"The most passionate cover I’ve seen": emotional information in fan-created U2 music videos

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/JD-07-2015-0086
Published date09 May 2016
Date09 May 2016
AuthorDiane Rasmussen Pennington
Subject MatterLibrary & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management
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“The most passionate cover I’ve seen”:
emotional information in fan-created U2 music videos
Introduction
Current information retrieval systems allow people to search for information by full
text, keywords, tags, and standard bibliographic metadata, but what if they want something
that makes them feel happy or that abounds with passion? Although music itself holds no
emotion, it generates emotion in people, and they actively seek it out for its emotional
qualities (Davies, 2010). If they could, people would look for music videos or other filmic
documents that meet an emotional craving, such as, “I want to watch a movie that will cheer
me up” or “I’m in the mood for a video of a happy song.”
Unfortunately, information retrieval systems, including those available on commercial
sites such as YouTube, do not support this sort of need well. In order to truly advance
information retrieval systems, it is essential to envision systems that go beyond the traditional
keyword- or subject-based query and conceptualize information “needs” in new ways. In
addition, people are not always necessarily looking to form a “query” that meets an
information “need.” They might not know exactly what they are looking for, or they might be
simply browsing what is available and interacting with whatever seems interesting
(O’Connor, 1993). On YouTube, music videos of potential interest appear on the right hand
side of the screen when a chosen video is playing. For example, upon playing the music video
for U2’s song “Beautiful Day”, YouTube suggests videos of other U2 songs, as well as songs
by similar bands such as Depeche Mode, R.E.M., and Oasis.
It is not the role of socially networked platform providers such as YouTube to provide
the metadata that is used to represent, search, or retrieve documents; instead, people who
contribute videos (“producers”) and those who view, like, dislike, and comment on videos
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(“consumers”) happily do it. In an effort to move toward a new generation of multimedia
information retrieval systems that incorporate intangible facets such as emotion, this article
explores how both producers and consumers of user-created music videos on YouTube
communicate emotional information.
Fandom and participatory culture
People who contribute to YouTube videos that pertain to their interests, whether they
are uploading videos or they are providing comments, likes, and dislikes about others’ videos,
belong to a participatory culture. In this study, participatory culture is defined as “a range of
different groups deploying media production and distribution to serve their collective
interests” (Jenkins et al., 2013, p. 2). Perhaps contrary to popular belief, participatory culture
did not come about with the rise of Web 2.0 applications. In earlier days, fans created videos
that remixed or commented on their favourite television shows; the videos were typically set
to music. While they did not have the ability to post their videos online, they shared them in
face-to-face gatherings of people with the same interest, such as at Comic-Con and Star Trek
conventions (Jenkins, 2013). With the dramatic increase in the availability of free and easy-
to-use media sharing platforms such as YouTube, a shift has taken place. The official media
distributors are still important and existent, but all people who have a webcam or a
smartphone are now able to produce and widely disseminate their own creative works that
remix or appropriate their favourite songs, videos, television shows, and other media to fan
communities that share their interest (Jenkins, 2006; Burgess and Green, 2009).
Jenkins (2013) defined a “fan” as “claiming membership in a particular subculture”
(p. xiv). His book, originally published in 1992, helped found the research area of “fan
studies”, which became a subdiscipline of media/cultural/literary studies. Fan studies
incorporates a range of enquiries within fan culture, including fans’ social interaction within
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their groups of common interest, fans’ creations such as fan fiction, how fans interact with
and discuss their authoritative creators of interest (Wilson, 1983; McKenzie, 2003), how fans
share knowledge, and how fans organize themselves for activism. The rise of social media
has empowered fans to share their cultural products and communications more easily
(Bennett, 2014). It has led to a focus on “collective creativity”, or content creation that could
not have been developed without a group (Boulaire et al., 2014, p. 113). Fans’ creations and
conversations have been called media “paratexts”, or texts surrounding and relating to the
main text (Gray, 2010).
The notion of authority as it is discussed in information science applies to fan culture.
Fan communities centre their activities and passions on the work of an authoritative creator,
such as U2, as they develop their own works and discussions. Given fans’ propensity toward
reworking their favourite authoritative pieces, it is worthwhile considering why and how they
view the original versions as the authoritative ones. People determine the cognitive authority
of a work based on whether they think it is helpful and trustworthy (Wilson, 1983; Rieh,
2002; McKenzie, 2003). Affective authority is “the extent to which users think the
information is subjectively appropriate, empathetic, emotionally supportive, and/or
aesthetically pleasing” (Neal and McKenzie, 2011, p. 131). Both forms of authority can be
observed in fan culture.
Examples of fan studies involving videos demonstrate the rich variety of work in this
area. In fan culture, fan music videos consist of assembled clips from the television show or
movie of interest that highlight certain aspects of the show, such as intimate relationships
between characters or plot lines. These clips are set to music. Fans who make these videos are
called “vidders”, and their creations are called “vids” (Jenkins, 2013; Karpovich, 2007; Ng,
2008). Vidding is an individual, collective, and social activity all at once (Turk and Johnson,
2012). Several studies have been conducted on vids; for example, Ng (2008) analysed vids

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