YouTube Nation staff visits with Dr. Gaunt's Black Girls YouTube Project

Earnest Pettie joins us for a discussion of studying and learning from YouTube. Students have been vlogging about our project on adolescent/teen black girls who twerk. 

This past summer, 18 of my students and I collected 425 mins or an 8 hour work day of impressions of black girls twerking and produced a PSA video (Time watched: 6 days or over 3000 views) which I recently remixed with music from Angel Haze. 

This fall 2014 a new team of 17 students and I have collected and coded nearly 700 video or viewable impressions of adolescent/teen black girls who broadcast while they twerk from their "privacy" of their bedrooms. In "Time Watched" this is equivalent to a 40 hour work week with over 1000 girls twerking in front of their webcam reaching an undefined networked audience of over 43 million views on YouTube.  This project examines the consequences of twerking to minor girls future digital reputation and net worth.

Here's two our our student vlogs: 
On Searching for Black Girls Twerking on YouTube:    • Video   
On BeTTy BuTT:    • Video  
Dr. Gaunt vlogs and edits:    • Dr. Gaunt's First Vlog 4800 Fall 2014: Bla...