative system, Zoella is a straightforward capitalist, existing only to make money
Audiences are not producers when interacting with zoella, but marketers and distributors
Targeting
Modes of address
Online media presents a move from broadcasting to narrowcasting
David Gauntlett - pick and mix. Allows audience to construct their identity
Possible knee-jerk reactions
Many opportunities for meaningingful interaction
Offers limited opportunities for meaningful interaction
"Far from the utopian and democratic potential that the internet claims to offer, both Zoella and Attitude online offer their audiences limited opportunities for meaningful interaction. Both Zoella and Attitude Online deliberately limit the opportunities for audience interaction in order to maximise profit and power, targeting niche audiences in order to do so. However, while there are limited opportunities for audiences to create, there are opportunities for audiences to reflect their identity. This essay shall explore..."
Content
with a question this ridiculously full-on, we ended up excluding Attitude entirely from our discussion. However, we make a similar statement: Shirky's argument regarding 'the end of audience' isn't very compelling and Gauntlett's theory of identity offers a much more convincing way in which audiences can interact with media products, particularly one that presents the ideological perspectives that Attitude does!
- Youtube is a closed system, self-regulated by Youtube themselves, and motivated solely by power and profit. While it seems to give users the opportunity to create products and become their own boss, only very few users actually meet the criteria for monetisation.
- Zoella constructs and presents a fake and hyperreal persona to her target audience, meaning that audiences have little idea of who she really is.
- Zoella uses a business model based on algorithmic knowledge and understanding. Each of her preview thumbnails provide the audience with a carefully selected close-up image of her with a hyperbolic expression of joy that resembles a cartoon character as opposed to a real person. This confirms and reinforces zoella's status as an 'amateur' presenting a compelling and hyperreal wold to her target audience
- Utilization of commodity fetishism in order to provide her audiences with a capitalist escapist fantasy
- Ability to comment on video for likes... however this again offers the audience limited opportunities for interaction
- However allows audiences to construct their own identities through her products and output. Audiens can identify with Suggs, and can take pleasure in the inclusive relationship she has with the 'gay best friend' archetype, and also provides a metanarrative of friendship and inclusion. Her frank discussions of anxiety can give her
A bit of theory...
19 - ‘End of audience’ theories - Clay Shirky
(newspaper, radio, videogames, online media)
• New media, as in the Internet and digital technologies, have had a significant effect on the relations between media and audiences
• Just thinking of audience members as passive consumers of mass media content is no longer possible in the age of the Internet. Now, media consumers have become producers who ‘speak back to’ the media in various ways, creating and sharing content with one another.
• This can be accomplished through comments sections, internet forums, and creating media products such as blogs or vlogs
However...
...this theory can and should be criticised. Arguably the media industries are just as exclusionary as they always have been, and audiences are less 'producers' than 'unwitting advertisers'., promoting pre-existing products through retweets, fan accounts and derivative vlogs that could never be financially successful without aggressive monetisation!