A few weeks ago, Time.com headlined a piece by Ana Marie Cox “The YouTube War,” referring to Iraq. Not long after, at Hit & Run, Jesse Walker called Lebanon the “first YouTube war.” I won’t get in the middle of that dispute, and I won’t get in the middle of the Lamont-Lieberman debate, but I will say this much: No matter what happens in Connecticut tonight, this Senate primary is going down as the first YouTube Election.
In the 2004 presidential campaign, while blogging was the next big thing, political web ads were first seeing wide use. MoveOn also encouraged people to make their own television ads, which were available on their site, created some controversy, and almost made it to air during the Super Bowl.
Meanwhile, it’s been a standard practice for campaigns to send a tracker — an intern with a video camera — on the trail with the opponent, hoping to capture something worth turning into an issue. It had to be something pretty remarkable, because the only way you could get it to people was on the local news, or in a campaign ad. The former is unreliable, and the latter is expensive. So aside from the debates, virtually all televisusal contact between voters and candidates is controlled by the campaigns.
That will probably remain the case for awhile, but the plummeting costs of online video means we’re seeing more of it than ever, and more of it is coming from private citizens, many of them political novices. Video-blogging still trails the text-based version, for reasons I probably don’t need to go into. But the result was there was one Evan Coyne Maloney, one John Amato and one Ian Schwartz. Now, the YouTube platform lets anyone do what they did before, and at no extra charge they provide a highly flexible distribution channel — viewers can watch videos on the site or as embedded on any blog that chooses to host it.
Search “Ned Lamont” at YouTube, and you’ll get 230 results. Search “Joe Lieberman” and you’ll get 187 results (as of this moment). That’s a bit surprising, when you consider that Lieberman has been a national figure for years and Lamont is not (yet) a household word.
The most interesting of these were shot on a handheld camera by local Connecticut bloggers, such as CTBob (blog, YT), Spazeboy (blog, YT) and ctblogger (blog, YT). They interviewed Lamont, plus visiting politicians and movie stars, made their own ads, not to mention parody ads and in the most compelling video of all, even quizzed Joementum himself:
To be sure, many YouTube videos related to the campaign are simply television segments (most likely posted in violation of copyright laws) such as Lamont’s recent interview on The Colbert Report. But even that counts. First, they’re making information available that the networks can’t rebroadcast on demand. Second, if you’re not in Connecticut, you can still see what the local television coverage is like. Remember, in the blogosphere all politics is national.
By 2008, it’s conceivable that there will be more homebrew ads on the Internet than official ones emanating from the Beltway, and video bloggers will almost surely break stories before the national media does. I don’t mean to suggest they will become more watched than the traditional campaign ads or national media. They won’t, but like blogs now, they will have an influence — especially among campaigns and the media.
For earlier ruminations on YouTube and campaigns, see James Kelm and Abstract Dynamics. Earlier in the year, they were asking what YouTube could mean for campaigns. Looks like they’re already getting answers.
Bloggers are already playing a larger role in politics and that will only increase by the 2008 election. Viral video will probably be even more influential.