Candidates embrace new media in first YouTube election
By Richard Waters in San Francisco and Andrew,Edgecliffe-Johnson in New York
Published: November 1 2008 02:00 | Last updated: November 1 2008 02:00
When the history books are written on how the media shaped the 2008 presidential race, three big networks that reach tens of millions of Americans will have a central place. As recently as the 2004 election, though, two of them were virtually unknown and one hadn't even been thought of: YouTube, MySpace and Facebook.
The online networks have turned into important mass-market distribution systems for political messages. But while the Obama and McCain campaigns have each in their way learnt to use the new "social media" for their own purposes, the ability of voters to interact with the political messages has had important results that have not always been obvious, according to media pundits.
"In significant and trivial ways, participatory culture has been a driving force in this political season," said Henry Jenkins, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The candidates have learned to tap its power, but they never fully control or regulate it."
YouTube, which was created only in 2005, has become a hub for the video "clip culture" that marks the biggest difference in media habits this election season.
Many of those online video messages have been pasted onto personal blogs or MySpace pages, linked to Facebook newsfeeds and circulated on personal e-mail lists, creating a new form that Mr Jenkins calls "spreadable media".
To feed this new online media beast, the campaigns have not had to turn to one of the staples of US electioneering: paid advertising. Just half of 1 per cent of the candidates' total advertising funds has been spent online, estimates Kevin Ryan, a former online advertising executive who runs the Alley Media online network.
Instead, they have taken to pumping out a barrage of quick and cheap videos, hoping to hit a nerve with as many voters as possible. The Obama campaign has been uploading up to 20 new videos a day to the YouTube site this week, said Steve Grove, head of news and politics for the site.
The McCain camp was late to this game but has shown "dramatic improvement" in recent weeks, finally hitting its stride with an attack ad on Obama as a "celebrity" that featured Paris Hilton, said Edward Lee, a professor at Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University.
Also, with much less money to spend, YouTube has given the Republican candidate a way to spread his TV advertising to a wider audience free of charge.
Yet with a much bigger following, Obama's YouTube videos had been seen 77m times by the beginning of October, compared to 20m views for McCain, said Mr Lee.
The mass use of the online networks has shaped the political discourse in ways that have yet to be fully understood. One effect of the deluge of online video, for instance, may well have been to drown out any single message.
That may explain why the 2008 election campaign has not had a repeat of the "Swift boat veterans" advert of 2004, which questioned John Kerry's Vietnam war record and was credited with seriously damaging the Democratic candidate's chances.
Many users have also massaged the content that has come from the campaigns or from the TV networks, subtly parodying or emphasising messages using tools such as Photoshop to alter pictures and video editing to "mash up" candidate's comments with other media or mixing them up for new effects.
Some of the most effective sight gags, comparing Obama to Mr Spock from Star Trek and McCain to a Penguin, show that users have taken control of the medium, even if they are starting with "official" content, according to Mr Jenkins.
At the most basic level, however, the simple availability and usability of online video may explain its greatest impact. Letting voters watch videos when they like, or choose what they want to pass on to their personal contacts, has shifted control away from both traditional media companies and the political campaigns.
In this, Sarah Palin may be one of the main casualties. Parodies of the vice- presidential candidate from Saturday Night Live, watched online, led many people to search back in the YouTube library for an earlier, damaging TV interview with Katy Couric, said Mr Jenkins. The widespread online viewing of both may end up being the hallmark of the first YouTube election.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
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