U.S. ELECTIONS | Guide to the 2008 Election
29 August 2007
YouTube Redefines Terms of Presidential Debates
Internet offers new forum for political campaigning
Washington – Thanks to the Internet, the tide may be turning for young American voters who feel they have no say in politics. YouTube, the “broadcast yourself” cyberspace phenomenon that allows anyone with a digital camera to post videos on the Internet for free, offered an unprecedented political platform in July: Democratic candidates were grilled by ordinary Americans via video questions.
Politicians accustomed to controlling discussions saw people in T-shirts pose cheeky, incisive questions from all over the country -- and the world. One question came from an aid worker surrounded by children at a refugee camp in Darfur, Sudan.
The eight Democrats on the dais vying for their party’s presidential nomination had to respond. Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama and Bill Richardson fielded questions on topics ranging from civil rights to health care. Several of the 39 questions were about the war in Iraq, and nearly a third touched on foreign policy, including “How do we get beyond empty promises in Darfur?” and “How will your policies reduce energy consumption?”
Co-sponsor CNN, which broadcast the July 23 event on television, chose the questions from about 1,500 submissions. University of Iowa elections expert Bruce Gronbeck found this “fascinating.”
“Television maintained its position as the dominant framer,” he told USINFO. “It threw the YouTube questions up on the screen and took a picture of them with a camera rather than direct feeding into the broadcast. So the dominant medium tried to stay in control and they picked the questions.”
But are television and print the dominant media of the 21st century? It is debatable, as both strive to develop Internet components and advertisers see the Web as the worldwide ad space. Gronbeck says the Internet has had a major impact on the print and electronic media. “The Internet now is a source of stories, of political stories, and … provides an amazing amount of material that then gets re-circulated on radio, television and print.” The YouTube debate exemplifies that.
YouTube first emerged as an influence on voters in 2006, when the Republican senatorial candidate from Virginia, George Allen, verbally abused a young party worker of South Asian-American descent who was videotaping a speech for rival Democratic candidate Jim Webb. The clip of Allen’s remarks was posted on YouTube. Despite Allen’s attempts to apologize, this once front-runner and possible presidential candidate lost to Webb by several thousand votes. Analysts see the widespread circulation of this so-called “macaca” video in the media, including YouTube, as partly responsible for his defeat.
This lesson was not lost on politicians. Serious presidential candidates, Republicans and Democrats alike, have joined YouTube in the past year to establish a presence and post campaign videos there. Barack Obama announced on YouTube his intentions to explore a presidential bid a month before his official announcement.
Some candidates who receive little attention from the mainstream media are all over the Internet. Internet views of one such candidate, Republican Ron Paul, outstrip all others, according to TechPresident, which tracks candidates in online social media. Unauthorized political videos also are posted by candidates’ supporters and detractors.
YouTube was created in a California garage in 2005 by three young computer technicians who wanted to make video-file transfer easier. It became an instant success and spurred the growth of an online community of video sharers. Every topic, sublime to ridiculous, can be found on YouTube. In 2006, Web giant Google bought YouTube in a $1.65 billion stock-for-stock transaction. YouTube remains an independent subsidiary of Google.
“The YouTube team has built an exciting and powerful media platform that complements Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said at the time.
Peter Leyden, a fellow at the progressive San Francisco-based New Politics Institute called the CNN-YouTube debate “a remarkable moment where new media finally takes its rightful place right alongside the old media.”
Gronbeck says there are signs that political consciousness is developing in the tech-savvy younger generation, and there has been an increase in the size of the 18- to 24-year-old vote in recent elections.
Does YouTube play a role? “There were probably people who tuned in who hadn’t tuned in to any other debate, and we know it was the largest portion of 18 to 20 year olds to ever watch a [presidential] debate,” Gronbeck says.
Questions were asked not by journalists, but by individuals whose diversity embodied the issues: black, white, disabled, dying of cancer -- “We can see their faces.”
“You are living out what a campaign ought to be, which is the leaders reaching down to the led and engaging in a serious kind of way,” Gronbeck adds. This personalized encounter ensured that debate and commentary continued among the Internet community long after the actual event ended.
In November, Republican presidential candidates will have their turn at facing the nation on YouTube.
The debate may be viewed on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/democraticdebate.
YouTube Democratic Debate 