[Air-L] Just Out: Videoblogging Before YouTube by Trine Bjørkmann Berry

[Geert Lovink]

Dear AoIR members,

the Institute of Network Cultures is proud to present Videoblogging Before YouTube by Trine Bjørkmann Berry, Theory on Demand #27. The book is available in pdf, epub, and print-on-demand here: 

http://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/tod-27-videoblogging-before-youtube/ <http://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/tod-27-videoblogging-before-youtube/>
An important hallmark in the research into online video, Videoblogging Before YouTube offers a cultural history of online video, focusing on the critical moment when the internet moved from being a mostly textual medium to a truly multimedia one. Through a close analysis of the early videoblogging community and their creative practices, Trine Bjørkmann Berry argues that early in the new millennium a new cultural-technical media hybrid emerged. which created innovative media forms that have been highly influential on YouTube and other audio-visual media forms such as film and television. Through an ethnographically-informed approach to the cultural history of the videoblogging community, the book examines their practices, which were mostly small-scale, self-funded and bottom-up, and truly experimental. The aesthetic, technical form and content of short-form digital film was an important predecessor to, and anticipator of, our current media ecology.

"A compellingly written and highly original study of the practices of the early-adopter video blogging community. This essential study will change the ways in which we think about past, present and future online creative communities and digital platforms.” Catherine Grant, Birkbeck, University of London


"A rich and illuminating narrative of the communities, aesthetics and technologies of videoblogging before YouTube. At a moment when the digital media imagination seems to have been captured by corporate behemoths, we need more stories like this.” Jean Burgess, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

Trine Bjørkmann Berry is a writer and academic whose research is at the intersection of film theory, digital media and digital vernaculars, with particular emphasis on video and the internet. Bjørkmann Berry is a visiting researcher at the University of Sussex. She publishes on online video, digital culture and aesthetics. Her new research examines the history and practices of the video essay.

Cover design: Katja van Stiphout. Design: Rosie Underwood. EPUB development: Rosie Underwood. Print on Demand. Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2018. ISBN: 978-94-92302-22-9.

Published under a Creative Commons license; download your free copy here or order a print edition via Lulu: http://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/tod-27-videoblogging-before-youtube/ <http://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/tod-27-videoblogging-before-youtube/>.