I. Aspects of cultural relativism in content and discourse (vlogs) of YouTube

(link to final video's story board)

A) The Nature of Discourse on YouTube – Its Implications
- Observations are currenty being confined to discourse regarding Islam and religion

• Vlogs that invite discourse will be emphasized

• what is the nature of discourse found within vlogs?
• Subjects (e.g. politics, religion, existentialism, cultural info, etc.)
• Manner of response (video responses emphasized; comments factored where pertinent)?
  

Insights:

• Face seems to be more knowingly present/maintained with age
• younger users tend to lack indirect elements of discourse (e.g. establishing context, identity, disclaimer of response)
• in general, older users consistently establish these indirect elements of discourse
  

• Dualism ( that is somewhat culturally defining of American discourse [e.g. framing a conversation around a binary debate]) typically shades the nature of discourse (see Deborah Tannin and theories on discourse and gender)
• realm of dialogue becomes artifically shortened/narrowed, but audience seems seldom aware of this
• this dimension also evidences some culturally relative insights regarding the culture of the speaker (that is, the exceptions to this rule are - those who engage in more open dialogue - are typically not American)
  

Observations:

- 'open' discourse/invitations - those that actively solicit responses from audience (see focus subject)

- 74 video responses (as of 4.17.08) (from approx 1.3 million views - 0.005% respond with 'traditional discourse)
- 5096 text comments (as of 4.17.08); of approx 1.3 million views - .39% response rate

• 22 constitute actual discourse responses (e.g. speaking to camera as though engaged in face-face discourse)
• 3 from children (10-14) - in each of these instances, the discourse invitation is actually responded to directly; the majority of the responses - from adults (18-50) consistently establish context prior to responding to discourse (this seems to be

-'closed' discourse - those that elicit reaction, but aren't ostensibly structured to do so (though this may arguably represent a form of invitation; see focus subject [‘discussions’ on Islam])



- Asynchronicity can entirely remove social status barriers that otherwise restrict/define audience members (discourse invitation, response)


B) Cultural relativism on YouTube

• to what extent is the cultural relativism that is available on YouTube accessed?
• do users access this;
  

- what is available (inherent/manifest)?
o variant forms in subject interest and presentation (e.g. vlogs, video content posted from users)
- what is the community aware of/utilizing?
o requires discourse examination (vlogs + responses)

- compliment the above with data and stats from Zoho form
o continue similar data collection as our initial YouTube stat collection, with an emphasis on culturally relative information found
§ new list of criteria to identify the above is being developed to more effective reflect this emphasis

II. The Macrocoscmic – Panning out to the Greater Mediascape (these will likely end up composing a simple 1-2 minute series of heuristic proposals/implications that are meant to suggest the greater significance of ALL of our research, and tie as much to a few notable areas of the mediascape (where time allows).

A) Wikipedia – what is knowledge

• insights gleaned from stats
  

B) Twine – identity motif; how does everyone’s research play into this notion, and what does changing this aspect of form suggest about potential impacts on content

• waitlisted for the Beta...

C) Spokeo – similar to twine, but with a slight change regarding agency and control over the form (and the obviously whatever implications this may suggest about affected content)