Skinnel.+Circuitry+in+Motion

=**Skinnell, Ryan. "Circuitry in Motion: Rhetoric(al) Moves in YouTube's Archive."**= //Enculturation// 8 (2010): 1-9. Web. 28 September 2010.

=Abstract= No abstract.

Argument
Ryan Skinnell of Arizona State University through explorations seeks to prove whether or not the video hosting site //YouTube// can be deemed a credible archive in the explosion of digital culture. By allowing all users to post YouTube has become a development that has changed the course of history. YouTube is noted by critics as the best and the worst of this newly arising culture. The most common rhetorical effects of YouTube can be reviewed through the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign election, in which the candidates were able to post personal messages. The archives of YouTube have increasingly become an important part in the lives of individuals. YouTube is similar to and known to replicate traditional archives in its methods of storing and retaining information on a computer; however, in the same efforts it represents a digital revolution in the role of its archives. YouTube’s archives are then compared and contrasted to that of Archive 2.0 and Derrida’s Archive philosophies. YouTube is similar to the description of the archive described by theorist of Archive 2.0 in the central operation of users contributing, engaging and having the central role of defining the archive’s meaning. In Derrida’s case archives are used to gather materials that cannot be authenticated but authorized. This allows readers to look at “YouTube videos in the terms of their rhetorical effects,” (Skinnell). These effects can be viewed through the ACORN videos. YouTube is said to be place into limits by the inability to connect like other social networks.

Key Passages
"Although the exact number of videos maintained by //YouTube// is unknown because of its perpetual expansion, considering that 'every minute, 20 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube' (YouTube Fact Sheet), a reasonable estimate is that YouTube videos number over 300 million," (2)

"//YouTube// clearly cannot be understood simply as traditional archive that stores digital materials, some of which are use[d] for argumentative purposes, but the accumulative effect of //YouTube//'s archive cannot be ignored," (2).

“By and large, however, scholars who have examined //YouTube // specifically as an archive have expressed a barely disguised aversion to it,” (3).

“In short, //YouTube's // archive has been conceived by most scholars as either not an archive or as a very bad one,” (3).

According to Derrida: “[T]he archive […] is not only a place for stocking and for conserving an archivable content //of the past // which would exist in any case, such as, without the archive, one still believes it was or will have been. […] The archivization produces as much as it records the event, (16-17),” (4).

"The evidentiary value of Crocker’s video notwithstanding, it has had remarkable effects in the invention, arrangement, style, memory,and delivery of arguments that extend well beyond it and well beyond the confines of //YouTube's // archive," (5).

According to Henry Jenkins: “YouTube’s value depends heavily upon its deployment via other social networking sites—with content gaining much greater visibility and circulation when promoted via blogs, Live Journal, MySpace, and the like. […] In that regard, YouTube represents a shift away from an era of stickiness (where the goal was to attract and hold spectators on your site, like a roach motel) and towards an era where the highest value is in [|spreadability] ,” (6).

“The ACORN videos were posted on YouTube on September 9, 2009, and by the next day, they were circulating widely on conservative blogs like those maintained by conservative activist, Andrew Breitbart,” (6).

//"YouTube's // archive made the videos accessible, linkable, and discussable in a way that motivated further rhetorical activity and that transcended //<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; text-align: start;">YouTube's // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">structure even as it reinforced it," (6-7).

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