“YouTubers comment that the site exists as a democratic place for everyday talk of the average person with computer, a webcam, and a broadband connection.”(Hess, 2009) As a famous web 2.0 forum, YouTube is expected to play an important medium in today’s world, especially in a democratic society. We should express ourselves freely on this platform and let the so called spirit of “democracy” been carried on. I think this is one of the functions that presented by the media, the fourth estate. Just as Hess’s article “Resistance Up in Smoke: Analyzing the Limitation of Deliberation on YouTube” trying to seek for, I’m going to provide my own perspective on whether democratic deliberation exists at those Web 2.0 forum, take YouTube for example.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnjx6KETmi4
I found that the issues about environment have been discussed frequently in recent years. The global warming is the most important of them. The link is the trailer of movie “The Inconvenient Truth” that presented by US former vice president, Mr. Al Gore. The movie received great attention but now a controversial issue because of some reasons. First, Mr. Gore was considered a fraud due to the incorrect information include in this film. Second, because his former political position, the film somehow is regarded as a propaganda of his own. The film talks about the causes for the global warming, how does it work and what we human should do to reduce this effect. We can say that this is a good movie (if we are regardless the authenticity of some scientific information), it do raise the attention of human society toward this global issue. Let’s take a look at it’s comments. Different with the ONDCP case in Hess’s article, the comments of this video did some discussions about the issue itself at first. Some of the comments state the global warming is a natural process, some of them do provide they way they think might led to resolutions. It’s really optimistic to see these kinds of discourses. Despite of some comments that include subjective opinion toward Al Gore, to some extent, I don’t think YouTube is not as inefficient toward democratic deliberation as Hess claimed in his article. But everything has two aspects, in the link below, the same issue that concerning about global warming but the issues that comments discussed have almost the same atmosphere as the case in Hess’s article.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iuXFvh6CXI&feature=related
This is a parody about Al Gore and his film on one of the talk show. After seeing this film, I think that people post or produce it seem to express their ironic feeling toward this US vice president that he might know less about global warming and blame every normal phenomenon on global warming. In my opinion, a politician who transfers his career to non-political one seems make no difference for some people. Still we can sense some political related feeling in some of this video’s comments. Hess (2009) said in his article, the parody is mean to challenge the mainstream, here is Al Gore, to emphasize on the differences and “might be subversive or transgressive”(Hutcheon, 1995). I have seen some comments of not only this video but also some related to Al Gore and his film show that politics takes part in this issue. Although a real science should be without any political force, it seems inevitable that most of issue will end with politics if we want a “democratic deliberation”. This makes me think of a comment that Hess (2009) used in his article, the member of YouTube called the war on drugs the “war on the people with different politics.”
Morgan in wonderland 