Notion of Viral Media

Flow and relationship in production.
Which one is more important, if you are participating, producer or redistributors more important.

Power and responsibility, increasing spread of trivialization of info.

• What is the impact of us gate keeping
• How do you find what you shared
• What bout stuff you don’t want
• Think about how stuff that you delete, what sort of power is that?
• Who are gate keepers
o Whole range, from advertiser to readers to shareholders, to owners, producers, editors etc
• By pressing del, you are occupying many of those roles. You are doing what traditionally place of authority. If in another context, making important decision.
• The connection between yourself and the others who also got that message.
o Have you claimed your Nigerian lottery?? Etc
o Still have power to get rid of or forward
o Have power to send both fluff and real stuff
• When you do send, you recognize whom you can send to. Filtering
• How does information spread?
• The more power if distribute, the more the effigy of the message has
• You are participating your endorsement via sending
• Because so many more things to spread, we all need to spread
• Not much different from niche channels
• You are engaged as a distributor through viral spreading

- why would you hide distribution list
o responsibility to protect privacy
- Do you care about who saw the thing? Or do you just want to see it?
- To present yourself in certain manner, by what you send
- Some use that distribution to be middle man

- What makes it powerful is that people send it
- you give it cultural currency
- production doesn’t presuppose the distribution
- is it the content itself or the distribution that makes it popular
- Do you have reciprocal responsibilities
- Snowballs participation, forced collaboration
- Creative Commons; distribution caveats
- Rules to distribution and re-distribution
- Built around sending links and not giving material
- To where the video is hosted and everything encompassing it
- New form of participatory distribution
- Pre-existing?
- Structure engineered to encouraged to share, open as possible
- If equal, the more we click the link the higher up in search

Why not burn those videos to disk?
- everyone we want to share it with, has access
- thus distribution list is limited to those with access
- certain transience to YouTube
- transience part is distribution
- things that don’t last very long

YouTube Justice
- you can film something
- it can be really important only if someone picks it up

Citizen Journalism
- if you have something that can be visualized, and you can provide cheap/free content then we want it

Camcorder Revolution
- transformed event
- turned into inflammatory, not just video tapped but distributed
- distribution created the spectacle
- political economy surrounds distribution networks

To a certain extent we produce fictional audience when we make our distribution list

When you produce for someone else, your produce within a template. We don’t make our own stuff that often. We’re plug-in to templates. Creating audience within a set of tools. When you make for yourself, you’re limited to your own tools.

When you’re distributor, your limited to your constrained environment.

Indy Media
- gaps in mainstream
- but usually to only like minded people
- rare that those in the network distribute to anyone outside of it
- it’s because if you are talking to someone who already believes, you may be fueling their passion
- if you want to change the world, but if no one looks than that participation is lost.

Spreading the word isn’t always the best idea
- copycats

Often it’s the fact that everyone talks about it makes it important. The substance doesn’t matter or who’s talking about it.
What does it mean to be successful
- how do you know whether or not it is good
- how do you mean success
- not just as authorship but about distribution


Why is there a sense of hurt if something is rejected that you share
- personal
- question yourself
- offensive, you take time to do something
- not that you were wrong, you assume they were wrong - judgment
- more about you and not them
- Well that just blew in my face, next time I won’t send. You self edit.
- Every now and then, you email and say don’t send

- You are a producer in a regular channel but not necessarily in content
- Notion of participatory, if we are doing multiple things. Production, distribution, redistribution.
- When you get to the same point again and again, you’ve reached saturation.
- If you start to recognize the people in your distribution – 6 degrees
- Doesn’t’ have linear beginning and end

Next Class:
We’re going to make something. Think about authorship and distribution.