by Nathaniel S.
YouTube is a video sharing platform which allows for people to upload nearly anything they wish. Various genres of content have emerged, whether it be beauty or gaming as well as education channels, which tend to be niche and smaller overall. I decided to combine a few of these communities; education and drag, in attempt to make unique content and appeal to people who frequent both genres. Using YouTube allows for the equalization of access to archaeological information as well as providing a more direct way of engagement by the public.
A major source of inspiration for this project was the channel ContraPoints, created by Natalie Wynn, in which she films videos about politics using drag characters and short sketches to grab attention. Drag is also something I enjoy and find eye catching and it seems to be having a moment within pop culture. The YouTube platform is free to upload to, easily accessible for people and is well known. The target audience was people in their late teens and early twenties and the goal of this project was to give a brief introduction of archaeology in a lighthearted way. Many of the videos on YouTube with an archaeology focus are filmed as if a professor has recorded a lecture over a slide show and are monotoned. I hoped to provide a different experience and be eye catching enough to encourage viewership. A major goal was to stress that paleontology is not a part of archaeology, which I hoped to accomplish by giving examples of what someone from each discipline might seek to answer.
Though many archaeology videos are difficult to watch, there are successful examples of public archaeology projects online. The Brain Scoop, hosted by Emily Graslie, has a view and subscriber count of 2.5 million and 45,000, is primarily focused on natural history and museum work, but in an episode called ‘Mummy Brains’ focuses on mortuary practices of Egypt (Williams and Atkins 2015). The Eliseg Project of England also utilized YouTube to post daily vlogs from 2011 to 2012. Its main goal was to bring the rural site of study into a public view (Williams and Atkins 2015). Though the Eliseg project did not have as great of success as The Brain Scoop, there is an audience present on YouTube for archaeological content.
College level professors who utilize YouTube say they do so because of the wealth of information available, visual examples and free cost (Burk et al. 2009). Most students say they primarily use YouTube for entertainment purposes, but those who do use it for school like it because it is quicker and easier to use than textbooks (Hrastinski and Aghaee 2011).
This project relied on little outside research, though four websites, which I believed had trustworthy reputations, such as PBS and the Smithsonian, were used so that the public would have easy access to them. Two scholarly sources were also utilized which I had prior access to. The links to the websites used were provided in the description for those who were interested in reading such sources themselves as well as the links to four other YouTube which make content directly related to archaeology along with a link to a channel run by an archaeology student. These were intended to make it easier for people who were interested in watching further archaeological content and to give a more direct idea of what some archaeologists do with their work. A series of brief questions were also added in the description to gage the audiences’ prior knowledge, assumptions and interests about archaeology. The video was filmed and edited using the imovie application on an iMac before being uploaded to YouTube. Wig tutorials by Jaymes Mansfield were followed and makeup was loosely based on that of Trixie Mattel. There is no limit of time which this video will remain online, allowing it to be viewed anytime, though December 2nd marks the second day of the video being online.
The video was 15 minutes long and has received 58 views, ten likes and 11 comments, which were the primary means of assessment. YouTube provides a more detailed analytic page, YouTube studio, which is accessible to everyone who posts on the website. Most views were from friends who were told about the video who watched for support. YouTube studio showed that the average watch time is two minutes and thirty seconds, which is up from the minute and a half from two days after its posting. This was most shocking, as I assumed most friends who were told about it would finish it out of politeness. In terms of views, there were 39 individual viewers, meaning that 19 people were repeat viewers. Of the comments, 5 out of 11 were from a single family member and the remaining were from friends offering their support. One person filled out the survey in the description, but this was a person I have discussed archaeology with at length, so her answers did not give particular insight about the general public. Engagement was small as a whole. Aside from many people not watching more of the video, the rest of the engagement levels were not extremely surprising.
In terms of viewership, there were more than expected, but based on view time, most of the viewers watched very little. The amount of comments were similar to what I expected, with few overall and none answering the survey questions in the description. It seems that many people clicked on the video, clicked off and said they watched to be supportive. No one said if they learned any new information, but a few, over personal messages as opposed to commenting, said that it was funny or more interesting than their regular classes, though seeing as they likely didn’t watch the entire video, this is not extremely useful. I would be interested in making more videos to see if they would have better viewership. The greatest change would be the shortening the length, as to discourage people from clicking off as well as making videos focused on specific topics, such as making a video dedicated to explaining the pyramids as opposed to a small section of the larger video.
Here’s the link to the video. I hope you enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuUb5EpI96H3MN9Ed1xvbLg
Acknowledgements
Rachel Shelly, Megan Walsh, Hannah Puckett, Emma Warner, Jaymes Mansfield, Natalie Wynn
References Cited for Blog
Burke, Sloane C., Shonna Snyder, Robin C. Rager
2009 An Assessment of Faculty Usage of YouTube as Teaching Resource. The Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practice. 7:1-8
Hrastinski, Stephan and Aghaee, Naghmah C.
2011 How are campus students using social media to support their studies? An explorative interview study. Educ Inf Technol. 17:451-464.
Williams, H. and Atkin, A.
2015 Virtually Dead: Digital Public Mortuary Archaeology, Internet Archaeology 40.
References Cited for the Video
Asch, Nancy B., Richard I. Ford and David L. Asch 1972 Paleobotany of the Koster Site: The Archaic Horizons. Illinois State Museum, Report of Investigation, No. 24. Springfield.
Erickson, Amanda 2011 Outreach and Education in Archaeology. Online Journal in Public Archaeology. 1:45-54
Fletcher, Kenneth R. 2008 Road to Repatriation. Electronic Source, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-road-to-repatriation-98420522/, accessed November 29, 2019.
Hekkenberg, Ans 2014 Ancient Egyptians transported pyramid stones over wet sand. Electronic document, https://phys.org/news/2014-04-ancient-egyptians-pyramid-stones-sand.html, accessed Nov 29, 2019.
Mark, Joshua J. 2016 Imhotep. Electronic document, https://www.ancient.eu/imhotep/, accessed November 29, 2019.
Nova 1997 Who Built the Pyramids? Electronic document, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/who-built-the-pyramids/, accessed November 29, 2019.
SIUE Public Archaeology 