Its sooo soo Good or just So So!
The use of YouTube for political gain is currently developing into something that in the future will be a tactic used by all serious politicians and political campaigns. Although the use of YouTube and other social networking sites is in the early stages of development the political world has seen some groundbreaking and successful results. In Australia we saw Kevin Rudd successfully gain leadership with the help of he’s online campaigning through YouTube and other social networking sites to promote himself with the slogan “kevin07” that was aimed at the younger internet savvy Australian voters. More famously however was the appointment of the U
S president Barack Obama in 2008.Obama’s use of the internet and its social networking capabilities such as YouTube, Facebook, Myspace and others saw him successfully captivate America and indeed the world. As discussed in the articles Obama campaigned on the internet in the correct context, he encouraged communications across the internet from voter to voter, unlike the Clinton campaign that encouraged conversation between voters and Clinton, which some thought was the wrong stance to take.
As seen in the Obama campaign the use of YouTube was very successful. The launch of a short YouTube video by the Obama party in December 2008 called “robot attacks” attracted more than 166,167 viewers in 24 hours. These types of results along with the party’s website MyBarackObama.com saw him appointed the US president in 2008
The Obama party was not the only party in the run up to the US election to use YouTube and other social networking sites in their campaigns, in fact the first use of YouTube as a tactic for the election of 2008 was made by John Edwards in December 2006 when he announced that he would be running for president via a YouTube video. Now you would think that since Obama was so successful when using YouTube that it would be the same for most candidates, but that is wrong. John Edwards did receive 166,167 views on he’s video but it took him two years to get those views unlike 24 hours for Obama. Edwards did become successful eventually on YouTube but for the wrong reasons when a 2 minute clip of him fixing he’s hair was posted and attracted far more views than he’s previous video.
Another example of the dangers involved with the use of YouTube for political gain is the famous Clinton clip (vote different) that was remade by DeVille and depicted Clinton in a bad light through the use of a 1980s super bowl advert. This is an example of when YouTube can go very wrong and the original clip doesn’t get half as many views as the satire clip!
So some benefits and risks of using YouTube for political gain........ YouTube can replace the need for expensive and time consuming political advertising because whatever is posted to YouTube is guaranteed to be aired on all the major news satiations in a matter of minutes or hours depending on its newsworthiness. The risks of YouTube and sometimes benefits are that it is easy and cheap to create satirical and parodies of oppositional leaders that will spread fast and far.
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