4/21/21
Diversity and Cultural Citizenship
Although a commercial enterprise, YouTube is a platform for ordinary to participate in culture. YouTube goes far past its expectation of being “social media entertainment;” it further spreads awareness on social and cultural diversity. This being said, citizenship is not only defined by the rights and obligations of a person, but also by their cultural and social practices, beliefs, and interests. This is called cultural citizenship. The rising popularity of social media, and therefore YouTube, is the foundation to cultural citizenship as it reaches to many people’s
interests.
Even though YouTube has become more commercialized, many participants still use it as a platform to demonstrate cultural citizenship. For example, recently, members of the LGBTQ community have been using social media to spread awareness and create “coming out” videos. Not limited to personal videoblogs, YouTube uses many more ways t show cultural and social activism and awareness.
Globalization and Localization
The question arises whether YouTube participates in the process of globalization and localization. YouTube can be found almost everywhere in the world, linking the term “global” with intercultural communication. Despite location, YouTube assists in the globalizing of producers, distributors, and consumers. As of 2017, YouTube can be found in different versions all over the world. Users can use both the local version of YouTube of the global version. By default, the content suggested will change depending what version is used.
Most commonly, YouTube is used locally, in other words, within each country in unique formats, languages, etc. By being used globally, debates are sparked about how it should look like. Further, more issues such as politics come into play when using YouTube globally. For example, YouTube cannot be found in China and Turkey as a result of political debates. Also, East Asia countries have rejected US social media, therefore turning to localized YouTube or none at all.
YouTube as Cultural Archive
Studies have shown that 76% of YouTube users uses YouTube for only music, without exploring anything else the app has to provide. YouTube is not popular used for its cultural archive. Vintage advertisements, infomercials and public educational materials, documentary films, and clips from children shows have been added to YouTube to help it become a cultural archive.
Cultures archiving in YouTube raises many issues. To start, culture archive questions persistence, ownership, standards, sustainability, and accountability on YouTube. In other words, by archiving cultural products, YouTube could be abusing their rights. Further, other countries are able to re-archive content from YouTube, which raises legal barriers and the use of YouTube’s Terms of Use.