I wish more people were anxious about advocacy and representation, so no harm there.

I actually think that even the vidders I know on LJ are not, for the most part, artistically influenced by the academic and legal discussions. I mean, there's no way to prove that, but I've seen marked changes to vidding that I definitely *can* trace to specific phenomena -- discussions of racism and sexism in media and fandom, cross-pollination with the AMV world, big changes in distribution methods and available technologies, and so on. But I just haven't seen much, if any, evidence that the specific discussions you're talking about are showing up in the art.

YMMV, of course.