Mike Wesch’s digital scholarship…oh, and he speaks to the Library of Congress

Digital Ethnographer (and anthropologist) Mike Wesch spoke to the Library of Congress about YouTube, providing an anthropological introduction to the global phenomenon. On his YouTube channel, Wesch (and his digital enthnography students) have posted a video of this presentation (which can be seen below). Aside from the dynamic content, and beyond the quality of scholarship involved in this presentation, the Wesch et al.’s video creation really showcases a different way of thinking/making with/about scholarship in our current culture. While I am sure the presentation was good, I have to believe that the video posted on YouTube works better, as it becomes a more integrated way of working through the material. In this one creation, there is oral discourse (and we can see parts of Wesch’s oration—the gestures, the facial expressions, and so on [hearkening us to Ong’s discussions of secondary orality), textual discourse (with text on screen, among other literate-based influences), visual/image discourses (with still shots, but also with issues of juxtaposition or examples of collage in various moments), and numerous other discourses. We could classify some as video-based practices (though not sure if that is “discourse”), where the use of jump cuts and other editing techniques help communicate the message(s) involved. Or we might see comic-based techniques emerging, with sections that work relationally—multiple things that together communicate something greater than they can individually: where text, image, video, oration, etc. work together intricately, relationally, not mimetically.

This creation, in terms of our focus here, is by far as interesting, if not more interesting, than Wesch’s discussion of YouTube, which itself is fascinating. The video mode opens things for the message that traditional print-based text cannot do. It creates a possibility for communication that text, even multimodal text (e.g., image/graphic and alphabetic writing) could not do. This, I think, is the kind of scholarship that Virginia Kuhn’s dissertation tried to open up, but because her constraints were within the genre of doctoral dissertation, she had to adhere (or remain noticeably close) to the expectations of that kind of creation: a print-dominate culture, adhering strictly to literate practices; thus, her TK3 dissertation was noticeably print-literacy based. More than just incorporating multimedia (like Kuhn’s approach, which itself challenged many limitations and significantly pushed boundaries for digital/multimedia scholarship in positive directions) Wesch’s video opens us to something else. It is scholarship that works orally, but also scholarship that works literately, and scholarship that works electrally. The medium, and the creation, do as much for the message as does Wesch’s scholarship (and the situation…as this would be received in completely different terms if he wasn’t speaking at/to the Library of Congress).

Nonetheless, I am once again amazed, informed, and inspired by Wesch’s work, and despite its lengthy viewing time (55 minutes), especially for YouTubers, it is an excellent piece of digital/multimedia scholarship.

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http://www.clemson.edu/~hodgson

The resistance…

Marshall McLuhan, in his book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, tells us that electric technology will meet with much resistance in American culture because it threatens (to alter) literate thought, which has been instituted (uniformly) in education, government, society, industry, and so on. Additionally, as Walter Ong has told us, in his Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, literate thought is total, is unquestioned, and this is the world we encounter within the walls of the academy. Despite the multimedia push occurring across the University, noticeable in the growing multimedia nature of Freshman composition and its related texts (visual readers, companion websites & CDs, etc.) as well as the common practice of cannibalizing lecturer positions so departments and colleges can afford various education technologies (necessities in our current climate), the academy is still overwhelmingly a literacy club (and maybe it should be, to a certain extent, as it was the institution given rise by literacy–i.e., Plato’s Academy). We talk of multimedia, theorize about the effects (and affects) of multimedia, and engage the various emerging new media technologies daily, but yet we don’t necessarily value the multimedia in terms of “acceptable” scholarship: dissertations are still predominantly text-only creations, even with a pdf option, which tends to be a mere digital copies of the would-be print version; or, in terms of tenure-track mobility, multimedia creations may be “appreciated,” may be conversation fodder, even may be considered impressive work, but are significantly less valued compared to the printed article–with the online (printed) article residing somewhere between the two–and all this despite the often immense effort, insight, research, and ability needed to create multimedia scholarship.

This is an issue making its way into various current conversations, creating some buzz about scholarship in the 21st century, and it is the root/rhizomic issue at the base of this blog, which I hope to explore in a variety of posts as I work to complete my own dissertation (regarding this and other related issues).

Work Cited
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1964. Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy: Technologizing of the Word. New Accents Series. NY: Methuen, 1982.

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http://www.clemson.edu/~hodgson