The Viral Clip About Racist Rant on Asians in the Library - Case Study Example

Analysis of the viral clip about a UCLA making racist rant on Asians in the Library Introduction The current modern life is characterised by sharing online content, and the transmission of You Tube videos, newspaper articles, and stories found online should not be a surprise; social transmission has become the norm of the day. There are, however, some online contents that become more viral than others. Some newspaper articles get tags such as most e-mailed in their websites while some remain unshared. Some video contents get viewed by millions of people within hours after its posting while others get a handful of viewers over a long period (Berger & Milkman, 2011). Virality is the process of social information distribution where many people get exposed to specific information over a short period. The specific information spreads through various social networks resulting in a quick increased rate of the number of people viewing the message (Nahon & Hemsley, 2013). From the observation about online contents, of some having so many viewers and readers within a short time, and some having none or just a few, it has been established that there are certain characteristics that make some online contents go viral. Such is the case with the video that will be analysed in this paper. The aim of this paper is to analyse a video posted by a student ranting about Asians in the library. The video is just a personal expression about some people from the Asian community, but has some features that angered the Asian community that made it go viral. Additional features that facilitated its spread are its run time, and title. The video has a short title and a short run-time, making it easy for people to view and share. Long videos discourage viewers while short videos are not perceived as time consuming. There are other features described that made the video go viral. Although it was not intended to go viral, the videos features, similar to other viral contents, made it go viral. Asians in the Library by Alexandra Wallace The video clip was made and posted by Alexandra Wallace who at the time, was expressing her anger about some Asian student’s behaviour. Alexandra was not happy about some Asian students receiving and making calls in the library because it distracted her. Based on what she posted, it seems this behaviour and others she talked about, made her very angry and decided to post her thoughts online. This never went well. She received a lot of insults and negative comments about her post, some of which extended to her family and personal life. The video went viral just hours after it was posted. This particular one received 2,148,440 views, 40,895 dislikes, and 4,460 likes. Alexandra Wallace began by saying, “So we know that I’m not the most politically correct person so don’t take this offensively. I don’t mean it toward any of my friends I mean it toward random people that I don’t even know in the library. So, you guys are not the problem” (You Tube, 2011). This shows that she may not have intended to be racist as it was claimed, but may have been angry and was trying to send a message to some people whom she believed were a nuisance. Some of her comments about Asian students, however, indicate that she may not have liked Asians. This video is a good example for analysis to explain the common features of a viral video. There are researchers who have established common features of a video that make it viral. These will provide a framework for analysing this video. Response to the Video from YouTube users and The University Administration Reports from other sources indicate that this video was shared among so many people within hours after it was posted. There were more than two million views of just this one video, but there were several other versions and posts of the video in other sites, as well as in YouTube. So many people were angry at Wallace. So many people insulted her, asked what she was doing in school, questioned her political science career, and related her manner of thinking to her being blond. Some Americans even commented that the video made them ashamed of being Americans. Wallace had said that her mother taught her good manners, and this formed one of the main areas of comparison to her behaviour. People criticized her behaviour terming it ironical to what she was advocating for. Some commented on her way of dressing, also terming it mannerless. From about 200 comments, only two were positive and agreed with what she was saying. The rest were insults and criticisms. There were more than two hundred comments on this one video, with several others hidden, only accessible upon a person’s request (YouTube, 2011). Apart from the comments beneath the video, several shares were made of this video and several articles critiquing the student written. Hu (2011) is one of such articles criticizing Wallace for her actions. It is a critical analysis of the video, but only pointing out the negative effects it has had on the Asian community, and the wrong things Wallace did in every sentence and actions in the video. The author even described Alexandra Wallace’s personal life and included her photos in the article detailing her faults (Hu, 2011). This video shows an event that occurred in 2011, but two-three years down the line, the video is still an issue and is still shared, commented on, and referred to in cases of racist attacks. Recently, UCLA held a rally against racism and referred to Wallace’s video as one of so many racist events (Liu, 2014). The University administration, distanced itself from the details of the video, terming such an act as ‘beyond distasteful’. A university spokesman termed the video ‘repugnant’. The university administration confirmed that Alexandra Wallace was a student at UCLA, but went ahead to distance the institution from her actions. They indicated that an investigation had been initiated to determine if her words and acts violated any student codes (Mashhood & Parkinson-Morgan, 2011). This video and the events after it caught the interest of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). After UCLA administration’s announcement that it will initiate an investigation to determine if Wallace language violated any students’ code, FIRE wrote a letter to UCLA. FIRE is an organization that brings together civil liberties and rights scholars, leaders, public intellectuals, and journalists, from different ideological and political spectrum. The organization does this to ensure legal equality, freedom of association, liberty, freedom of association, due process, and religious liberty in American college campuses. In the letter, FIRE was concerned about UCLA investigating Wallace’s language, and insisted that the investigation should stop. The basis for such action was that an investigation into Wallace’s language would violate her individual freedom of speech (FIRE, 2011). This is another source of virality of the video. Since the video reached one civil rights organization, others across the globe would also be concerned. The same applies to legal institutions of the world, and various analysts. Characteristics of a Viral Video A video is considered viral if, the clip becomes wildly popular from the distribution by its users. Different researchers have come up with various reasons explaining why some videos go viral while other receive little attention. It was established that for a video to become viral, there must be an element that appeals to the popular culture at the time of release. An example is like pop music appealing to the young generation (West, 2011; McKinney & Banwart, 2011). In the case of Wallace video, there is no popular culture but one can connect her comments about Asian students’ acceptance into American universities as an issue of concern to the Asian Students in America. It has also been established that videos that go viral do not have traditional media content; they are characterised by amateurism and oddness (West, 2011). Oddness may be a feature that may have led to the Wallace video going viral, but amateurism is not a factor. The video was odd in the sense that it contained someone’s anger recorded and posted on YouTube. It is not in order to make assumptions about the behaviours of the Asians, record the complaint on video attacking the entire population, and expect nothing will happen after that. It is odd to think of making a video just complaining about something, and there is nothing unique in it that may have driven the individual to make a video. Online videos go viral because of the buzz content that they have (Phelps, 2012). An example is creating irony in the video. An African student may be complaining about some behaviour from African that he may not like, yet he is African. This does indicate that he is not free to say what he thinks, but it brings in the irony considering that an African, yet he is complaining about his people. It may seem like he has forgotten that he came from that place. The same applies to Wallace’s video. She talked of having been taught good manners by her mother, yet the video shows she has no manners at all. The fact that she approached the issue of some two Asians distracting her in the library by posting her rants on YouTube, shows how ‘ill mannered she is. She went ahead and included the whole community of Asians in her expressions. It is ironical because she does not see that there are issues that other people and the Asians may not like about her, as well. This irony could have been a factor that drove many people to share the video. Most particularly is her way of dressing. Wallace said that she was well mannered and that Asians should adopt American manners, but her way of dressing was not pleasing to very many people. Most people would say that it was ironical to speak of good manners, yet she did not show the good manners in her video. She generalised the whole Asian community as people who speak on phones in the library, and as people who let their parents and grandparents cook and do their chores for them. Her gestures and manner of speaking also did not match what she was advocating for in the video. West (2011) also indicates that the environment from which such videos are posted is also a determining factor in their virality. Videos that come from well-defined social networks are destined to become popular (Marshall, 2012). Examples of well-defined social networks are places such as a university, or schools. This perfectly explains the popularity of Wallace’s video. It was not only shared within the school, but was able to reach other networks easily because of its origin. UCLA is a State university with students, lecturers, and employees from various nations. The institution is well connected to other well linked organizations such as FIRE, other universities, and governments in the world. These show the level of connection that the institution has to families, nations, and various organizations worldwide. The large network facilitates the spread of such videos. A study also investigates the role of arousal in social transmission of information. It was established that video contents that aroused high emotions were more likely to be shared than those that evoked low emotion (Berger & Milkman, 2011). Wallace’s video contents angered so many people, and this could be the reason behind its rapid rate of share at the time. Studies have also revealed that video contents that evoke anger or anxiety are more viral (Caiazzo, Febbraio & Lisiero, 2013; Berger & Milkman, 2011; Tsvetovat & Kouznetsov, 2011; Guadagno, 2013). Reading through the comments on Wallace video, it was clear that people were angry about the contents of the video. People were angry about Wallace’s association of the phone calls made in the library to the Tsunami in Japan, her generalization of all Asians as dependent on their family members to do their daily chores, and her mimicking of the Asian language discourteously. Raeburn (2013), also indicates that emotional appeal should be the focus of content creators when they intend for the video to go viral. This describes an intentional case, but shows what matters in a video for it to go viral. The author further indicates that events that cause; laughter, bring tears, cause goose pimples, get people angry, irritate people, and surprise play a key role in the diffusion of social information. However, this is only half of the story. It is clear that high-arousal videos go viral more than those that do not arouse any emotions. Wallace’s video responses are evidence of the emotions it aroused. People were angry. Some were irritated by the way she spoke and even her mode of dressing. There are some characteristics that were found to be common in viral videos. These are; that viral videos have short titles, mostly composed of three to five words. Viral videos have short runtime. Videos are considered to have short run-time if it runs for three minutes or less. Viral videos also have musical qualities and may be focused on a minority group (West, 2011). Wallace video had a short title, a three-minute run time, and was focused on the Asian community. There were no musical qualities, but this is because of the type of information contained in the video. There are different factors that lead to video being viral. The most widespread factor is the emotional content in the video. Conclusion Wallace’s video has several characteristics that facilitated its spread. One main important facilitator was the social network of the university. The university is an institution that is well connected to various organizations, which also have large networks. Social information diffusion in such networks is easy and fast. The contents of the video are another source of its virality. Evidence shows that any social information that arouses emotions has high potential of going viral. Scientists even advise content developers to take into consideration the arousal nature of the contents they want to go viral on the internet. Wallace’s video had this important component for it to go viral. She as angry at some Asians and her emotional outburst made her say some things that affected the Asian community and other people emotionally. What affected most people were her comments about the earthquake in Japan and its relation to all Asians, and her disrespect for the Asian language. She generalized the language as; “Ching Chong Ling Long Ting Tong” (Hu, 2011; You Tube, 2011). She even demonstrated the way the Asians spoke, which was very offensive. Other characteristics that made it easier for it to go viral were its short title and its short run time. The video was titled ‘Asians in the Library’ and had a run time of three minutes only. Wallace video also went viral because of the popular culture of personal posts among the youths. It went viral because it was odd, and it had the buzz content that it had. It gave people what to talk about. There were several issues; Asians talking in the library, Asians who cannot take care of their daily chores, and they way she described them in the video, Wallaces mode of dressing, her gestures, and her blonde nature. All these gave people what to comment about and criticize. References Berger, J. and Milkman, K. L., 2011, What Makes online Content Viral? Journal of Marketing Research, Ahead of Print, 1-17. Caiazzo, D., Febbraio, A. and Lisiero, U., 2013, Viral Video: Content is king, distribution is queen. Social video advertising: discover the most advanced industry techniques to make a Youtube video go viral, Milano, Italy: Ledizioni Foundation for Individual Rights in Education Administration (FIRE), 15 March 2011, FIRE Letter to UCLA Chancellor Gene D. Block, March 15, 2011, Retrieved from: http://www.thefire.org/fire-letter-to-ucla-chancellor-gene-d-block-march-15-2011/ Guadagno, R. E., 5 April 2013, What Makes Videos Go Viral? Psychology Today. 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West, T., 2011, Going Viral: Factors That Lead Videos to Become Internet Phenomena, The Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications, 2(1): 76-84. http://www.elon.edu/docs/e-web/academics/communications/research/vol2no1/08West.pdf You Tube, 15 March 2011, UCLA Student racist rant on Asians in the Library for phoning Tsunami victims in Japan. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNuyDZevKrU&bpctr=1399440807 Read More