My thoughts on the semester  

1- How is the framing, that is the background of the video, part of the message? Would Ron Strickland's cultural theory videos have the same meaning on a beach? Why are the normative YouTube framings norms? What is the "norm", is there a pattern? Why is this the norm? (especially considering the amount of professionals that are on the tube- maybe my points in the "The Beauty of YouTube" are salient here.)

2- If we consider YouTube as an interface, in what ways are people entrapped in the video box and unable to interact with the interface? How can one interact with it, and what does it mean to do so (is it a violation of norms? or maybe just something that hasn't been thought of?) What is the foreground/background relationship and are there implications to collapsing these?

3- Are there aesthetic differences between informational videos, vlogs, and "features" (something that is a non-habitual posting i.e. response)? Again, like above, what does this say about the video and how is it part of the message? I think of this video:

in what ways is the background a truth statement? I suppose this is the same as question 1 in the end, but I'm too lazy to backspace and edit. I will say, though, I think this would make Erving Goffman wet himself. 

Another question I'm intersted in exploring, that unfortunately doesn't have anything to YouTube, is why the changing landscape in Malta is so offensive to Maltese people. A simple search in the Malta Times shows so many irate people in regards to the facial reconstruction of Maltese buildings- why is this? The Maltese are a people very concerned with looking modern, yet they don't want the landscape to look that way! An interesting compromise occurring between the visuality of self and the visuality of space to say the least.

Now I just need to think about the semiotics course I'm taking, and I'll be golden for the semester.

Comments would be accepted lovingly.

Happy blogging.