Assignment 7. From viral media to spreadable media

Nowadays datasphere or mediasphere, how it also could be called, is developing very fast and there are several phenomena which appeared not so long ago. One of them is based on huge amount of information which is created every day and for commercials there is only way, according to Jenkins (2013). He believes that information and commercial should be spread all around mediasphere or it will be dead.

It is quite new approach but the ideas of expansion of information started with the idea about viral media. The main concept of this idea is media virus which travels through the mediaspace and works as usual viruses. Media viruses infects networks and areas of media as television and Internet. According to Rushkoff (1994),  The “protein shell” of a media virus might be an event, invention, sex scandal or anything else which catches attention (Rushkoff, 1994, p. 10). The goal of media virus is in expansion and influence the certain point of view on moral, lifestyle or anything else.

Also, there is another term which is an analogue for a gene in talk about biological viruses. This term is meme. According to Rushkoff, this concept was overused. It became famous because of Richard Dawkins who establish a theory about memes, Moreover, according to Dawkins, religion in any kind of it is a kind of media virus. Nevertheless, concept of memes was rethought and on the internet it is usually used with another meaning.

Some ideas of viral media were accepted by creators of advertising and many commercial became popular and actually viral. One of the main reasons for that became such platform as YouTube. Phenomena of Youtube is also disscussed by Jenkins who has his own point of view of media. According to Jenkins, there is such category of media as spreadable media. “Spreadable Media focuses on the social logics and cultural practices that have enabled and popularized these new platforms, logics that explain why sharing has become such common practice, not just how” (Jenkins, 2013, p. 3).

Spreadability is an important and even crucial factor of media. It is about viewers and their wish to spread the content. Another author which was mentioned by Jenkins, uses the term of “stickiness” when he was trying to describe the same type of content. “Spreadability assumes a world where mass content is continually repositioned as it enters different niche communities” (Jenkins, 2013, p. 27).

With all this information there is an opportunity to analyse the concrete examples and see the react of mediasphere on some viral commercials. The advertising of Old Spice could be a bright example. One particular video from all advertising campane became very popular. It is the video The Man Your Man Could Smell Like. For now it has over 54 million views and it was loaded to YouTube in 2010.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE

The react of the viewers could be seen as positive. There are more than 196 thousands likes and it means that so much people added this commercial to the void with favourite videos. Moreover, there are a lot of comments under this commercial. Many of them are the parodies on a video like “Look at your comment. Back to mine.” and so on. Many people got the impression about jokes about sexist view on a man. Also, in the field of this discussion there was another video with a young woman as a main character.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XApxFznVafg

This parody could also be the interesting point to study because it plays on stereotypes but with the men as viewers and woman as the object of wishes. The original commercial was funny and absurdist and played on stereotypes but it was not offensive because the man was the object of the wishes. However, with the opposite turn of this situation there could be seen that another angle would be sexist and could receive negative comments.

Another parody but without any ideas or even approach to the social issues was with toy from Sesame Street and the main character. The goal to that video is to make funny things in original video even more funny. The original commercial already had the absurdist effect and was playing on this but with the Sesame Street character it doubles the effect.

All in all, Jenkins and Rushkoff believe that nowadays the best way for commercials to be on the top is to be spreadable. Rushkoff prefers the concept of virus and Jenkins talks about it as about spreadable media.

Literature:

Jenkins, H., Li, X., & Domb, A.
(2008). If it doesn’t spread, it’s dead. Creating Value in a Spreadable Marketplace

Jenkins, H., Ford, S., & Green, J.
(2013). Introduction: Why Media Spread. In Spreadable media: creating value and meaning in a networked culture (pp. 1-46). New York; London: New York University

Rushkoff, D.
(1994). Introduction (pp. 3 -16). In: Media virus! Hidden agendas in popular culture (1st ed.). New York: Ballantine Books.

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