Visual Ethnography of Amateur Video Makers

This website is the audio-visual component of my doctoral thesis that investigated amateur video producers' use of the Internet as a video distribution technology. My thesis focussed on categories of amateur video producers who had established video distribution practices before the advent of the Internet, and investigated why this technology was adopted by them and how it was used. My approach offers a different perspective on this technology from those that begin with YouTube or the Internet as their point of departure.

My research is based on an ethnographic study of three groups of amateur video makers, and involved engaging with them online and offline continually over a period of 12-months from mid-2011 to mid-2012. I produced a written ethnography of each of the three groups in my thesis, and analysed my findings within a new materialist framework that was based on elements of Manuel DeLanda's reading of Deleuze and Guatarri's assemblage theory, and elements of Actor-Network Theory. This website comprises a visual ethnography of the three groups, and complements the written ethnography in my thesis, which is available here, and is best used in conjunction with it. However, this website functions as a standalone visual representation of my informants, and can be used without reference to any other documents as the visual and interactive elements are embedded within brief extracts from the written ethnography reworked to put those elements in a meaningful context, although the overall academic context, analytical framework and conclusions of my work will not be apparent without it being used alongside the full written component of the thesis.

The three groups of amateur video producers I researched are described on the remainder of this page:

California Community Media Exchange

Public access television had its genesis in the US in the early 1970s.  Public access channels broadcast non-commercial programming produced by local residents over their city’s or county's cable television network.  These channels are typically broadcast from television stations that also broadcast local education and government channels, and some also have a low-powered FM radio station associated with them.

The CACMX logo

The California Community Media Exchange is an association of seven such stations in the greater bay area of northern California. My research focussed primarily on the public access activities of two stations from this association, Davis Media Access (DMA) and the Community Media Center of Marin (CMCM), along with a selection of their associated producers. A visual ethnography of the online distribution activities of some of those producers are presented here: Antonio Sausys and his programme YogiViews; Frankie J. Woods and his Frank DoggTV productions; and Deborah Whitman and her Environmental Voices project.