NETWORKED MEDIA: W8 – Networked Video (Practice Analysis)

NETWORKED MEDIA

TASTY (BUZZFEED) – @buzzfeedtasty

“Instagram is more than one thing: it is an app; it is a series of programs and algorithms; it is a gigantic database of images, videos, captions, comments, geolocative tags, location tags, likes, emoji and more and more items over time; it is a collection of personal data (connected with similar sets of personal data after the purchase by Facebook); it is an application program interface (API) which enacts rules to allow different apps, platforms and partners to access, add or remove data from the Instagram database; it is a series of decisions and developments over time that create different versions of each of these things; and it also encapsulates various popular understandings of what Instagram ‘is’ to the more than a billion people who use it. In short, describing Instagram as a platform offers a continual reminder that Instagram is many different things, some at the same time, and some that have quite radically changed over time (Leaver, Tama, et al. 2020).” One of the most important features, the video, is used in many different ways within the network. “Online video has been transformed from an expensive to distribute mediaform to one which can be networked, shared, downloaded and re-used with ease. Digital videos, a kind of ‘vernacular avant-garde’, can now be found in a variety of short-form genres, from family videos to haul videos (documenting things people have bought) to unboxing videos (people opening the wrapper from their new purchases) and from a new type of YouTube celebrity to amusing ‘meme’ videos (Berry, T. B 2018).” This has changed the way photo and video practitioners share their work, opening a new way of monetising online, through clicks and views – with Instagram becoming one of the most popular avenues to do so. @buzzfeedtasty

When we look for an example of the online video being used this way on Instagram, we look to Buzzfeed Tasty, an Instagram account that is attached and apart of the original Buzzfeed blog-site; which has a main focus on short online video based content used to teach people ‘easy’ and ‘quick’ recipes, as well as promoting longer video content of theirs that can be found on IGTV or other SNS platforms such as YouTube.

An example of their work is this one-minute tutorial video on what they call “Hash-brown Waffles”, posted to their Instagram on 26th April, 2020. Buzzfeed work to strict time limits, with all of their tutorials hitting a rough one-minute mark. What’s interesting about Buzzfeed Tasty, is that they have a team of content creators that contribute to their page (which you can see in the referenced image above, just below their description box), as opposed to one person running the account alone.

This means that we can presume that the “Hash-brown Waffle” video, was authored by multiple content creators – the food created by one person, shot by another person, edited by someone else, and so on, so forth.

Published to the World Wide Web, on the SNS Instagram to be specific, well as being distributed on their other Tasty accounts on their original Buzzfeed blog-site and other SNS accounts such as Facebook and YouTube – With the intention to make money through clicks/views, and distribute their content as far around the world as they can, on as many platforms as they can, across the World Wide Web to do so.

CITATIONS

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