About the AuthorDanielle Rose has lived in New Mexico her whole life. She has a B.A. in English from New Mexico State University and hopes to soon complete her B.S. in Technical Communication from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. She is looking forward to joining the work force. Contents |
Literature ReviewYouTube and other video social media (VSM) sites allow for various levels of interaction with the video media and the creators of that media. The innovative structure of VMS sites is a large factor of their current popularity and the reason technical communicators should focus more on actively using this technology format. YouTube allows users to comment and rate videos after they have been viewed. Users (viewers) can also post “responses” to videos. Figure 1, below, shows the YouTube format for interacting with videos. This type of format is common among all VSM sites. Video creators can respond to comments, view, and rate any posted responses. After a video has been selected to watch, other videos that are similar in content are listed in a side pane. The format of VSM sites allows for communication that creates a dialogue between users and video creators, and allows for the spread of information while receiving feedback quickly in an organized format. This level of interaction creates an important connection with the audience. Enrique Bonsón and Francisco Flores discuss this in their article on social media and its use in corporations. They conclude that the metrics for SM sites show that “when you engage in a conversation and treat your consumers with respect and as your peers, magical things will happen” (Bonson and Flores 25). In the case of VSM sites, the audience or “consumers” can represent not just clients, but peers, students, and other types of viewers.  Figure 1: YouTube All video sharing sites can be categorized under the title of "video social media." Most VSM sites build their own communities based upon video content. Videos posted to these sites can be linked to from other websites, and shared person to person. Videos can also be embedded into a webpage or social media (SM) site. These sharing options allow communication that can foster both a teaching and learning environment. Rick Cole argues the benefits of social media for public managers, saying that VSM sites allow users to build upon established methods of communication (9). Technical communicators already work to foster various avenues of communication. As such, it makes sense for technical communicators to start integrating VSM sites into their communication networks. According to articles on integrating social media, like Joyce Lofstrom’s and Britt Parrot’s, as social media reaches new heights, people are looking for ways to incorporate social media into areas like business, hobbies, promotion, politics, etc. (Ghosh et al., Lofstrom, McAllister and Turrow, Parrot, Schierhorn et al., Wilbur). Social media allows itself to be adapted for a variety of purposes. VSM has most of the same adaptability as non-video social media. Flexibility, combined with VSM’s capacity for interaction, allows for advanced communication; users of VSM sites gain the ability to design video content and deliver that content. Caroline Kealey argues in her article on Web 2.0 that the medium, social media, is also the message. Her main point is that technical communicators need to find new ways of reaching audiences through the arena where “our audiences now live, work, and play,” and VSM sites and SM sites make accessing audiences easier (Kealey 2). Technical communicators consider their audiences in everything they do by analyzing what their audience wants and needs. The format of VSM sites allows technical communicators to interact with their audience in a new way. Some of the main questions that technical communicators ask about their audience are: Who is the audience? What are their needs and interests? How and where will the project or document be viewed? Why will it be accessed? The answers to these questions are simplified through the use of VSM. The advantage of VSM sites is that they provide the opportunity for audience members to directly respond to content as it is developed. The audience can directly comment with what they want and need through the interface of the VSM site. The interaction VSM sites allow between users can streamline audience analysis for technical communicators. Another advantage of VSM sites is speed. If a user posts a video that is groundbreaking and immediately relevant, this video can be shared to a large number of like-minded users very quickly. For technical communicators that write paper articles, the speed of VSM sites is an advantage. Paper articles tend to address innovations, revelations, and needs within the technical communication community. Articles have a lag time between their creation and their dissemination to the public. This is because they must be sent to editors, publishers, checked by peers, revised, printed, and then distributed. This is a time-consuming process. It is common that by the time a paper article reaches its audience, updates have been made to move beyond the information the article contained. This is because of the time it takes to get an article from the writing stage to the publishing stage. Similarly, for technical communicators that work on documentation, it can be difficult to update users on changes to documentation. The advantage of VSM for technical communicators is that VSM sites make content viewable instantaneously. Through a video, a user can quickly learn the same information a paper article might have contained, or view changes to documentation that would take weeks, or longer, to print and send out. Viewers can also comment immediately. If the video makes an interesting point, but has forgotten a key factor that should be considered, a user can comment and let the original poster of the video know. For example, if a video about MLA documentation mentioned the changes in the most recent style guide, but forgot to mention the style guide edition, a viewer could point this out in a comment. Other users can see the comment and build upon this information as well. Jennifer Sheppard argues for this type of feedback interaction in her article on multimedia production. She says that technical communicators need to fully prepare information for a multimedia audience, and the best way to do this is by working with the audience in several real-time run-throughs (123). Sheppard’s multimedia project was a children’s website “for a Forest Service Research Lab” (122). She designed the website while talking with local school children and scientists (Sheppard 126-127). She then built pieces of the website and tested them on various platforms and asked children to test them (Sheppard 126-127). Her article emphasizes how important it is to examine and adapt current multimedia technology to reach a growing multimedia audience. VSM sites are the perfect arena for learning through interaction. Users interact with the videos and become part of a larger picture. Guosong Shao explains that users deal with user generated media (UGM) in “three ways: by consuming, by participating, and by producing” (Shao 2). This three-way interaction allows for better communication and involvement with the media and the creators of the media. This type of use allows for different gratifications. A user who consumes is also interacting with the video creator and other viewers. A video creator might be interacting with viewers as well as other creators. And in some cases viewers might be drawn into creating videos based on information from their interactions with others. This kind of communication and interaction leads to further updates in VSM. All of the popular social media sites are avenues for communication and build upon the need for interaction (Kealey 3). There is no need to fear social media, because like other forms of interaction and communication, social media is just another means of “trying to find the best way to communicate with an audience” (Parrott 1). Technical communicators should be embracing VSM as a way to expand their reach within the internet community. VSM is a great communication tool that allows communicators to interact with a larger, more global, audience. This interaction is a natural progression of communication and audiences will respond and connect with it. Colin Delany defends the value of the internet communities’ participation in his article for the use of online participatory tools, saying that “as more people participate, the value of the system tends to increase” (Delany 1). VSM sites provide great value because of the way they facilitate the delivery of information. James Porter is a prominent voice in the technical communication field and his article on the delivery of digital rhetoric discusses the framework for the delivery of digital information through five key topics (Body/Identity, Distribution/Circulation, Access/Accessibility, Interaction, and Economics) (Porter 207). These five key topics for the delivery of digital information can be seen with the framework for how VSM sites deliver information. The video is the body, or the focus, and the VSM site is the method of distribution. Within the distribution there are levels of accessibility and interaction which are the framework and features of the VSM site. The levels of interaction available for the body (video) come from the distribution (the site and its features). The economics of the body are who created the video, what rights they have on the video itself, and the information it contains. VSM sites are a compact delivery system within the definition of Porter’s framework, and VSM sites are constantly adapting. Technical communicators need to adapt themselves to new avenues of digital information delivery. Adream Blair-Early’s article discusses participatory design research and how methods of design need to adapt, arguing that before technical communicators can move forward “to solve more complex design problems we need a better framework in which to conduct our research” and VSM provides a new framework for technical communicators to work in (Blair-Early 215). By adopting the community networking aspects that VSM provides, the use of VSM becomes similar to the use of participatory design. (Participatory design is a design approach that involves including everyone from employees, customers, and end users to have input on the product being designed.) It is best to focus on user interaction from the standpoint of participatory design and not user-centered design because “participatory design is design by users, while user-centered design is design for users,” as discussed in Tatiana Nikolova-Houston’s article on improving web sites with participatory design (7). While user-centered design sounds like it would also be useful in the incorporation of VSM, user-centered design places a distance between the creator and the user. By focusing on participatory design the distance between the creator and the user is minimized and the community aspect, that is the goal of social media sites, increases. A video posted to a VSM site, especially a video that requests feedback and input from viewers, becomes a tool that allows designers (video creators) to learn from their audience and incorporate the information the audience has given them into future creations. Video viewers can participate by leaving input on the design presented in the video. Using VSM sites provides a quick and easy way for technical communicators to present an idea and receive feedback on what works best and what could be improved. A further benefit of using VSM for participatory design is that a video can reach almost anyone, so a designer can get feedback from across the globe. By sending a link to a video, a designer can reach employers, employees, and customers. But the video can reach even farther than that. A video can now reach potential customers, an audience who may have been thinking about using a product (in this instance “product” can be anything from software, to hardware, a presentation, an article, etc.). This audience may have just heard about the product, may have been concerned about using the product and searched for more information, may have stumbled upon the video, or they may have just been introduced to the product. Most importantly, this audience now has the ability to let the designer know what they would like to see in future updates and in the final result. YouTube, and VSM sites like it, allow technical communicators to better communicate with the audience. Technical communicators want to understand the audience and their complexities and be more aware of how choices affect them. This is one of the arguments of Paula Rosinski and Megan Squire in their article on human-computer interaction, interface design, and composition pedagogy (151). The format and features of VSM sites make them excellent places to research and think about the way the audience interacts with content. At present there is little to no method in development to help technical communicators use VSM sites within their work sphere. In order to effectively use VSM sites, and SM sites, an outline needs to be established that will allow technical communicators to understand the features of VSM and take advantage of the opportunity for audience interaction that VSM sites present. |