Background

Over the past 50 years, mass media has largely affected the way in which campaigns are run and in the end decided. With television becoming widely available during the JFK-Nixon election, the two candidates faced challenges that past presidential hopefuls didn’t have to worry about. In the first ever televised presidential debate, Kennedy looked young, tan, and confident while Nixon looked underweight, nervous, and sloppy. While the two candidates were evenly matched in substance, studies of the 70 million television viewers show those that watched the debate on television believed Kennedy won the debate by a large margin. 6% of voters claimed they made their decision based on the debate, which if true, would be more than enough to decide this close election. The Great Debates of 1960 pushed the United States into a new era of politics.

Television, newspapers, and radio were the three primary sources of information during the latter half of the 20th century. These mediums were often structured in a top-down manner, which led to a small group of people in the country selecting what information would be reported to the public.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a shift in information started to take place. With the internet becoming mainstream in American homes, a new medium in which to spread information became widely used. Because of the decentralized nature of the internet, traditional media powers have lost the firm grip on information they once controlled.

This new means of communication allowed individuals that traditionally would not have had a voice to express their opinions or share facts that were not being reported in the traditional media. For many years, however, technical barriers made it difficult for most users to create their own content. Only those with more resources were able to set up websites or bulletin boards that could be used to spread information. By 2005, however, the paradigm began to shift. Websites began to shift away from simply providing static information to allowing users to create and post their own content with no technical expertise. Web 2.0 was born.

As of the writing of this paper, the most highly trafficked websites according to Alexa.com are:

•Google - Enables users to search the Web, Usenet, and images. Features include PageRank, caching and translation of results, and an option to find similar pages. The company's focus is developing search technology.

•Yahoo! - Personalized content and search options. Chatrooms, free e-mail, clubs, and pager.

•MySpace - Social Networking Site.

•YouTube - YouTube is a way to get your videos to the people who matter to you. Upload, tag and share your videos worldwide!

•Facebook - A social utility that connects people, to keep up with friends, upload photos, share links and videos.

The top two most popular sites listed by Alexa function as portals into the web. The next three, however, are very powerful web 2.0 social network sites that allow users to control the content that is displayed on the site. MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook all have become focuses of political campaigns because of the ease in which information can be spread. YouTube is also easily integrated into both of these sites, making it easy to share videos that may have never been seen before.

The History of YouTube

YouTube was founded in February 2005. According to the YouTube website, “YouTube is the world's most popular online video community, allowing millions of people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small.”

YouTube’s primary features, as described by the YouTube website, are:

• Video embedding: Users can insert a YouTube video into Facebook and MySpace accounts, blogs, or other Web sites where anyone can watch them.

• Public or private videos: Users can elect to broadcast their videos publicly or share them privately with friends and family upon upload.

• Subscriptions: Users are able to keep track of their favorite users' new videos.

• Quick Capture: Users with a webcam and Flash software are able to instantly record video responses or normal videos onto the site rather than having to prerecord and then upload the video.

• TestTube: This is an area where YouTube engineers and developers conduct alpha testing for new features in development. Users are encouraged to participate in the development process and are welcome to evaluate the feature.

The following is a brief history of YouTube from Wikipedia.org:

"Few statistics are publicly available regarding the number of videos on YouTube. However, in July 2006, the company revealed that more than 100 million videos were being watched every day, and 2.5 billion videos were watched in June 2006. 50,000 videos were being added per day in May 2006, and this increased to 65,000 by July. In January 2008 alone, nearly 79 million users watched over 3 billion videos on YouTube.

In August 2006, The Wall Street Journal published an article revealing that YouTube was hosting about 6.1 million videos (requiring about 45 terabytes of storage space), and had about 500,000 user accounts. As of April 9, 2008, a YouTube search returns about 83.4 million videos and 3.75 million user channels. It is estimated that in 2007, YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire internet in 2000."

2006: YouTube’s first election

The 2006 senatorial election saw the first major use of YouTube in an election. The most famous example from the 2006 election is that of Virginia incumbent George Allan (R). Early in the campaign, Allan commanded a strong lead over his challenger, Jim Webb. The Webb campaign, however, came up with a brilliant tactic to discredit Allan. In an attempt to catch Webb saying something inappropriate, they sent a volunteer to follow Allan on his campaign trail and film everything he said and did. The plan worked, as Allan was caught on tape saying racist remarks to the volunteer:

“"This fellow here, over here with the yellow shirt, macaca, or whatever his name is. He's with my opponent. He's following us around everywhere. And it's just great,"…"Let's give a welcome to macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia."”

The Webb campaign quickly posted the video on YouTube, which helped it gain national recognition. Allan, caught by surprise, was unable to respond to the video going viral. He went on to lose his reelection campaign.

This campaign meltdown has prepared the presidential candidates for the new YouTube environment. Now candidates are being proactive and using YouTube as an integral part of their campaigns.