The Numa Numa Dance and Gangnam Style: musical videos on youtube in multiple mediation

Abstract

This paper examines the videos The Numa Numa Dance – a 2004 amateur video uploaded by Gary Brolsma and taken as a precursor of viral musical videoclips, and Gangnam Style, by Dj Psy – the official music video of a k-pop song and the most frequently watched videoclip in the history of YouTube, and discusses the mediation process whereby these videos circulate on YouTube from a comparative perspective. The core premise is that The Numa Numa Dance is the precursor of a category of music videos that later help us understand the success of Gangnam Style, and that they both fall within the same socio-technical network that links amateur and professional people, cultural industry and common users. Once they are mapped, these networks reveal important aspects of contemporary musical culture circulating through digital media.