We'll put someone's personal, intimate, creepy, gross, whatever, anything online 'cause we want to relate to other people. I mean things that people would never want to talk about, we're like all about that.
—Ryanne Hodson, December 3, 2006

Many people cannot understand why it would be important or interesting to watch intimate, spontaneous events in the lives of bloggers. People who are unfamiliar with the diary form of video blogging are often critical of this genre, seeing it as self-centered and obsessed with filming micro-events with no particular point or relevance beyond the videomaker's own life. Yet, many video bloggers argue that it is precisely by putting these intimate moments on the Internet for all to see that a space is created to expose and discuss difficult issues and thereby achieve greater understanding of oneself and others. Public access to intimate moments and the discourse surrounding the video artifacts on the Web allow social boundaries and pre-existing assumptions to be questioned and refashioned. In this paper I explore some of the themes that women have raised on video blogging sites by exploring their intimate moments. In particular, I wish to discuss videos made by women video bloggers who explore ideas about self-image, diversity, and helping Internet strangers.

Video blogging is an umbrella term that covers a wide number of genres, including everything from short video footage of spontaneous, real-life, personal moments, to scripted and preplanned "shows" with characters, narratives, and professional acting. A blog is a Web journal with entries that may include text comments or other media (such as photographs). The entries are placed in reverse chronological order so that the site's visitors encounter the most up-to-date entry first.[1] A video blog or "vlog" usually contains text and often photographs, but it also features video as a central mode of communication. Many video blogs are for the general public, although some are restricted to a small circle of friends. Video blogs may be diary-based, artistic, journalistic, entertainment-based, or they may take any number of other forms. What unites members of the video blogging community is a commitment to video as a crucial means of expressing and understanding issues that the video blogger wishes to share.

This paper is an exploration of how certain woman video bloggers' work and personal choices use intimacy to create reactions in viewers that encourage reconsideration of the blogger's own and viewers' ideas about social action and values. Intimate moments are more personal and involve experiences not ordinarily seen outside a person's small circle of friends and acquaintances. The research discussed here is part of an ongoing MacArthur-funded project on Digital Youth. The project analyzes how people increasingly use media to interact with other people in daily life.[2] My research project focuses on video production, sharing, and reception, and on the complicated ways these acts intertwine in online sites such as video blogs and video sharing sites. For the past eight months I have been attending video blogging tutorials and social events to understand aspects of the video blogging community as it is experienced both online and locally in the Los Angeles area. I have analyzed video blogs and interviewed women, men, children, and families who video blog to understand how they use video to mediate their social and cultural experiences. This paper draws from an analysis of video blogs and/or interviews with 17 video bloggers. The project is ongoing, and I encourage video bloggers to contact me if they wish to participate.

Many video bloggers find tremendous value in sharing intimate moments with the world to gain greater insight about themselves and others, and about social interaction. But as Behar pointed out years ago, exposing oneself through writing and art constitutes a kind of vulnerability.[3] Whereas analytic writing that does not involve self-disclosure is merely boring if it fails, she argues that "when an author has made herself or himself vulnerable, the stakes are higher: a boring self-revelation, one that fails to move the reader, is more than embarrassing; it is humiliating."[4] Yet it is precisely in taking this kind of risk that a space is opened for others to relate to the video blogger's concerns about self-image, about how others treat her, and about how social change may occur.

Vulnerability takes many different forms for video bloggers. Circulating personal information to a vast Internet audience creates risks that range from humiliation to emotional and physical harm. For instance, early in one interview, a woman told me that she had a stalker. I was shocked and concerned, and I was at a loss for how to respond. As I review the transcript, I am disappointed that my response was to talk about the risks of being public. But I felt that the way I expressed my initial "shock" was perhaps naïve, given that these problems can and do occur among people with highly public profiles on the Internet. My response was not meant to judge women who expose their personal lives on the Internet; rather, it reflected my social discomfort at having been told something deeply troubling about the life of someone I did not know well.

Interviewee: Yeah, I'm getting stalked right now for sure.

Patricia: Oh really?

Interviewee: Oh yeah.

Patricia: [shocked] Oh my God.

Interviewee: In a bad way.

Patricia: How do you know?

Interviewee: This creep keeps leaving comments on [my blog]. It's been happening since [last year]. Like really, really nasty comments.

Patricia: Really nasty?

Interviewee: Mm hmm.

Patricia: Like threatening?

Interviewee: Well he isn't directly threatening, but he says like you should kill yourself. I posted something about getting a [sports car] and he's like oh, I'd buy that [sports car] for you just to see your face smash into your windshield. I'm like yeah.

Patricia: Oh my God. Well I guess you kind of knew the risks about, like—

Interviewee: I'm super public. I mean it's bound to happen.

Patricia: But still when it actually happens, that must be very different—

Interviewee: It sucks.

Later, she went on to say that her presence on the Internet had brought her so many benefits, including many positive connections with other people, that she did not have any intention of scaling back the publicness of her online and offline experiences and interactions. After her disclosure, I was curious whether this problem had changed her attitude toward video blogging or prompted her to reconsider being so public online. We talked frankly about how more people, including many academics, are choosing or are being asked to have a more visible Internet presence. In the midst of concern about teenagers disclosing too much about themselves on their MySpace pages, it is also true that many adults are encouraged or required to have their workplace address and contact information prominently displayed on a Web page. We discussed how public participation and related self-disclosures are increasing on the Internet.

Patricia: People put personal information [on the Internet] all the time.

Interviewee: Yeah they do. And that's not going to stop. That's definitely not going to stop.

Patricia: Can it stop really?

Interviewee: Yeah, I don't know. I mean I've gotten so many positive contacts from being on the Internet. I mean my whole social life is online. I mean obviously I go out and have fun, [but] most of the people I know, I know on the Internet. And like that's been really valuable for me. I work on the Internet. You know what I mean?

It's important for me to be open and social online. And I've gotten so much benefit from that that one annoying person leaving ridiculous comments that don't make any sense on my blog . . . it's like yeah, it's frustrating. But as long as it's not dangerous, whatever.

Although video bloggers are aware of the risks, they often continue to share personal insights and intimacies that can promote social change in a variety of ways. In writing about how certain women video bloggers communicate vulnerably to promote social change, there is a risk that this paper will be misinterpreted. People may accuse me of arguing that women can promote social change exclusively or most effectively through intimacy, or that women are better suited than men to promote social change in intimate ways. Some may accuse of me suggesting that women, more than men, are predisposed to intimate types of video blogging. In fact, I have seen plenty of male video bloggers expose personal moments that people can relate to on their blogs. Jay Dedman, for instance, posted a haunting video on his blog in which he admits eating McDonald's food and revealing, through images and words, his guilt.[5] The supportive comments he received illustrate how Jay became vulnerable and, through that vulnerability, made a connection with others who had similar feelings about what they eat. As a pioneer in the video blogging community, he has firsthand experience of the problems associated with posting intimacies. He explained how one video site called MyHeavy appropriated images of his fiancée's engagement ring (without permission or attribution) online, complete with advertising. As he put it, "so here they have grabbed my video of Ryanne and I buying our engagement ring. Now I got ads all over it. Great. This personal moment from my life has now become my worst nightmare (see video)[6] thanks to MyHeavy. . .. without my permission."[7] Video bloggers in general face the risk that their material will be used in unintended and undesirable ways, without their permission or consent.

As for the misconception that women only use intimacy or that they are more successful when using intimacy to promote social change, I direct the reader to the vast body of overt political work contained in these and other women's video blogs. These blogs contain an overwhelming number of videos, links, and information intended to raise awareness and provide concrete action plans to address a variety of social causes, including poverty, human rights, AIDS, Net neutrality, copyright issues, sustainability, global Internet access, and a host of other public activist projects, both online and off. Roxanne Darling of Beach Walks with Rox, for instance, posted a video in which she joins other protestors to go to Senator Daniel Inouye's office in Hawaii to present him with a petition supporting Net neutrality, a movement concerned with ensuring that certain corporations do not obtain preferential rights to access the Internet in ways that degrade or compromise others' access.[8] The video is an excellent example of overt political action in which a woman publicly takes a stance both within her community and over the Internet on a crucial political issue.

Zadi Diaz, another high-profile pioneer in the video blogging community, promotes numerous causes on the many different video blogs she maintains. For example, in her blog karmagrrrl, she provides links to video bloggers around the world and promotes the work of people in underrepresented countries.[9] She provides links to such organizations as Amnesty International, Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch, One World, and Tolerance. Zadi is publicly involved in debates about new media, copyright issues, and the globalization of information technology. Through the JETSET video blog show that she produces with her husband, Steve Woolf, she connects with teens and kids, promotes their work, and talks about issues important to them.[10] Micki Krimmel of Mickipedia works for Revver, a video sharing site that, in contrast to similar sites, is dedicated to sharing revenues with video makers. Micki has led efforts to build online activist communities and has made a cameo appearance in Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth. She is a regular contributor to a site called Worldchanging.com, where she writes about the democratization of media making.[11]

I admire these and other women video bloggers' efforts to raise awareness and promote social change in overt ways on the Internet. An entire book could easily be written analyzing the different ways women video bloggers are contributing to social change. In this paper, however, I would like to talk about specific videos and choices that promote social change in a different way. For me, the material I discuss below prompts a reconsideration of certain beliefs in a way that, for some reason, seeing a banner across someone's blog saying "Make Poverty History.org" does not. I'd like to explore how these video bloggers create social change through more personal and vulnerable types of engagements with unknown members of one's audience.

"Go deeper to see clearly"

In Beach Walk #211, "Go deeper to see clearly," which was first posted on September 21, 2006, Roxanne Darling takes on the issue of blonds, bimbos, and bikinis and challenges her viewers to rewrite the semiotics of what an intelligent, technologically sophisticated woman should be allowed to look like.[12] Using a pre-recorded voice message from a viewer, Rox enacts taking a "caller" on her show and responding to his concerns. After expressing his admiration for her show and her perspective, "Philip from L.A." says, "I wanted to ask that you [probably] do a show or segment on balancing your credibility. I was giving my son the talk the other day and I mentioned that you walk around in a bathing suit on TV, on the Internet, and yet your perspective and your insight shine through and you're not perceived as a bimbo or something else. There [are] so many others that can't be seen through with their exterior appearance."

Although we cannot know what Philip means by giving his son "the talk," one common interpretation is that he is indoctrinating his son about how to interact with women. He uses Rox's show as an example of how a woman can wear certain clothes (such as a bathing suit) and also have important ideas and insights to share. Rox's intimate moment of walking on the beach becomes a talking point for a man to introduce his son to certain healthy attitudes about respecting women. As Rox explains in this video, wearing a bathing suit is part of this particular intimate moment in her life. The whole idea behind Beach Walks is that, given her busy schedule running a Web design business with her partner, the only time to do her video blog is on her way to her morning swim. Normally, she wears a bikini for her swim. She juxtaposes what some people perceive as a sexualized stereotype, a blond woman in a bikini, with sharing her insights about self-improvement and solving problems. It is this juxtaposition that provides resources for changing attitudes about women to other people, including younger generations of men.

Despite the prediction that the importance of place would be greatly minimized on the Internet, Rox's experiences demonstrate that place still matters quite a bit in terms of cultural expectations and behavior. During our interview, Rox mentioned that in Hawaii it is quite normal for people to walk around in beachwear, and at one time or another you will see "pretty much everyone you know," including your banker and the people you go to church with, in their bathing suits. In the video she notes that this practice removes the sexual "charge" of seeing her in her bathing suit. She deliberately wanted to challenge people's prejudices and assumptions about how someone's looks correlate with their intelligence. Some feminists may be concerned to see Rox wearing a bathing suit and discussing serious issues. I share those concerns in some ways. However, people who would dismiss Rox's decision to wear a bikini on her video blog risk hard-coding a semiotic association in which a woman in a bikini must inevitably be dismissed, sexualized, and judged by her exterior. Butler makes a similar argument with regard to hate speech. Formalizing a rejection of certain forms of speech, she maintains, would prevent words and symbols with unfortunate meanings and connotations to be re-used or repositioned in ways that could diminish or negate their hurtful impact.[13] Similarly, wearing a bathing suit while rewriting the semiotic stereotype of what a woman in a bathing suit should be like invites viewers to rethink their prejudices.

It is deeply disappointing to me that our society is still grappling with these prejudices. I am thus grateful for the way Rox's video visually disrupts unfortunate assumptions about women. As a result of her video, she has received an outpouring of emails from women who are happy that she appears in a bikini being "normal" rather than striking up "tart poses" that call up a very different "energy." According to Rox, many of her female viewers thanked her for "wearing a bikini and not being all cutesy and giggly and . . . allowing it to be just a normal part of life."

Rox: So, in my world, you know, I like wearing a bikini. I'm going to be a hundred years old and I'm going to be wearing a bikini. You're not gonna get me out of it, I don't think, you know, because swimming in the ocean, I like to be wearing as little as possible. It's just a more sensuous, comfortable experience and you see that all the time here, you know, people of every age wearing a bikini, people of every body type wearing a bikini . . .

. . . It's basically about reclaiming the bikini from the stereotypical. . . all those men's jokes about women and their bodies that, you know, you shouldn't be allowed on the beach with that kind of a body and I'm, you know, "No, you have no right to say that. I have as much right to be here as anyone, you know, regardless of what I look like." So, you know, there's definitely some of that stuff that I'm trying to take on.

It is precisely through Rox's sharing an intimate moment in her life—a walk on her way to a routine, morning swim—that she is able to challenge viewers' prejudices about women who appear publicly in beach wear. Rox has received incredible feedback from her viewers who do not read her show in a sexualized way. She receives emails from people who are ill with serious diseases and other problems and find comfort in her inspirations. With a background in conflict resolution and in helping others deal with problems such as alcohol abuse, Rox makes herself available through private exchanges to connect with other people.

In some ways, Rox's show is not without risk. She knows that her clients watch her show. She considers how they might perceive her and how that might affect her business. In one case, a client watched one of her shows in which she discussed a problem at work. As a result, Rox and her client ended up resolving the problem they had had. Rox's experiences and her decision to be vulnerable to her audience have brought tremendous benefits to her life and those of her viewers.

On December 18, 2006, Zadi Diaz posted an entry on her video blog about a teen on MySpace who was talking about suicide. She asked her viewers and fellow video bloggers what she should do about it. She said in her comments for that day that she didn't even know if the suicide talk was serious. One comment she received urged her to find out more and see if the kid's family could be contacted. Another poster also expressed concern and raised the issue about whether or not the incident was real. Zadi contacted a fellow blogger named Rick Rey who scanned the teen's MySpace page and found a way to contact the teen's school.[14]

After the incident, Zadi received many supportive comments on a mailing list where many video bloggers regularly post. She continued the conversation by making concrete proposals for dealing with this kind of situation, which most people understand is likely to occur again in the future somewhere on the Internet. She points out that offline, one can call a 911 service for help and she tries to develop ideas for obtaining timely help online. She proposes a protocol to deal with similar problems in the future.

— Social Network Suicide Protocol

1. Contact the person in trouble directly. Find out if there is a direct way to reach them.

2. Contact the list of friends (i.e. top 8)

3. Scan the page for any information that can lead to direct rescue: school, company, etc.

4. Contact the site officials

From: http://zadidiaz.com/blog/2006
/12/in_case_of_suicide_note_break.html# comments

Zadi chose to publicize an intimate moment and a very personal choice about whether or not to intervene. When Zadi saw the MySpace teen's comments, it was a private moment that she could have ignored and no one would have known. But she asked others in the blogging community for advice and support. Such a choice is not trivial, given the variety of self-presentation opportunities on the Internet. Hoaxes have and will continue to occur, and in each instance of a suicide attempt, a witness must decide whether or not to intervene and must look for clues to assess the situation.

In her dissertation on the "camgirl" genre, in which women regularly transmit images of themselves from their home on the Internet, Senft relates a similar event.[15] A camgirl named Karen had a bipolar disorder, and her suicide attempt was captured in the Web cam images she transmitted over the Internet. While other people witnessing the event wrote to Karen online and provided text-based "hugs" of support for her, Senft, who lived near Karen, physically went to her address to investigate the situation. Senft describes the feelings of anxiety and irritation that we all might have in trying to intervene in a crisis involving someone we do not know well. For me, such an event brings up many kinds of feelings and questions, such as, Is this the right thing to do? Should I take time to do this? Am I being duped? If I cry wolf too many times, will anyone believe me in a real crisis? What might happen if I do nothing at all? Senft argues that overwhelming emphasis on and unquestioning preoccupation with the "virtual" aspects of Internet interaction stems from a quest for authenticity that ultimately creates inertia and prevents human compassion in everyday online life. She writes, "As a means to resist this trend, I suggest tele-ethicality: a decision to risk engagement in social contracts with people who may or may not be true, or even real, over one's networks. I believe tele-ethicality not only aids action in mediated environments, but helps understand us better the ways in which we virtualize others in our offline lives."[16]

Knowing that the MySpace incident might not have been real, Zadi and Rick risked acting, and through their actions they were able to help the teen. Further, the incident prompted additional efforts on Zadi's part to find mechanisms to deal with these problems in standardized, public ways. An intimate choice became the touchstone for larger proposals to create public mechanisms of assistance for teens in trouble. It is worth noting that amid concern about the inappropriate release of information on the Internet, it was public information that enabled Zadi and Rick to help. Sharing this personal choice prompts a reconsideration in Zadi's viewers about how to handle similar incidents should they occur. As Senft suggests, it also prompts viewers to wonder how we all "virtualize" people in "offline lives" in ways that promote a similar kind of social indifference and inertia in the face of pain.

"Atheism is not sad"

Micki Krimmel works as the director of community for a video sharing site called Revver. Her job is to manage the customer support team and advocate the interests of Internet-creators to Revver. I have seen her in person at several video blogging events in Los Angeles. From my observations at these events, she appears to be bubbly, extroverted, the life of the party, and rather intimidating for a somewhat shy anthropologist. I thought about approaching her for an interview, but I wasn't quite sure how to go about it. In some ways, I hadn't realized I had felt shy toward her until I saw some of her more intimate postings on her blog.

I was intrigued when I noticed videos of hers that presented a very different, quieter persona. I began to realize that through her more intimate postings, I was warming up to her work and to her ideas in a new way. In navigating her blog, I immediately noticed a link to a video with the fascinating title "Atheism is not sad," which was posted on November 29, 2006, 11:04 p.m.[17] For me the video presented a persona that contrasted dramatically to the Micki I had seen in public venues. Obviously, we all have different parts of our selves that emerge for different purposes at different times. But I was stunned to see her in the atheism video in a soft pale blue shirt, wearing little or no make-up, talking directly to the camera in what felt to me to be an intimate setting that resembled a living room. In this late-night recording of her thoughts, she speaks with a low-key self-presentation, introducing the video by saying that it was prompted by a discussion with a coworker for whom she had a lot of "respect" and "love." He had read a blog posting of hers on atheism and it made him "really sad." He said he would buy her The Tao of Ching for Christmas. She found his sadness disrespectful and she wanted to talk about how her atheism is not sad, but rather beautiful, because her worldview is complete and does not require additional explanation. It is based on fact and does not prompt doubtful questions about the existence of higher beings.

I am not an atheist, but what struck me about the video was that it led to a reconsideration of my behavior and attitudes toward atheists. I will say that I have had atheists proselytize much harder at me than I think I have ever done to my atheist friends. Nevertheless, I began to wonder if I had ever told an atheist friend that I was "sad" for them. I wondered if it is okay to feel "sad," if that is an honest emotion. If so, is it better to be honest about feeling sad or to withhold sharing that emotion to avoid being disrespectful? A number of other questions emerged, such as, How does being "sad" play out in larger, political ways? How does being "sad" for atheists create a situation that minimizes their ability to express their views in public? Are there issues in the news, for instance, that I am less supportive of on atheists' behalf because of a deep-seated, unarticulated sadness or feeling that they lack something? Do I feel that encouraging diversity will complicate my own preferences for religious expression?

In the comment section, Micki says that it is important to keep up the "momentum" on issues of atheism. In a US political climate in which religion has taken on so much prominence, it is entirely understandable that folks who are atheist would wish to create a space in which it is possible for political candidates who are atheist to be more public with their beliefs. People who are atheist and agnostic left comments on Micki's blog and on other Web sites thanking her for making the video. They were grateful that it expressed views they had held for a long time. Not all of the comments she received on her blog agreed with her position, but she expressed gratitude that people used the video blog to explore these issues in a frank and public manner. For me, the quiet, intimate, yet public exploration of feelings about atheism set in motion by a private conversation with a coworker prompted a reconsideration of how personal views may transform into political questions such as, How do internal attitudes translate into political choices that affect diversity? It also galvanized other atheists and agnostics to bring issues of atheism more openly into public discourse.

Anyway, thanks to all of you for leaving comments. I hope the discussion continues. And I'm super happy that this discussion is happening so much right now on the web and in our culture. Even if we can't agree, it can't be bad to talk about it. —Micki Krimmel

From: http://www.mickipedia.com/?p=616

Conclusion

As these women's experiences show, it is precisely through sharing intimate moments and personal choices that greater public discourse is promoted in the minds of viewers, in the attitudes of video bloggers themselves, and publicly through the circulation of issues raised in the videos and on blogs. The sharing of these intimate moments is not self-indulgent, solipsistic obsession. Rather, it provides a means to connect with others and raise awareness in ways that are less overt than acts such as public marches but are nevertheless quite important. Video bloggers acknowledge that the video image, rather than text alone, promotes a key connection. As one video blogger observed, even though she had been writing about personal issues for years, it was video that stimulated her audience to listen to her opinions and reconsider their own views.

Michelle: [I] mean people just connect more emotionally with somebody's face than maybe with text, [that's] the simplistic version of it. And I noticed that when I started doing the video blogs because I had been writing about personal stuff for years.

But as soon as I started doing video blogs, people were like [wow]. It kind of surprised me because I thought who wants to see me sitting around talking about my feelings? But they do. I don't know why, but they do.

Originally, the feminist motto "the personal is political" was an attempt to bring into the public discourse problems that had been "hidden in the private realm such as sexual violence, abortion, and sexual orientation."[18] It served as "a way to convey to women who were suffering in silence that their individual experiences were, in fact, instances of widespread sexism."[19] Some feminists have criticized this motto, arguing that it invites unwanted public intervention into women's private lives. Equating notions of "publics" with "government," some feminists argue that such a position invites the public to adjudicate women's personal matters in sexist ways. In this sense, reclaiming a "right to privacy" functions to shield women from inappropriate, sexist coercion. Gallagher traces how public discourse can be replaced by salacious interest in private affairs, as evidenced by the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. She argues that mass media promotes these dynamics and concludes that, "since the development of mass communications, especially in the form of television, has personalized the content of political discourse, the notion that citizens could meet in a public forum to solve their common problems has become increasingly difficult to sustain."[18]

In a more optimistic light, Williams argues that feminists who conflate the idea of the "political" with "government intervention and coercion" create an impoverished view about what the personal-as-political framework can achieve. As she states, "power can be politicized without authorizing government to publicize the details of intimate life or even involving government in private decisions at all."[19] Although I share concerns about inappropriate government intervention, I also agree with Williams that "the political" should not be equated with government action upon people. The political can mean, as it does for many video bloggers, ideas and solutions circulated in discourse that emerge from intimate actions and thoughts. These shared intimacies may translate into larger spheres of social action and political participation. Part of the problem in either attacking or supporting notions about the personal as political is that the distinction between the public and the private is blurring in certain ways. As more people carry around cameras and mediate their everyday experiences, private moments posted on the Internet enter the public record, with images archived in searchable, reproducible ways.

Admittedly, the circulation of one's private moments and choices is not without a number of serious risks, which I do not wish to make light of. Nor do I wish to advocate that each of us share our intimacies on the Net. That is a highly personal decision which, as stated above, contains numerous risks. I am merely observing that the experience of a number of video bloggers shows that by being vulnerable and sharing intimate moments and choices, it is possible to promote increased public discourse about formerly uncomfortable, distasteful, or difficult topics in ways that other media and other methods have not. Video blogging about one's own life is far from an insular practice. For many, sharing intimacies is socially transformative because the vibrant discussions and responses they prompt demonstrate that vital issues on video bloggers' minds are also important to others.

Endnotes

1. For an introduction to diary blogging, see B. Nardi, "'I'm Blogging This' A Closer Look at Why People Blog," http://www.ics.uci.edu/
~jpd/classes/ics234cw04/nardi.pdf. [Return to text]

2. For a description of the project, see Digital Youth Research: Kids Informal Learning with Digital Media, http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/. [Return to text]

3. R. Behar, The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996). [Return to text]

4. R. Behar, The Vulnerable Observer, 13. [Return to text]

5. J. Dedman, "VIDEO: An Eating Experience," http://www.momentshowing.net/
momentshowing/2006/05/video_an_eating.html. [Return to text]

6. J. Dedman, "VIDEO: A Videoblog circa 2006," http://www.momentshowing.net/
momentshowing/2005/03/video_a_videobl.html. [Return to text]

7. J. Dedman, "MyHeavy is a Splog," http://www.momentshowing.net/
momentshowing/2007/01/myheavy_is_a_sp.html. [Return to text]

8. R. Darling, "Beach Walk #190 - Net Neutrality Hawaii Style," http://www.beachwalks.tv/2006/08/31/
beach-walk-190-net-neutrality-hawaii-style/. [Return to text]

9. http://karmagrrrl.org/. [Return to text]

10. http://jetsetshow.com/. [Return to text]

11. Throughout the paper, I use first names to refer to the video bloggers and last names to refer to academic work. I cannot account for why this is so. I tried changing the video bloggers names to their last names when referring to them, but frankly this sounded artificial and looked odd on the page, especially when the comments on their blogs from viewers refer to them by first name. I also tried referring to the academics by their first names, but this too went against the grain of my training as an academic referring to other academics. This asymmetrical use of naming implies no judgment about the seriousness of the video bloggers' work. [Return to text]

12. R. Darling, "Beach Walk #211 - Go deeper to see clearly," http://www.beachwalks.tv/2006/09/21/
beach-walk-211-go-deeper-to-see-clearly/. [Return to text]

13. J. Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, (New York and London: Routledge, 1997). [Return to text]

14. Zadi's MySpace teen's suicide attempt postings: http://zadidiaz.com/blog/2006/12/
theres_a_kid_on_myspace_about.html; http://zadidiaz.com/blog/2006/12/
in_case_of_suicide_note_break.html; http://zadidiaz.com/blog/2006/12/
myspace_in_case_of_emergency_c.html. [Return to text]

15. T. Senft, "Tele-ethicality," http://www.terrisenft.net/diss/synopsis.php. [Return to text]

16. T. Senft, Web Celebrity and the Personal as Political in the Age of the Global Brand, (Peter Lang, forthcoming). [Return to text]

17. M. Krimmel, "Atheism is not sad," http://www.mickipedia.com/?p=616. [Return to text]

18. S. Gallagher, "The Personal Is Political. Now What? Privacy, Publicity, and Gender in American Politics," http://faculty.uml.edu/
sgallagher/personalispolitical.htm. [Return to text]

19. J. Williams, "The Personal is Political: Thinking Through the Clinton/Lewinsky/Starr Affair," http://faculty.uml.edu/
sgallagher/Williams.htm. [Return to text]