Whenever a video becomes popular on YouTube it almost always gets mentions in various online and print media, whether it is from a politician's news desk or a wannabe hollywood gossip giant's bedroom.
We all remember the David Cameron YouTube fiasco:
Tory leader Cameron set up WebCameron project, a website of video blogs of him talking about key political issues and interviewing guest speakers (which now has its own YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/webcameronuk). His first video blog showed him washing up dishes in a noisy household while talking about what he wished to achieve with this new form of political broadcasting,
"I want to tell you what the Conservative party is doing, what we're up to, give you behind-the-scenes access so you can actually see what policies we're developing, the things that we are doing, and have that direct link ... watch out BBC, ITV, Channel 4, we're the new competition. We're a bit shaky and wobbly, but this is one of the ways we want to communicate with people properly about what the Conservative party stands for."
(http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives/story/0,,1884396,00.html)
In response, Labour MP Sion Simon (Birmingham Erdington) created a spoof video mimicking Cameron and posted it on YouTube. The one minute video clip shows Simon referring to himself as "Dave" and donning a basebal cap. He looks at the camera and announces
"Yo. My name’s Dave, yeah? Thing is, I’m just like you. I’ve got the same worries, the same troubles, the same cares, the same trouble and strife.
"Want to sleep with my wife? That’s cool. Come down, check it out, we’ll sort it out. Safe."
"I’ve got two kids - kid one, kid two. You like them? Take one - that’s cool."
The video was posted by Tom Watson, a West Bromwich MP who posts under the name "Baggymp".
The video sparked political outrage and soon the story was plastered all over the web and print. By publicising the video, the media indirectly herded more and more people towards seeing the short video. It became an online phenomenon, a vessel for politicians to reach the people on an informal front.
Early this year, Blair created a YouTube channel "LabourVision" in an attempt to catch up with his rivals (Catch it at www.youtube.com/labourvision). His first video showed a rather uncomfortable Blair sitting in front of a dank purple backdrop stating:
"The purpose of coming into the YouTube channel is to enable you to hear unmediated, fresh, first-hand, what it is we are about,"
While their videos are watched by the press and commented on on occasion,
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2057126,00.html
- http://video.aol.com/video-detail/tony-blair-labourvision-interview-life-as-pm-child-poverty/849626412 etc.
It is still developing itself into a powerful communicating tool, with its latest video of a Gordon Brown interview stacking up 15,000 views.
3 comments:
To upload a video to YouTube costs nothing, and to make a video you need no more than a computer in your bedroom and some spare time. For a professional looking video you'll need, in addition to your own talent and skill, professional lighting, sound, camera equipment, make-up, background, etc, in short a fully equipped and staffed studio, not easily available to the average bedroom video maker.
That the Cameron and Blair YouTube videos look so amateurish is surely not because they cannot afford a proper studio setup, but rather a calculated decision to make it look more believable, YouTube like.
As for the numbers of people who actually watch these videos, it would be interesting to know how many of them are actually from the UK, where they see these guys on HD TV every day, and how many are just curious viewers from somewhere else around the globe.
a big problem for politicians today is authenticity and being able to connect with non-traditional, but very challenging younger audiences, who understand new media much better than they do.
Does Sion Simon MPs - cringe inducing - "mickey taking" spat with David Cameron on YouTube, achieve better dialogue between MPs and non traditional, younger audiences?
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