YouTube

YouTube, what is YouTube? If you haven’t heard what YouTube is by now you are clearly hiding under a rock!!! YouTube is a website where anyone can post videos and pretty much on what ever they want! It is a website where anyone can watch these videos and comment about them. You can find videos on people singing, dancing or even video blogging there lives. But more importantly and more recently politicians have come to use YouTube as one of there strategies to campaign. Winograd and Hais, (2008) start off by telling us a little about how the internet has quickly become a popular way to campaign. They tell the story of how politicians first used sites such as facebook, to gain voters for their campaign, and after realising that majority of people use the internet rather than watch television or read the newspaper, politicians smartly worked out that the internet was a much more affective way to reach the public at a much lesser cost! And that instead or writing their stories on facebook that they could tell there stories on YouTube!

In fact Winograd and Hais describes that the political advantages to using YouTube as a way of campaigning is now virtual to the whole outcome. Not only does internet campaigners have a huge economical gain but it is found that majority of people, well a whopping 34 million people visit YouTube a month and a lot of them watching political campaigns. Winograd and Hais continue to say that the enormous advantage in the economics of campaigning via the net compared to television means that it is only a matter of time until candidates who devote most the energies and money to these new campaign tactics will gain the upper hand. Not only does the technology provide an economical way to reach voters it does so with messages that are actually watched and heard and if created properly believed.

However although politicians can find the internet useful for campaigning, what they have also found is it can do not so well for their image. Because YouTube can be accessed by and contributed by any one, many politicians like Obama have found that other politicians or other people in general make a mockery of there campaigns through this website either it by copying an ad they have created and editing it to make fun of it or someone posting something that has been said against another politician. For example you can find many videos on politicians that are made mockery of like this one.



Although YouTube has its downside with attacks against campaigns, it can also be used as an advantage. For example, Obama girl is said to have had an impact of the voting polls of the Obama election because as can be seen Obama girl is an attractive girl who sings and dances about Obama. And as is quoted in New Media by Paul Levinson that a lot of Obama’s voters were aged 30 and under, not surprising, when a saucy video clip about Obama is released targeted at that age group to watch.



YouTube and other internet sources can be a massive benefit to politicians on their campaigns because for one it allows for politicians to be noticed by the younger generation, as well as the older generation. Being able to watch interesting video clips of politicians makes younger people more intrigued to get involved. And being one of the younger generation; in experience having a choice to watch television politics or politics done in interesting ways via YouTube, I am more likely to watch YouTube then television.

Winograd, M. and Hais, M. D. 2008, Millenial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics, Rutgers University Press, Piscataway, pp 156-173