ALTERNATIVE MEDIA

Ramrez Pinzn, Mary Anglica Snchez de Sales, Mara Wizner Ruz, Mara Jos

INDEX

1. Introduction. What is alternative Media?

2. YouTube's history

3. YouTube as means of Media democratization

4. Democratization of Media and Media globalization

5. YouTube as a tool of commercialization

6. Conclusion

7. Bibliography

1. Introduction. What is alternative Media?

The term alternative media as well as the phenomenon itself can seem to be quite tricky ones. As Dowmunt has it, an initial difficulty () is defining more precisely what the alternative label actually means (Dowmunt 1998:244). Different scholars have different opinions towards what the term is supposed to express and what it actually encompasses. For example, in her book Alternative Media Chris Atton raises the question whether we use alternative as a catch-all for anything that isnt available at our local newsagents? Is it a synonym for underground, radical, oppositional even samizdat? (Atton 2002:2). Downing takes a slightly different turn when he talks about the feasibility of the term alternative in the sense that "that alternative is almost oxymoronic because everything, at some point, is alternative to something else" (Lee 2007:2).

Furthermore, it is not just the vagueness of the term alternative that attracts many scholars attention but also the blurred limits of alternative media as such. Atton points this out by giving an example of what criteria certain publishers, namely, the editors of Alternatives in Print apply to determining whether a medium is alternative or not:

1. The Publisher has to be non-commercial, demonstrating that a basic concern for ideas, not the concern for profit, is the motivation for publication. 2. The subject matter of their publications should focus on social responsibility or creative expression, or usually a combination of both. 3. Finally, it is enough for publishers to define themselves as alternative publishers. (Atton 2002:13).

Importantly, it is only one criterion that needs to be met in order for a medium to be alternative. This fact together with the two remaining quite problematic criteria makes Atton wonder why should they [alternative media] be considered as the special cases they see themselves to be if they do not seem to be able to 'even define what they do' (Atton 2002:14). The same is reiterated in Lee who comments that in

many cases media institutions appearing to be exactly the same as non-alternative institutions claim to be alternative merely because their headquarters say so. (For instance, the Village Voice, example taken from Lee 2007:2). Ultimately, it only leads to believe that the term is contrived and pretentious. As Abel puts it in Atton, what we are left with is a term so elastic as to be devoid of virtually any signification (Atton 2002:14).

On the other hand, there are those scholars who conclude that alternative media is required to complement or replace mass media ()Thus, defining alternative media is associated with the notion of mass media and society - specifically social power, mainstream culture, and democracy (Lee 2007: 2-3). Our further discussion of the liberal-pluralist approach and the Marxist approach will hinge on this premise of alternative media as means of complementation or replacement of mass media.

From the liberal-pluralist point of view, alternative media () [is] created by those who have been denied access to the mainstream media marketplace (Lee 2007:4). The bottom line of this approach is that alternative media basically helps to serve the needs of the marginalized:

By alternative media, the liberal-pluralists address the media for dissident social groups; including minorities, feminists, utopian and communitarians, socialists and communists, and so forth. This idea conceptualizes alternative media as the media which need to coexist with and supplement mass media, rather than replacing them. (Idem)

What happens when such alternatives media are created is that it enables people to experience a much greater diversity of ideas and leads to a more democratic state of affairs. This is what can be found in the definition of alternative media as it was proposed by the Royal Commission on the Press in 1997:

1. An alternative publication deals with the opinions of small minorities. 2. It expresses attitudes hostile to widely held beliefs. 3. It espouses views or deals with subjects not given regular coverage by Publications generally available at newsagents (idem)

Another approach towards alternative media is considered from the viewpoint of Marxism. To McChesney, alternative media mean non-commercial media serving the public interests of the working class. (Lee 2007:5). This conclusion has its roots in Gitlin who claims that it is media that play a central role in production and distribution of a ruling classs hegemony and that in this way the media become 'primary centers of capitalist enterprise, primary pipelines for capitalist values, primary weapons of social control' (Lee 2007:6). Ultimately, this led Gitlin to conclude that the media needs to be transformed, namely, one-way communication must disappear and the producer-consumer relation be changed to a relationship among communicators (idem). This is also what McChesney means when he talks about establishment of reformed media as a global public sphere, where people can communicate with one another without having the communication filtered and censored by corporate and commercial interests (Lee 2007:5). Therefore, the Marxist approach concentrates on how to eliminate the inequality of access to news sources and production systems of mass media (Lee 2007: 7). This counter-

hegemonic approach Marxism espouses can be seen to fit into the framework of the Internet as a as a new decentralized network against dominant hegemony (Lee 2007:21).

Due to the Internet and the new digitalization era multiple instances of alternative media, such as local radio, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc, where users can interconnect with other people are appearing and are worthwhile looking at inside the theoretical framework of alternative media. As Tony Dowmunt puts it, alternative media do give us specific, dynamic and lived examples of practices that challenge mainstream models of how cultural consumers can become producers as well. Therefore, as far as the interconnection aspect is concerned, we can look at weblogs as an example of alternative media

Weblogs can be seen to connect people by quite a number of technological tools. Importantly, these types of cybermedia often include videos from YouTube. In other words, they use it as a medium for the audience to have news not only published in articles, but also in videos. Later on the audience response can begin: anyone can give information, opinions and thoughts in their own blogs on the Internet. One of their

most important aspects is the fact that they are public and everybody can be informed about daily news and videos.

2. YouTube's history
YouTube is a website where users can download, upload, share and deliver videos from all over the world. Nowadays the company's headquarters are placed in San Bruno, California, and one of the most important features of this website is that it uses a technology called "Adobe Flash Video" so as to display its content.

YouTube was first designed by Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim and Steve Chen, three employees of PayPal Company. YouTube's story began in San Mateo, California, when its official launch took place (November 2005) with $11.5 million budget.

The website grew amazingly quickly; in July 2006 the website received more or less 65,000 videos per day, apart from more than 100 video views. More currently, on March 2010, YouTube's views exceeded the quantity of two billion videos per day.

An important fact during YouTube's history is that in October 2006 it was purchased by Google Inc. for $1.65 billion, so it has become a Google' subsidiary.

Though YouTube is only five years old, it's still growing in number of videos and also in audience. Nevertheless its profits are not as remarkable as they may seem. Before being bought by Google, YouTube already stated that its mechanism for earning money was advertisement-based. But this business model wasnt as profitable as they firstly imagined, according to a report realized in June 2009.

Even if YouTube's benefits are far from desirable (a report estimated that the company would loose $470 million in 2009), nowadays YouTube is the predominant online video provider, with more than 14 billion videos viewed in May 2010.

3. YouTube as Means of Media Democratization

In this case I will give an example of liberal-pluralist approach to alternative media, where the main principle is diversity based on freedom. I will focus on Attons alternative media model which is based on the following components: (Atton, 2001)

1. Ownership: commercialized or non-commercialized 2. Political positions: dominant or oppositional 3. Subjectivity and cultural representation: mainstream or subculture 4. Production systems: professional or participatory 5. Labour processes: traditional or less-hierarchical

YouTube is a new alternative electronic media/medium and it satisfies all these components. YouTube is more non-commercialized nor commercialized, suggests dominant and oppositional political opinions, and proposes mainstream scene and information, also subcultures view. In production level YouTube is professional and participatory. A labour process is democratized - everyone for everyone.

To prove liberal-pluralist approach we will concentrate on point 2: political positions. This component of alternative media as we can see immediately concerns liberal-pluralist approach and a democratisation process which is related with political, social movements. Democratization of media is as a democracy bearer.

It is necessary to analyse some examples in order to have an image of YouTube as alternative, liberal-pluralist media, to prove that it requires five mentioned components and to show how alternative media can be a democracy bearer:

Example 1: Taiwan politics; Taiwanese television news covers the Double Ten Day Protests: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsGDEhwTcew

In Taiwan from the late 1970s to the early 1990s the alternative media started to play

a big role for political democratization (Lee, 2007). Alternative media propose diverse perspectives or alternative media is a complement or even major force for reform political or social in Taiwan. We can find a lot of examples on Youtube, but it is necessary to cite: Mainstream media were obedient to official propaganda under authoritarian control, the dissident oppositional media have risen against the repression of freedom of speech. As the mainstream media have surrender themselves to sensationalism and partisan rifts guided by owners interest and preference, the alternative media exist to make peoples voices (Jinsun Lee). So, this example shows mainstream media with news image limitation on TV, the man comments the situation on mainstream media and in this moment creates alternative media with his liberal opinion, oppositional to dominating.

The following examples are concerned with pluralism, heterogeneity of styles, of contributions, of perspectives.

Example 2: Hitler speech on the future of Germany: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljv7rMFc_yk

This speech was showed on mainstream media through historical perspectives and was controlled by authoritarians. Hitler was depicted the way he wanted, but subtitles that we can see show liberalism because everyone can understand what Hitler is speaking about, everyone can have his own opinion about this. It stimulates pluralism.

Example 3: Fall of the Berlin Wall: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnYXbJ_bcLc

This example is also about an historical event, but it is different from the first one. Here different perspectives of political opinion are shown and various opinions of certain countries are included as well. This is sensibilised with contribution of different media origins.

4. Democratization of Media and Media globalization

It is interesting to focus on the digitalization era and discuss if this period will allow the democratization in communication with more pluralism for everybody. As an example, we look at YouTube, which can help users to communicate and be informed about what happened in the world. It is a very quick medium to denounce situations and it helps to be aware of facts that occur in other countries.

Youtube is one complement of other media which helps to democratize the information broadcasting. For instance, newspapers cannot publish the whole information that they receive. They need other media in this new era to renew the traditional ones. We are in a new period where technology helps audience to answer, criticize and complain about content. Nowadays, media is not one-sided, but there is reciprocity between the sender and the receiver. We can observe comments on YouTube that encourage or discourage audience to watch uploaded videos. Audience is active, people can interact and they will soon forget the passive role that they have played before.

If we have more informative webs, we will have more pluralism and we will be able to discern better contents and points of view. As a result, YouTube can produce this diversity and pluralism because people have their own opinions and they can express their attitude through the Internet and make comments on videos.

5. YouTube as a tool of commercialization

When Google Inc purchased YouTube great numbers of YouTube users were convinced that this would ruin the authentic YouTube experience of community. However, it does not seem to have happened at least not yet. The role of YouTube as a tool of commercialization can be felicitously summarized in a quote from YiWyn Yens article YouTube looks for the Money Clip: What isnt clear is why Google () hasnt figured out how to make a profit from YouTube yet. The reasons why YouTube does not appear to be intrusively monetized at the moment and how it is working towards becoming more commercialized will be the main aspects of YouTube I would like to look at in this part of the paper.

One of the reasons why YouTube is not very heavily commercialized in an intrusive way is the nature of its audience. As Google co-founder Sergey Brin says making money wasnt a top priority. The company has focused heavily on refining a users experience and collecting data on how viewers find videos on YouTube (Yen, 2008). This leads to what Suzie Reider, YouTubes first chief marketing officer, points out when she says that YouTube realizes what a very, very fickle () What have you done for me lately? audience it attracts (in Emily Steels YouTube Executive Walks a Tightrope). As a result, the company is forced to look for seemingly seamless ways how to blend marketing into YouTubes offerings and to keep its audience satisfied at the same time which may prove to be really difficult at times (idem).

Another reason why YouTube is not heavily commercialized as of yet is the nature of its content. This is quite paradoxical in the sense that YouTube does not follow the standard advertising model where advertising as a primary source of income inevitably leads to business interests () controlling the content of the media (Atton 2002:37). In YouTubes case advertisers do not attempt to control its content. On the contrary, according to Yi-Wyn Yen, it is many advertisers who see YouTubes unprofessionally produced content as a problem for advertising. They make a large distinction between, for instance, advertising on ABC.com, and on YouTube which is very much a vast collection of campy, user-uploaded clips (Yen,

2008). As a result, advertisers feel that most of clips on YouTube are unmarketable as it is only 10-20 per cent of its content that is professionally produced. This is precisely what discourages them from advertising on YouTube. This is also reiterated in Mike Shields (Lets (Not) Make a Deal):

Not a lot of advertisers are willing to throw their brand into that environment," said Kristen Ferguson, vp, marketing at Maven Networks, which powers Web video for Fox News and Scripps. "It's kind of not a video advertising site," added Adam Kasper, senior vp, director of digital media at MPG's Media Contacts. "I don't know that the sales are there." On the other hand, some predict that in the future this will change. According to Todd Krieger, senior vp, Denuo the main reason for that will be that without getting on YouTube, you don't always get picked up by Google search (idem). Furthermore, there is another way to look at YouTube. Curt Hecht, the chief digital officer for GM (general motors) Planworks, believes that eventually advertisers will find ways to approach YouTubes audience: Were trying to figure out what is the value in brand association with content thats not premium () The approach we take is, how can we package this in front of a ton of eyeballs (Yen). Therefore, YouTube is becoming commercialized to a certain extent as more and more advertisers realize what a huge audience it attracts (cf. in March 31, 2010, YouTube would serve more than two billion videos per day, "nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major US television networks combined). It is true that there are some advertisement formats on YouTube (cf. standard banner ads, rich media ads, YouTube videos ads etc), however, it is crucial that in an effort to keep its audience happy YouTube does not use pre-roll ads. In her article Emily Steel states that YouTube has spent months testing different ad formats to figure out which models wouldn't alienate its viewers. It found that viewers abandon videos that include pre-roll ads at a rate of more than 70%, so it ditched pre-roll commercials. The approach YouTube has adopted ultimately is comparatively unintrusive overlay ads. This new ad format has received quite a lot of attention. As Miguel Helft refers to it in his article Google Aims to Make YouTube Profitable with Ads, Google believes it finally has found the formula to cash in on YouTubes potential as a

magnet for online video advertising and keep its audience loyal at the same time. Now some clips have an overlay ad which is put on some fifteen seconds after the user starts watching the video. However, the viewer is still in control: they can choose whether they want to stop the video and watch the advertisement or not. It was revealed in tests that approximately 75% of viewers presented with an ad chose to watch the whole ad. (Henry Blodget, Analyzing YouTubes Revenue Potential). Thus, it seems like in this way advertisers communicate to viewers and consequently YouTube could make a profit out of advertising:

The revenue from the ads will be split between the media partner and YouTube. Ms. Naughton [Googles director for media platforms said Google would charge advertisers $20 for every 1,000 times the ads were displayed. () Ms. Naughton also said advertisers would be able to take aim at specific channels and genres, as well as demographic profiles, geography and hour of the day () (Helft, The New York Times)

Nevertheless, as Henry Blodget argues in his article on YouTubes revenue potential, YouTube will not prove financially beneficial straight away. The article discusses two scenarios: in the most aggressive case (50% of all YouTube videos getting an overlay ad), in the year to come YouTube could make an annual revenue of 1 billion dollars (according to a Wall Street analysis) which would be enough to make a meaningful contribution to Google (Blodget, Analyzing YouTubes Revenue Potential). If this scenario works out, then in five years time YouTube will possibly generate nearly $13 billion of revenue--closing in on Google's current revenue today (idem). The other scenario, however, is less optimistic. If the conservative scenario (10% of all YouTube videos getting an overly ad) comes true, then for four years to come the companys yearly revenue would be only 12 million dollars and the prospect in five years time would be nearly $200 million of revenue: nice, but nothing to write home about (idem).

6. Conclusion
To sum up, on the one hand YouTube can be considered a democratic tool par excellence since its main objective is to convey information to a wide range of people. In the other hand it does seem that YouTube is not much of a money-maker and it may probably be seen as a sunk cost for Google. However, it may very well be the case that Google bought YouTube only to make sure no other media conglomerate buys it. Thus, Google may have purchased it without having the intention of turning it into a profitable contributor to Googles annual revenue. In either case, it is obvious that YouTube is becoming more commercialized but not in the ruthless and intrusive way some of its users may have anticipated.

7. Bibliography
- Atton, Chris. Alternative Media. London: Sage Publications, 2002.

- Atton, Chris. (2001) Approaching alternative media: Theory and methodology. Paper presented in the ICA preconference on May 2001. Washington D. C. Retrieved on May, 2008, from http://ourmedianetwork.org/files/papers/2001/Atton.om2001.pdf

- Helft, Miguel. Google Aims to Make YouTube Profitable With Ads The New York Times. 22 August 2007. 25 April 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/22/technology/22google.html

- Lee, Jinsun. How Alternative for What?:Reconceptualizing Alternative Media in the Global Age. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, TBA, San Francisco, CA, May 23, 2007 Online. 2008-04-30 http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p170550_index.html

- Steel, Emily. YouTube to Start Selling Ads in Videos. The Wall Street Journal. 22 August 2007. 25 April 2008 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118773972468004675.html?mod=rss_whats_news_technol ogy&apl=y

- Dowmunt, Tony. An Alternative Globalization: Youthful Resistance to Electronic Empires. Electronic Empires: Global Media and Local Resistance. Ed. Daya Kishan Thussu. London: Arnold, 1998. 243-255.

- Yen, Yi-Wyn. YouTube Looks for the Money Clip. Fortune on CNNMoney.com. 25 March 2008. 25 April 2008 http://techland.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/03/25/youtube-looks-forthe-money-clip/