A History of Internet Discourse: From Discussion Boards to the Video Essay

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In Ancient Greece cities, the agora was the place where intellectuals would go to discuss complex ideas such as philosophy, literature, and government. During the 18th century, book societies and reading clubs gave upper-class men and women the opportunity to have meet with a similar purpose; namely, the discussion of fine literature. In the 1960’s, literary journals began to gain recognition, providing literary scholars with a platform to discuss complex ideas of the literature they were reading. For centuries, complex conversation about literature - and eventually, media as a whole - was restricted to the elites; either financially or academically. However, that all changed with the advent of the internet.

Suddenly, anyone with access to a computer could go online and share their thoughts and opinions about the media they were consuming. In the early days of the young internet, message boards proliferated, where anyone could find a community with the same interest in books, movies, TV shows, and music as them to discuss with. This was a significant departure from what the public discourse had looked like before; gone were the days where complex conversation about literature or film were restricted to academic. This ushered in an era where the only barrier to accessing the conversation was internet access.

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The First Generation of Online Media Analysis: Message Boards

These online discussion forums were a far cry from the highly structured, peer-reviewed standard set by the literary journals of the past few decades. Rather than discussing Shakespeare, Hemmingway, or Dickens, many of these online discussion boards were dedicated to ongoing or recent pieces of media. These boards existed for anything from Star Trek to The Phantom of the Opera, giving fans a platform to discuss the media they loved. These fans shared all the same enthusiasm as the academic journalist, while lacking his prestige, education, and formal structure. This form of discourse was often characterized as uninformed, uneducated, and irrelevant. It didn’t aim to be making profound statements on literature or film the way that journals did, it simply tried to provide a platform for people with common interests to congregate and share their thoughts.

In the years since the internet’s inception, media discourse has maintained a prominent place in the development of the web, albeit in different forms. The second half of the 19th century saw rise to “fandom” culture - a group of fans with strong attachments to the media they follow. The internet was the perfect platform for members of fandoms to congregate and discuss - first on discussion forums, but eventually in blogs and on social media sites such as Tumblr and YouTube.

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The Second Generation of Online Media Analysis: Blogging and Social Media

This second generation of media discourse was often just as casual and informal as the first, but saw a greater deal of organization and involvement. People were sharing their own works, such as fanart and full-length works of fan-fiction, both of which proliferated during this time. The 2000’s saw online fan involvement at an all time high. However, this also marked a turning point for online discourse.

While much of the discussion was still casual and surface-level, fans began thinking deeper about the works they were celebrating. This manifested in media analysis that started to resemble the more academic conventions found in journals at the time. Another trend during this time was the creation of fan theories, where rans would take a close eye to a story and try to find some secret meaning behind it. Movies, shows, books, and even video games were all treated to this close-reading. Media that was being completely ignored by the academy was being closely examined by a growing base of dedicated fans. Nothing was off limits for fans, who ravenously searched for evidence to support their theories. Subjects of these theories ranged from Pokémon and Final Fantasy to Harry Potter and Supernatural.

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The Current Age of Online Media Analysis: Youtube and The Video Essay

In the current age of internet discourse, YouTube has taken a huge leap in popularity. While some early forms of rough media criticism was seen in the second generation of discourse, it was mostly relegated to reviews, opinion pieces, or pedantic nitpicking. YouTube channels like CinemaSins and Nostalgia Critic provided basic media analysis, but rarely did the platform see any kind of substantial or illuminative content during this time. That is not to say that high-level media analysis wasn’t happening, just that it wasn’t receiving the most attention.

In recent years however, a new format has been popularized on YouTube. The “video essay” strikes the balance between the approachability and fan-driven topics of previous iterations of internet discourse while following many of the same conventions as academic conversation. These essays will have a brief intro to the topic, a thesis, and pull quotes and other supporting pieces of evidence to support their claims. Channels like Nerdwriter, Lindsay Ellis, Vox, and Every Frame a Painting all engage with media at a high level, bringing academic conversation about familiar topics to their subscribers.

With popular conversation about media (especially movies and TV) at an all time high as a result of shows like Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, and The Walking Dead, it makes perfect sense that audiences are hungry to enter the public discourse. Fortunately, the fandom presence on the internet has been around long enough to have finally hit its stride.