Blog Three: Name = Subscribers?

By Alesha Granshaw

Image from http://www.mememaker.net/meme/creates-a-youtube-account.-gets-1-subscriber/

In 1991, Tuan (p.688) stated, “generic terms are not as powerful evocators of place as are proper names”. This statement still rings true today when we examine the concept of space and place, and the way in which naming and the use of names impacts on the transformation of space into place. Tuan (1991, p.688) goes on to explain that the process of naming is instilled with power, as in the act of assigning a name to something, we are “imparting a certain character” upon it. When someone first accesses the global social networking platform YouTube, they are prompted to create an account to enable them to interact with content creators and other users through liking/disliking videos, subscribing to channels, commenting on someone else’s content and uploading their own content if they wish to. The name that they assign themselves becomes important if they wish to become a content creator on the site, as the name that they have for their channel creates a space of the Internet where they can post videos that viewers can find and access by searching for their name, and by doing so they can develop their own place on the Internet. In this sense, the name that they assign themselves creates a sense of identity and also makes them recognisable to other content creators and viewers. The names that content creators have assigned themselves also create a sense of place for their viewership, or subscribers. For example, if you are a “Friendliest Friend”, you probably dedicate twenty minutes of everyday to watching the adorable SacconeJoly family’s ‘daily vlogs’, in which film segments of each day and upload them. In this context, the name of the content creator themselves is not the only significant contributing factor to developing space and place, as the name of their viewership also contributes to the development of more of a community of users. Due to the fact that users have to register an account on YouTube, which involves a name, in order to interact with other users in the YouTube community, there is the establishment of a sense of “social capital” (Kuttainen, 2015), which “refers to the collective value of all ‘social networks’ [who people know] and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other [‘norms of reprocity’]” (Harvard Kennedy School, 2015). This social capital aspect determines which users are able to interact with different aspects of the YouTube user interface and the broader YouTube community.

References:

Harvard Kennedy School. (2015). About Social Capital. Retrieved from http://www.hks.harvard.edu/programs/saguaro/about-social-capital

Kuttainen, V. BA1002: Our Space: Networks, Narratives and the Making of Place, Lecture 5: Power. [PowerPoint Slides]. Retrieved on August 27, 2015 from https://learnjcu.edu.au

Tuan, Y-F. (1991). ‘Language and the making of place’. Annals of the Association of American Geographers.

Image Credits:

Creates a YouTube account. Gets 1 subscriber. [Image]. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.mememaker.net/meme/creates-a-youtube-account.-gets-1-subscriber/