Well the fact the viewing the videos are free, anyone can have access to it, even small children. well all the contents varies from any genre you want to find. There are millions of videos to choose from. from the educational to violent and seditious videos. so is YouTube good or bad?
According to Kress & van Leeuwen (1998) readers interpret texts and images depending on their social and cultural background. For, example parents from a Western background might allow the kids to watch all these sexy scenes, because their culture is like that. On the other hand, for cultures like Chinese, Indian and Muslim which are more conservative, they would be shock to see that their children exposed to these sexy scenes.
Well some people used YouTube as an entertainment tool, some use it to make themselves famous by doing weird stuffs. Some got famous, some got violent. In YouTube, there are a lot of explicit videos that can be viewed. It is so easy to upload the video, and in minutes, thousands of people would have viewed the video. Just imagine the video was about someone famous having an affair with the janitor.
There are a few cases where people make fun of politicians via YouTube. In the local arena, a guy sang our national anthem while modifying some lyrics to tell what he feels about his country which is so true. All the videos can be detrimental to someone's life or image.
The guy who got "sang" the national anthem
So once again the it all boils down to the users responsibility and maturity. So parents be careful when you let your child wonder around the internet. Because you never know, he might see someone 'Tubeless'.References:
Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 1998, ‘Chapter 7: Front pages: (the critical) analysis of newspaper layout’, in Bell, A & Garret, P (eds) 1998, Approaches to media discourse, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 186-219.
YouTube.com, 2007, 'Negaraku', viewed 4 November 2007;[internet], http://youtube.com/watch?v=tF7fbQdBoYw
YouTube.com, 2007, 'Sexy Scenes', viewed 4 November 2007;[internet], http://youtube.com/watch?v=tF7fbQdBoY/sexy