Thread by @liapold

Hi #MediaStudies twitter!

Here's a great video to teach US undergrads about #GlobalMediaStudies & #DigitalMediaLiteracies, esp:
-- neocolonialism & postcolonial critique
-- platform moderation & algorithmic cultures
-- participatory cultures & fan labor!

This 🧵 is based on a convo w/ @arbitist

In the video, food YouTuber @SonnySided explains how:

--his recent episodes showing contextualized food & lifeways in Africa & the Caribbean have been repeatedly flagged & demonetized b/c of their "shocking" & "graphic" content.

--His small company tries to re-edit the videos at a cost to their time, artistic vision, & educational quality to escape demonetization, but there is no clear guidance on how to appease YouTube.

They're on their 4th attempt to edit a video filmed in Zimbabwe.

--He sees a heavy Western bias in terms of what kinds of food prep & cultures are considered appropriate /monetizable vs. which are deemed inappropriate /shocking /graphic /not monetizable.

He says this is a detriment to the educational & intercultural possibilities of YouTube.

If his channel's videos keep getting flagged & demonetized for their "graphic & shocking content" (i.e., showing non-Western food & lifeways), either his channel will suffer (demonetization, deprioritized in YT's algorithm, shut down) or he will have to stop making this content

"So whatever is normal in the USA, that's what the whole world is judged by. What does that mean? Shocking is something you're not used to seeing. If I have a raw chicken, by American standards, that's normal. But, if you show a whole raw pig that's uncooked, that is 'shocking.'"

The video highlights:

(1a) NEOCOLONIALISM: the re-making of unfair power relations of the colonial period thru current economic + corporate structures.

(1b) COLONIALISM: the idea that these exploitative relations are continuous & ongoing from imperial past to capitalist present

(1c) and the video can push students to engage in POSTCOLONIAL CRITIQUE:

What would it mean to stop centering Western perspectives in how YouTube content is monetized, censored, and circulated?

I used the vid this week to help students unpack the idea of neocolonialism while teaching @_SeanJacobs' piece on Big Brother Africa. It could also illustrate the persistence of colonialism in media infrastructures ("Decolonisation Is Not a Metaphor" @tuckeve + K. Wayne Yang)

Could also pair the video with Dipesh Chakrabarty's Provincializing Europe.

In what ways are Western perspectives the default in knowledge cultures that are considered universal/global (ex. "must cite" scholars, global media like Disney), & what would it take to de-center them?

Pairing this video w/ work by (2a) @ubiquity75 & @TarletonG on CONTENT MODERATION or (2b) @safiyanoble on ALGORITHMIC JUSTICE would be great for getting students to think more carefully about the norms embedded in YouTube's search & discovery algorithms & moderation practices...

And the endless, complex, & biased (bc all humans have biases) human labor that goes into the maintenance of media platforms.

Ask students: If u were a YT moderator with dozens of videos to check an hour, how would u respond to the flagging of animal slaughter in these videos?

Lastly, the video is an effort by the host/channel to exhort fans to get involved, to tweet at YouTube, in the hopes that a human with some organizational influence will take a closer look at the situation and intervene in YouTube's moderation & demonetization processes

It’s instructive to see both the host's invitation for fans to tag YouTube *on Twitter* (treating Twitter as a separate but related customer service platform from YouTube)

AND commenters saying they will tweet at YT & sharing their perspectives on YouTube's moderation practices.

I could imagine unpacking questions this vid brings up about cross-platform (3b) FAN LABOR & (3a) PARTICIPATORY CULTURES for US students with work on Twitter-based media activism by scholars like @annienavar, @melstanfill, @kidolopez, Mar Guerrero-Pico, @DaynaC_PhD

This is just a quick set of reading & topic pairings off the top of my head. Would love to hear others' ideas!

tl;dr It's always great to find short, rich, approachable media examples that help my PWI US undergrads discuss #GlobalMediaStudies & #DigitalMediaLiteracies, and this one already worked for me in the classroom 👍