There seems to be quite a bit of difficulty, certainly hand wringing, in defining just what is videoblogging (just read the thread here for a sampler of how a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing). One of those moments when it seems reasonably easy to know it when we do it, but quite hard if we look closely and try to develop a clear, empirical definition. Some of the terminology is just plain sloppy, for example in the way that the term ‘television’ gets bandied around. Hence videoblogging is sometimes described as what you don’t see on tv, or some sort of alternative practice to television and so on. Not interested in pursuing that particular question right now. But I do think we need to be reminded just what television as a term means. Television in this sense is the combination of a production practice (professional, amateur, generally guild based, often relies on commissions and co-productions, etc), broadcasting via institutions known as television stations or channels (which regularly form networks), and reception into generally domestic spaces via a television set (which is a receiver). This is television.
In these terms, when I watch a DVD on my television I’m not watching ‘television’, I’m watching a DVD (which might be home movie, a tv show, or a movie). Similarly I can now use my television to play console games, interactive DVD games, or even watch an interactive DEV. Same when I’m watching a video. It gets grey when I record a show to timeshift it, where it would seem to be a bit of television and a bit of something else. But the very simple point is that just because something appears on your television it doesn’t make it television. Television is the complex assemblage of production, distribution and consumption.
Now, if a video blog (specifically its video content) is broadcast through this apparatus, it is television. There’s no ifs or buts about that. Which is why content based definitions of what a videoblog is don’t work since it is the fact of broadcast and reception that constitutes television, not what is chosen to be broadcast and received.
(That doesn’t quite work does it? That should be more like, if you could take your videoblog content and broadcast it via television, and nothing, qualitatively has changed, then I’d suggest you’re not videoblogging, it is television. For just as not all that appears on TV is TV, it also follows that the televisual can appear elsewhere to the domestic television receiver.
Which also means that trying to define videoblogging on the basis of content is similarly problematic. Blogging (as an obvious relative) is less defined by content than by a particular style, and a series of technical (formal) requirements. This is good. A book is similarly defined (serial pages, bound and contained within a cover), as is film (serial sound/image on a linear substrate that is played through a projection device).
Tags:
practice,
Vogging
