I recently browsed YouTube for the campaign channels for each of the presidential candidates. Each channel presented a different facade. The Democratic channel featured mainly news reels and amateur videos of speeches by Barack Obama and Joe Biden. There were some polished commercial ads for the campaign, but these were few and far between. The Republican channel featured many more polished commercial ads. These often used emotional themes in attempts to sway the vote. The Republican channel seemed much more biased as opposed to the more objective approach of the Democratic site. The Republican channel also had far fewer videos. The Democrats boasted almost 1,600 videos while the Republicans showed a lowly 309. The Democratic channel was surely the more convincing of the two.
Democratic Channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/BarackObamadotcom
Republican Channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/JohnMcCaindotcom
I also browsed some user generated videos. The majority of these were taped speeches. One video stood out to me. It was in support of Obama.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY
I'm not quite sure how I feel about these videos. Clearly there is some definitive goal to the posting of any of the videos and ultimately bias is inescapable; however, if I were to choose which videos seemed most authentic and genuine it would be videos that were simply of the candidates giving speeches...authentic and genuine are most likely not the right words though.
Peace, Love
Evan
A blog created for Media and Communication Studies
1 comment:
I agree it is important to me to see what the candidates are in favor of and who they are and what they have done, and not all those videos made by fans of them. It is important to see the core issues. Sometimes it may be more entertaining to see powerful images with music or something, but is this really an example of what kind of president the individual will be?
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