John Hondros - Ecologies of Internet Video

This book explores the complex, dynamic, and contested webs of relationships in which three different groups of video makers found themselves when distributing their work on the Internet. It draws upon both the Deleuzian notion of assemblage and Actor-Network Theory, which together provide a rich conceptual framework for characterizing and analysing these webs. The groups examined are a UK video activist project, a community of film and television fans originating in the US, and an association of US community television producers.

Rather than taking YouTube as its point of departure, this book centres on the groups themselves, contextualizing their contemporary distribution practices within their pre-Internet histories. It then follows the groups as they drew upon various Internet technologies beyond YouTube to create their often-complex video distribution assemblages, a process that entangled them in these webs of relationships.

Through the analysis of detailed ethnographic fieldwork conducted across a period of several years, this book demonstrates that while the groups found some success in achieving their various goals as video makers, their situations were often problematic and their agency limited, with their practices contested by both human and technological actors within their distribution assemblages.

John Hondros is a Visiting Lecturer at the School of Media, Film and Music at the University of Sussex, UK. Prior to his academic career, he held various senior roles in the digital media industry, pioneering the development of multiplatform television and Internet video internationally.

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First published 2018
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ISBN: 978-1-138-89556-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-17945-2 (ebk)

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The origin of this book, and the beginning of my interest in the relationship between the Internet and video, can be traced to 1997 when I first saw WebTV in operation. This was a television set top box that contained a dial-up modem to access the Internet, which it would display on a television screen, and an analogue tuner for receiving broadcast television programmes. What particularly fascinated me about this device was how it integrated in various ways Internet interactivity with the television programmes being broadcast. I had just begun working in the then nascent digital media industry, and my early experience with this technology inspired me to focus my career in this new, integrated domain. Over the next 14 years, I worked on various projects in this area, and in that time, the industrys focus shifted away from WebTV-type technologies to ones like YouTube that concerned distributing video via the Internet. My fascination with this marriage of the Internet and video remained, however, and in fact intensified as Internet video distribution technologies became more widespread, although my interest shifted from the commercial and technological concerns that preoccupied the industry to sociological ones. In particular, I wanted to understand the social dynamics within which this new technology was becoming entangled. While this book takes a sociological approach to the problem, it is also informed by the various perspectives, insights, and sensibilities gained during my industry experience, and therefore draws upon 20 years of reflection upon the relationship between video and the Internet.

Over 100 people, belonging to the groups of video makers discussed in the following pages, directly contributed to the primary research that forms the basis of this book. Many of the insights contained within it depended upon their generosity, both in granting me access to the inner workings of their groups and in giving up their time to help me understand their practices. This book is therefore dedicated to them, and to their determination in pursuing their goals as video makers in the face of often considerable resistance and difficulties.

This book explores the complex, dynamic, and contested webs of relationships that three different groups of non-professional video makers found themselves in when distributing their work on the Internet.1 These webs can be thought of metaphorically as ecologies, and they will be framed and analysed in the following chapters using the concepts of assemblages and actor-networks. Through this analysis we will see that while these groups found varying degrees of success in achieving their goals as video makers, their situations were often problematic and precarious, and their agency limited, with their practices contested by other actors often considerably more powerful than themselves as they went about their task of distributing their videos online.

While YouTube was the primary focus for social scientists investigating Internet video when the initial plan for this book was formulated in 2009, and continues to remain so to this day, a different approach is used here. Rather than taking YouTube or even the Internet in general as a point of departure, this book instead centres on categories of producers who existed prior to the advent of the Internet, but who later adopted it as a distribution technology. The reason for this approach is that it frames Internet video distribution technologies within the wider historical context of video distribution technologies in general, rather than treating them as something unprecedented. Given the ethnographic method used here (discussed below), this also left open the possibility of encountering producers who had some experience with pre-Internet distribution methods, opening lines of enquiry concerning the relationship between online and offline video distribution methods. This approach, while focusing on Internet technologies, therefore also invites comparisons with pre-Internet methods, providing a different perspective on this technology from ones that begin with YouTube or the Internet as their point of departure.