Barack Obama's speech on race last month, though lengthy and nuanced by YouTube standards, was viewed online by millions. Also prominently seen on YouTube: John McCain singing "Bomb, Bomb Iran" to the Beach Boys song "Barbara Ann" at a campaign stop last year.
It's clear that some candidates are making better use of this new technology than others.
Pundits have long been talking up the Internet as a growing factor in elections. This year, though, the video website YouTube has emerged as a particular force to reckon with.
"It has revolutionized political campaigns to the point that candidates are told to watch out for everything you say and everything you do," says Ken Warren, who teaches political science at St. Louis University.
Some of the most discussed issues emerging in the race might not have even registered were it not for YouTube. In past years, controversy about Obama's association with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., might have lasted a day or two before people lost interest. But it's one thing to hear or read about the pastor's comments, however incendiary, and another to see him saying them — repeatedly.
But YouTube is a double-edged sword for candidates, and Obama managed to quell much of the criticism with his March 18 speech on race. Nearly 4 million have viewed the 38-minute clip ( www.youtube.com/watch?v= pWe7wTVbLUU) online.
One thing candidates are learning is that truth isn't so malleable in the digital age. If the characters of "Rashômon" — the 1950 Akira Kurosawa movie that has come to denote multiple interpretations of a single event — all had cellphones with video capability, there probably wouldn't have been much disagreement.
Without YouTube, Hillary Clinton might have been able to explain away the discrepancy between her account of her trip to Bosnia and what actually happened. Even those skeptical of the explanation would likely brush it off as typical election-year exaggeration. But when 1.8 million (as of last week) view a clip (www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BfNqhV5hg4) juxtaposing her recollections with footage of the much less eventful reality, it becomes a more serious kind of campaign gaffe.
Alex Halavais, professor of communications at Quinnipiac University, says YouTube videos can make more of an impression than TV because they're usually presented as a single clip instead of being sandwiched between other images.
He thinks candidates are becoming savvier about YouTube. "It's not so much that candidates are producing the material themselves but being aware that [what they say] is going to go viral, and making sure that it doesn't come back to bite them," he says.
Halavais says YouTube hasn't had the kind of defining moment that television had with the Nixon-Kennedy debates of 1960. It hasn't eclipsed TV as a factor in elections, and Halavais isn't sure that it ever will. More likely, he says, the two will continue to converge as a force.
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Videos produced on behalf of the candidates without their participation also are common. It's unclear whether these videos have any real effect or are just a diversion.
Of the three candidates left standing, Obama seems to have inspired the majority of these. Musician/producer will.i.am's slickly produced video "Yes, We Can" features celebrities singing along to one of Obama's speeches. There's also the scantily clad Obama Girl (model Amber Lee Ettinger) and her "I Got a Crush on Obama" (www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKsoXHYICqU ), viewed more than 7 million times and nominated for "best political video" in the YouTube Video Awards.
That video spawned a response on behalf of Hillary Clinton, "Hott 4 Hill" by former " American Idol" contestant Taryn Southern ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Sudw4ghVe8). Clinton's own video, spoofing the final scene of "The Sopranos" (also featuring Bill and Chelsea), got decent play.
Running a distant third in the YouTube war is McCain. Besides the "Bomb, Bomb Iran" misstep (www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-zoPgv_nYg), he's also the subject of "john.he.is" ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gwqEneBKUs). It's a parody of the will.i.am Obama video, which prominently uses McCain's declaration that we could be in Iraq for 100 years. The "Bomb Iran" song gets mixed in there, too.
Based on how McCain's people have failed to make use of the new technology, "it just seems the campaign has thrown up its hands in regard to young people," says Lynn Schofield Clark, who teaches communications at the University of Denver.
Clark says one of YouTube's main uses in politics has been as a tool to make candidates look foolish, and she's glum about its overall effect on the electoral process. Politics has always been geared toward spectacles and sideshows, Clark says. But because these videos are being passed along via e-mail by the general public, "it's allowed us to be mudslingers ourselves."
"When I look at those things, I think, 'Yes, isn't that funny,' but also 'Isn't this demoralizing for the whole system, and is this the kind of life we want to have?'"
Contact William Weir at bweir@courant.com.
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