Politicians - more than just a laugh on YouTube?

Hands up anybody here who looks at serious political speeches or campaign clips on YouTube? Naahh, didn't think so. What about watching videos of pollies making fools of themselves.....yeahh? It's almost a national pastime to make fun of our politicians by sending them up, including carefully editing video clips of them to totally distort anything they say, or to insert silly farting noises as they speak and putting the resulting clips up on YouTube for the whole world to see. Some are in worse taste than others. But what about the genuine, serious uses of social media in politics? 

In the US, John Edwards was the first person to announce his intention to run for presidency on his website in 2007 in an attempt to get with the times and use social media to win some votes. But the use of his website was a poor choice and didn't get much exposure, because after all, how many people would be visiting the site to see it? A review of the sites of six candidates in that election indicates that Edwards employed lots and lots of types of social media in his campaign, but obviously didn't score the top job, and his site now appears to be totally defunct. 

This was a direct contrast to Barack Obama. Obama enjoyed a massive publicity campaign fought with a clever use of social media, including a particularly provocative video clip on YouTube of the Obama Girl, which could be argued to have given him an extremely good advantage over his rivals and may have even won him the election. There was a much greater turn-out of under-30s voters in the 2008 election than had been seen before, which is exactly the audience that politicians are hoping to capture with their use of social media as promotional platforms. I  think that it would be interesting to know what  Obama's wife Michelle thought of the Obama Girl video....

Obama continues to use social media extremely effectively. Figues show that he had around 2.4 million Facebook friends in Nov 2008 and now has over 8.6 million. Obama's YouTube channel contains almost 2,000 video clips which have had 23 million channel views and  over 150 millions downloads. Totally amazing for a political website. It is claimed that during the 2008 presidential election, 68% of registered U.S. voters turned to the Internet regularly to receive political information. For the first time, the Internet surpassed newspapers and magazines in terms of reach and influence.This demonstrates the power that efficient and effective use of social media can harness, but it needs to be done well.

To help the pollies, YouTube has just launched a  campaign toolkit for politicians with the aim of equipping political candidates with the resources to use YouTube and Google effectively to engage with their audience. Naturally the toolkit includes paid advertising video streams and similar.....     

      

The internet also provides fertile ground and the technological opportunities for citizens to express their true thoughts and feelings about their elected candidates, which can consequently positively or adversely affect chances of people still running for election. It also  has the capacity to spread information (or disinformation) exremely rapidly. Take the case of Sarah Palin. Palin was the youngest person, and the first woman ever to be elected Governor of Alaska, and was selected to be John McCain's running mate in the 2008 presidential election. Unfiortunely for Palin, she had the misfortune to be impersonated and satirised on Saturday Night Live by the strikingly similar-in-appearance comedienne Tina Fey, and the end result went viral over the internet. This may have helped immensely in turning her into a figure of rpublic idicule and undermining any credibility she may have had, thereby affecting her campaign efforts. See video here. 

I tend to think that women get crucified worse by the media than men so, but that's just my perspective. Poor old Pauline Hanson has certainly got a lot of stick over the years, some may say deservedly, but apparently posting nude photos of her (turned out to be not of her) over the internet was regarded by some as a good marketing ploy. Hanson has not been treated well by the media, even though many might say she only has herself to blame. Here's a video clip discussing the media treatment of her.  And of course there's much more to be found on YouTube.



But one thing is for sure, what it really great about the internet, social media and politics, is that in our democratic society where we have relatively good freedom of speech in our media, ordinary citizens are able to read  political material that presents different or opposing points of view about matters that affect our voting preferences, which a lot of people in certain countries do not have the luxury of doing. It is therefore up to the politicians to make the best use of the media to enhance their prospects of getting into power. The tools are there. But in the meantime, it's great to have the freedom to find and publish silly photos of our respected (?) leaders. ...ciao.