Curating Online Video through RSS: A Resource Discovery and Mapping Framework for Teaching with Multimedia
Abstract
The explosive growth of online video over recent years presents both opportunities and challenges for those teaching sociology. While multimedia resources on the Internet abound, discovering and accessing those that are teaching-relevant remains an obstacle to instructional integration. By way of a digital framework based on Really Simple Syndication (RSS) technology, this paper introduces a systematic approach to curating Online Video Repositories (OVRs), i.e., websites, blogs, and video channels that aggregate and stream digital content. To demonstrate the practical utility of this system for creating and sustaining video archives, we offer a sample of sociologically-relevant OVRs and discuss several in terms of their instructional value.
Keywords: online video, Online Video Repository, OVR, RSS, video pedagogy, curation, multimedia
1. Introduction
Sociology instructors today face a stark contrast to the video scarcity of the early 2000s, now having access to an overwhelming abundance of relevant content. Commercial websites ceaselessly upload new material, while user-sharing platforms host an ever-expanding array of professional and amateur productions, including news reports, interviews, speeches, lectures, demonstrations, social experiments, documentaries, movie and television clips, and specialized instructional content of all sorts. Digital advances over the period have effectively eliminated the technical barriers that once impeded video integration. Vastly improved Internet infrastructure and video coding innovations now make streaming highly efficient for most users.
However, the sheer volume of available content has created a new challenge: effective discovery and display of quality materials. Researchers consistently identify this as a major obstacle to full instructional adoption (Kaufman and Mohan 2009, Marquis, Wojcik, Lin, and McKinnon 2020). And the problem has grown even more acute since the 2020 mass transition to remote teaching, which highlighted the dire need to gain access to quality digital resources (Fyfield, Henderson, and Phillips 2021, Nguyen 2022). Nonetheless, instructors continue to invest considerable time searching through vast amounts of online content, frequently with minimal returns.
We suggest that obsolete curation approaches, rather than technological shortcomings or content scarcity, primarily impede effective video integration. Our discipline, and other social sciences too, has not recognized the need to digitally process the substantial content created by instructors and academically-inspired filmmakers, nor has it realized the utility of employing already available digital tools that could help with this task. While The Sociological Cinema pioneered online video curation fifteen years ago with(see Andrist, Chepp, and Dean 2010-2024), those who would curate video for instructors today lack a framework for reasonably addressing the volume of contemporary output. As a result, instructors may not know about resources that could best help them spark students' sociological imaginations.
In our opinion, current curation efforts focusing on individual videos rather than the broader context of content distribution create the fundamental problem. This atomistic approach limits not only the sustained use of valuable video resources in sociology education but their very discovery. While individual video curation efforts may point instructors to worthy materials, the rapid growth in available content demands a more systematic approach. Traditional methods of discovering and sharing educational videos, focused on individual pieces of content, no longer adequately address the scale and complexity of current digital output.
Our paper advances the cause of video curation by employing video-centered websites, blogs, and channels as the primary unit of analysis. While curators have historically examined specific content, we shift attention to the distributional context through which creators now make digital film accessible to users: Online Video Repositories (OVRs), our term for Internet sites hosting aggregated film available for on-demand streaming.
An OVR-based curation approach can quickly advance the productive employment of video in physical and online classrooms in at least two immediate ways. As curators point explicitly to quality collections, instructors can discover site appropriate to their teaching interests. Widening curational scope from single videos to aggregates of videos axiomatically encourages instructors to expand inspection to the corpus of content located there. As instructors become familiar with the work of particular video-makers, they will likely encourage future creative efforts and foster the development of online creator-instructor networks (see Palmer and Schueths 2013), key to further motivating and sustaining video-production activity.
Second, centering on OVRs rather than single videos will facilitate curation mechanics and thereby markedly enhance our ability to bring digital film to discipline attention and retain attention over time. In this paper, we employ RSS (Really Simple Syndication), an application that can systematically link and organize websites, video channels, and blogs in a clean window interface. RSS enables immediate video identification and access from a common web location. Moreover, our chosen application, Protopage, maps an OVR landscape with the capacity to capture continual change as creators upload videos, and as curators add new OVRs and just-found older ones to existing RSS pages. This approach creates, in effect, living archives to serve ongoing curation activity.
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Several years ago, we began to examine OVRs by looking at open-access (i.e., free) video repositories across the social sciences (see Miller and CohenMiller 2019). However, that research provided highly uneven coverage as we included only a handful of sites centered on sociology. Focused search activity since then has revealed about one-hundred and fifty more created mainly by sociology instructors, primarily targeting sociology students. We have also uncovered a similar number of OVRs from related social sciences that could provide ancillary teaching support in sociology courses. Although many sites doubtless remain undiscovered, we believe this sample is of sufficient size and diversity to allow for meaningful generalizations about the current state of sociologically-relevant online video.
In describing the utility of an RSS-based strategy for curating online video collections, we systematically employ sociology-relevant OVRs for purposes of illustration. We largely engage in descriptive curation by locating, organizing, and displaying them and their most recently uploaded videos on RSS pages, but we also perform limited evaluation by recommending some that appear to be particularly serviceable as instructor resources. Given that understanding human behavior transcends disciplinary boundaries, we also display OVRs from related social sciences through RSS pages and likewise identify those appearing to have the potential for employment in sociology courses. Finally, we focus on OVRs more precisely for purposes of teaching application within discipline subfields. To illustrate, we aggregate academic and nonacademic OVRs together on a single RSS page that might assist those teaching courses related to social stratification.
2. Current State of Video Curation in Sociology
OVRs include sites that either curate video and/or create video,,,
Some video curators create videos, but most creators do not curate videos in a strict sense. Video curation involves a variety of functional tasks related to the display and description of film resources. It certainly includes organizing materials in a coherent, accessible manner in order to inform others about them, and in this sense, video creators and even instructors play a limited curatorial role in aligning videos to audiences. However, curation is generally understood to entail more involved efforts, including content synopsis, synthesis, and recommendation. Video curation moreover is often taken to mean a process undertaken by third parties who mediate between video product and target audiences of potential viewers, specifically enumerating strengths and weaknesses of such content in light of perceived viewer interests and needs.
Video curation in our discipline primarily has been effected through a single journal, in addition to a handful of websites and blogs created by sociology instructors or those with sociology background. That journal, Teaching Sociology (TS), has long-promoted scholarship on the instructional use of film, publishing much about how video can facilitate teaching and learning, and especially how it can enhance the ability of students to think sociologically (see Belet 2017, Besek and Pandey 2022, Dowd 1999, Hoffman 2006, Prendergast 1986, among others). TS also has extensively explored the application of popular media to particular courses, such as introductory sociology (Belet 2017, Smith 1973), theory (Fails, 1988, Pelton 2013), research methods (Leblanc 1998, Tan and Ko, 2004), and race and ethnic relations (Dagaz and Harger 2011, Khanna and Harris 2014, Loewen 1991, Stout, Earnhart, and Nagi 2020, Valdez and Halley 1999). In addition, TS has provided reviews of given documentaries and collections of documentaries specific to certain teaching subfields (e.g., Grauerholz and Covert 1997, Baker-Sperry, Behringer, and Grauerholz 1999), and in 2011 formalized this practice by instituting a film review section as a regular feature. Most recently, TS began reviewing documentaries available through major streaming platforms (see Brutlag 2021, Smith, Smith, and Kozimor 2024). On the other hand, Teaching Sociology publications that have addressed OVRs are scarce.
In fact, despite the large number of online sites creating and distributing sociologically-relevant video--regardless of whether professional or amateur in nature--it strikes us as astounding that not a single one has ever been mentioned, much less reviewed, in the journal. To our knowledge, TS has only addressed one OVR--that being the excellent site dedicated to video curation not video creation--the aforementioned, The Sociological Cinema (see Caldeira and Ferrante 2012).
Actual curation of OVRs applicable to courses in our discipline currently resides in two realms quite apart from Teaching Sociology. The first, what we will call instructor-focused curation sites, is reflected in efforts of sociology instructors to translate online video, primarily short clips, into forms directly employable in teaching, and is embodied in two OVRs: The Sociological Cinema and Popular Sociology. Pioneering the curation of found video for the discipline in 2010, The Sociological Cinema (TSC) was developed by Lester Andrist, Valerie Chepp, and Paul Dean, then University of Maryland graduate-student instructors. The site quickly built a critical mass of content based on collaborative curation that asked contributors to both volunteer links to relevant videos and also specify how such videos could be applied to teaching. In addition to being featured in TS, TSC received additional attention through laudatory review articles (see xy and z) and by winning the 2012 MERLOT Sociology Award. The website also includes a blog, an images section, and a set of modules featuring multimedia clustered around major sociological concepts. Although growing little since 2016, TSC remains a valuable instructor resource with a body of over 600 pieces of content. At present, the only active instructor-focused site dedicated to curating found video is Popular Sociology, started in 2017 by Widener University sociologist Matt Reid. This site now numbers over 250 user-submitted videos and learning applications, and also like TSC suggests strong production values in curating its growing body of content centered on individual videos.
The other direction sociology-related video curation has taken is consistent with a creative trend evident across the social sciences and the humanities of engaging in critical analysis of the entertainment media popularly consumed among college and working-class youth. Two of the best offering sociologically-informed criticism in video form are The Pop Culture Detective and Sociocinema. Created and narrated by Jonathan McIntosh, the former "...explores the intersections of sociology, masculinity, politics, and entertainment." Although not a sociologist by training, McIntosh demonstrates keen skills in sociological storytelling as is evident in this remix about how the animated movie Wall-E exemplifies common assumptions held by sociologists about the nature of social reality (see McIntosh 2017). However, most of his work centers on deconstructing movies from a critical gender perspective. For example, his recent video on the megahit Barbie (McIntosh 2024) identifies key representations of patriarchy and their effects on diverse types of people appearing in the film. Characterized by strong production values, his content is clear, detailed, and well-grounded conceptually. Website posts also include key references, opportunities for subtitling contributions, and hyperlinks to download options, reflecting his long-standing advocacy of fair use. McIntosh's YouTube channel, featuring over 40 remixes to date, has amassed more than one million subscribers. Sociocinema, the Jake Bishop website, and his YouTube channel, likewise illustrate the utility of inspecting films through a sociological lens. However, while McIntosh focuses on gender issues, Bishop's work has wider relevance for students new to sociology by describing how a broad array of sociological concepts are embedded in popular media. Two remix vehicles that well-illustrate how Bishop integrates sociology with videographic criticism include Joker Explained (Bishop 2022) and The Rise of Super Rich Satire Explained (Bishop 2023), an analysis of the growing trend in film to depict the wealthy in unflattering terms. Bishop's YouTube channel has more than 35,000 subscribers and almost 30 videos to date.
The Sociologist's Dojo blog, maintained by Brian Brutlag since 2013, provides in-depth analysis of media, particularly movies, from a sociological perspective. The blog's detailed posts, which range from monthly to quarterly updates, incorporate complex analyses with references to cultural criticism and feminist theory.
i criticism to address popular culture, especially that related to blockbuster movies.
ShortCutsTV... see blog there... and curation of own video...
The second is apparent in the work of several OVR developers who employ video curation in the sociologically-informed films they create.
[Mention blogs that have attempted to curate online video. For example, Nathan Palmer (2010-2012) Sociology Source: Videos for Class (https://thesocietypages.org/sociologysource/category/videos-for-class/) and .... Sociological Images contributions related to videographic criticism (e.g., see Nord 2023) (Jillian Nord 2023 https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2023/07/11/them-ms-sexualized-media-and-emphasized-femininity/) also see Evan Stewart 2023 Cheeseburger Culture https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2024/07/17/cheeseburger-culture/) and see videographic criticism via Graham Nielsen 2020 The Hidden Cost of Your New Wardrobe (https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2020/06/25/the-hidden-cost-of-your-new-wardrobe/).
Also need to include TRAILS and specific contributions of instructors:
Video curation in sociology has primarily developed through Teaching Sociology (TS) journal and a small number of instructor-created websites and blogs. TS has long championed scholarship on instructional film use, publishing extensively on how video enhances teaching, learning, and sociological thinking (see Belet 2017, Besek and Pandey 2022, Dowd 1999, Hoffman 2006, Prendergast 1986). The journal has explored video applications across various courses, from introductory sociology to specialized topics, while maintaining a regular film review section since 2011.
Two distinct realms characterize current online video curation in sociology. The first involves instructors translating online video, primarily short clips, into directly teachable forms. The second reflects curators using sociological criticism to analyze popular culture, especially blockbuster movies.
A significant dimension for OVR curation relates to the type of sourced content aggregated in the collection. OVRs are primarily comprised of original video and/or found video. The former is new video produced by or for an OVR, and often when done for instructors is in the form of lecture captures, speeches and interviews, screen-captures of presentation-based lectures and tutorials, concept explainers, etc. Found video is appropriated from elsewhere online. It may include any of the types of film just mentioned that are created by others in addition to news stories and movies, television programs, and documentaries or clips derived from them. The presentation of found video in such contexts can be understood as having curatorial meaning to the extent that developers make it a point to say something meaningful about them. Hybrid or remix video is a third less common type which combines found-video clips in new video form made by the OVR creator, and is often used for purposes of videographic criticism or social protest (see the discussion on detournement at Andrist, Chepp, Dean, and Miller 2014).
Another important curatorial consideration is the extent to which content is made publicly accessible and also freely accessible. In general, OVRs are open access in the sense of being available at no cost to users, and that is particularly the case for educational OVRs where audiences range from just instructors' students all the way up to large bodies of diverse collectivities, perhaps even including non-academic audiences. While access to video from many for-profit OVRs is often restricted by paywalls, nonsubscribers can sometimes view at least some of that content through alternative Internet platforms. Instructors and students can likewise tap into huge collections of documentary film, such as those at Alexander Street, Kanopy, and Films On Demand, through subscriptions purchased by their college libraries. While increasing numbers of students are no doubt being asked to take out semester-long subscriptions to Netflix or other popular streaming sites, instructors should become aware of no-cost alternative collections of shorts and full-length documentaries such as those identified in our RSS pages.
political ideology
Grassere, J. (Nov 11 2023). Nebula: What does creator owned mean? Diggit Magazine https://www.diggitmagazine.com/articles/nebula-what-does-creator-owned-mean
Follow up with categories employed in (a.) sociology OVRs and Video curation sites from other disciplines...
Additional ways OVRs can be differentiated for curation purposes include quantitative distinctions (video number, video length, recency of upload), as well as qualitative ones--discipline and subfield relevance, video format (filmed, photo presentation, animation, etc.), and types of information conveyed in video relevant to specific learning goals [elaborate] (see Andrist et al 2014).