YouTube has rapidly become one of the most popular sites on the internet. The ease in which individuals can upload and share video has allowed citizens to share views and ideas with unprecedented ease. Additionally, individuals have greater access to information being spread by sources they may not have seen before.

YouTube’s popularity is astonishing. According to the YouTube website, “people are watching hundreds of millions of videos a day on YouTube and uploading hundreds of thousands of videos daily. In fact, every minute, ten hours of video is uploaded to YouTube…Our user base is broad in age range, 18-55, evenly divided between males and females, and spanning all geographies. Fifty-one percent of our users go to YouTube weekly or more often, and 52 percent of 18-34 year-olds share videos often with friends and colleagues.” The massive number of users from a broad age range combined with the ease in which videos can be downloaded and distributed makes YouTube an attractive place for political campaigns to campaign.

The 2008 presidential election is the first election to take place with YouTube. Many journalists, researches, and bloggers have coined this election as the first “YouTube election.” During the primary campaign season, every presidential candidate posted a large number of videos in an attempt to garner more votes.

This raises important questions about YouTube campaigns. What types of videos are most effective? Are there any patterns in the number of views different types of videos receive? What types of campaigns are the candidates running on YouTube, and which type of campaign is most effective? A more important question that this project attempts to analyze is how big of an impact web 2.0 applications such as YouTube is having on civic engagement. Has YouTube been successful in engaging younger voters? Has involvement increased due to these new technologies? Finally, should the public sector invest more of their time into sites such as YouTube in an attempt to engage a larger number of citizens?

The following two part video provides a brief introduction to this project.

Part 1

Part 2