5.3 Conclusion of case study

It is of no surprise that a subject such as homosexuality causes these types of negative reaction, because traditionally this is a type of group that has not gotten much representation in the mass media. Over the past several decades the traditional groups, such as corporate gatekeepers, educational authorities and church leaders, have lost their power to define cultural norms. A process that Grant McCracken calls the ‘withering of the witherers’;

Ideas and practices that were once hidden from public view – say, the Wiccan beliefs that fundamentalist critics claim are shaping the Harry Potter books – are now entering the mainstream, and these groups are struggling to police the culture that comes into their homes and communities. (Jenkins, 2006, p.208)

This results in today’s environment as one of cultural ‘plenitude’, also a concept of McCracken. He argues that because of cultural conditions and new media technologies we have a wide range of diverse cultural production;

Each new technology spawns a range of different uses, inspires a diversity of aesthetic responses, as it gets taken up and deployed by different communities of users. Such transformations broaden the means of self and collective expression.

You would say that in such a culture there would be no need for strategies to be heard or to even stay on the platform. These different personal expressions could develop a greater understanding from other perspectives on life. Users don’t need to agree with it, but they can at least accept them as being part of the community.

The LGBT part of the YouTube community seems especially vulnerable to flags, because of the visibility of the flags. Firstly, the ‘confirm birtdate’ message saying that the user is about to watch a flagged video. Secondly, the ‘not suited for minors’ message saying “you are now watching a flagged video”. This is often placed on videos with LGBT content, informing the community that these videos have been flagged. This could form an incentive for flaggers to flag more LGBT videos, because they have seen that it ‘works’. At the same time, this visible sign of being flagged also feeds the LGBT community to address the issue. Which leads to the conclusion that if all the flags set on videos would be made visible to the community this would lead to greater participation and foster debate. YouTube already makes use of a variety of banners, why not insert a banner stating why a video was flagged:

And inserting the option to either confirm or remove the flag, available for a selection of users. I will address this as well in my proposal.