As mentioned in my previous blog post I finally did my presentation for my digital history class this week. My prompt was 'YouTube History.' I chose YouTube because I've been very active on the platform, probably since about 2007, and it was a constant throughout my formative years.
My presentation was split into two parts. In the first part I discussed the advantages and disadvantages of using YouTube as an educational tool for studying history. The fact that YouTube is a free to use publicly accessible website with an endless catalogue of content to explore makes it a great tool for studying history online. The accessibility of YouTube means that students can engage with audiovisual historical content without needing to be affiliated with an institution. The fact that YouTube is a platform that is so easy for creators to use as well is also a huge advantage, as this means that there are a number of educational YouTube channels, most with their own unique spin on teaching. However, a disadvantage of using YouTube in this way is the fact that any creator can upload anything under the guise of education, whether it is accurate or not. Recent studies have found that students often engage better with a topic when they are able to see and hear the experiences of people who lived through that period (see Azora et al., 2020, and Moghavvemi et al.,2018). In the case of studying history, YouTube is a fantastic example of what can be achieved by using digital tools as a learning resource.
The second part of my presentation was an opener for a class debate around the validity of using YouTube as an online archive. When asking the question of 'is YouTube an archive?' most historians would probably go 'well...no. Anyone can upload anything, and it doesn't follow correct archival procedures. They don't even have an archivist on staff!' But it's a bit more complex than that. At a base level, no, YouTube is not an archive. Not one in the sense that we might consider it to be anyway. Our hypothetical historian is correct in their statements, YouTube is an unreliable source of archived primary materials for a number of reasons. The most glaring being that a majority of archival type content that is uploaded to YouTube is copyrighted and the uploader doesn't own the rights to the footage. There is no moderation of archived materials outside of copyright issues, so even if a video isn't removed the metadata included in the title and description might be incorrect or totally false, discrediting its ability to be used as a source.
However, to counter argue, there are a number of channels on YouTube that act as archives within themselves. Some are literal archives, such as Archives New Zealand (ANZ) who has their own YouTube channel. Other YouTube channels that are affiliated with news networks, such as the Associated Press (AP), could be loosely considered archives if one considers the sheer amount of content that is uploaded that pertains to current events. In my opinion it wouldn't be outlandish to cite an AP YouTube video given that the information stated in the video, and in the title and description, are likely to be as correct and fact checked as possible. It's also not a stretch to consider these videos accurately archived, even if they do not have a specific archivist on staff ensuring the preservation and validity of everything, they are still a news outlet with an obligation to truth.
Overall in my personal opinions, YouTube is both a great digital tool for studying history, and an informal public archive. I'm pleased with my presentation and the outcomes that I have concluded upon.