You Tube And The Possibility Of A Democratic Media

Introduction

YouTube would seem to be the fulfillment of a dream of equitable distribution of the means of production and distribution. Finally, the masses, at least in the West, can shoot video, edit it, and distribute it as easily as broadcasters. Shouldn't this then make possible an openness and democratic access to media? Shouldn't this then make possible a democratic, and possibly even socialist, transformation of the body politic?

In this essay I will review the expectations and hopes for a democratic digital media and return to an apolitical reading of the potential for new media.

Some of the points to be made:

• Review Engelbart, McLuhan, Enzensberger, and Baudrillard on the potential for digital media and citizenship.
• Revisit the apolitical argument - that new technologies don't necessarily make new political configurations possible.
• Propose a hypertheory that argues that it is through the imaginative hope for new technologies that we can understand their culture.
• Counter with a breakdown theory that it is in the failure of technology that we understand technology.