The Anthropology of YouTube
Last week in my ANTH 300 class, we watched “An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube,” a talk given by cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch, who heads up Kansas State University’s Digital Ethnography program.
I found the section on the “Numa Numa” video phenomenon, in which Wesch calls the original video’s star, Gary Brolsma, “the first guy on the dance floor of this global mixer,” to be the most interesting. The latter half, heavy on the talking head confessionals about what a mind-blowing concept it is to be able to connect with others through a webcam, was too much navel-gazing for my tastes. Still, I recommend watching this to ANTH 378 folks.
Wesch is something of a YouTube celebrity himself, having created a video on the evolution of Web 2.0 that went viral back in 2007.
