YouTube and Politics

As the battle begins to wage for the 2012 Presidential election, YouTube has launched a new channel dedicated to US politics: YouTube Politics. This channel will feature speeches, campaign ads, parodies, user-generated clips, and "Hot Political Videos." Users will be able to compare stats for the major candidates, their views, and the opinions of other users.

What does it look like?

Patriotic - red, white, and blue is the color scheme. The main page includes the top five viewed videos. Your choices are from today, this week, last week, this month, and all time. Below this, you are able to view how the candidates stand against each other by video views and subscriptions. Then you may "meet the candidates," and it will bring up their most recent, most viewed, and most shared videos. You may go straight to their channel and/or subscribe to it.

The benefit of YouTube Politics

This channel makes sense, especially with the citizens who will be newly eligible to vote for the upcoming election. They were mostly born in the early nineties, when most households had a computer and the world wide web was integrating itself into every day life. Internet is how they are informed. We receive our news about the world, our country, and about each other through this medium. YouTube is taking full advantage of their technology to inform those who might have otherwise voted blindly. Now there is a one-stop shop to educate yourself for the betterment of our country's future.

As technology improves, things around us, such as elections, change. Prior to television, it was the newspaper; the rumor goes that if television was around when Roosevelt was running, then he never would have won because no one would have voted for someone in a wheelchair. Television came next and debates were the thing to watch. Now, on top of television, we have the Internet. We have streaming videos and the opportunity to upload our own videos of our own opinions and experiences. YouTube, by providing an all-political channel, has now made politics interactive from your own home, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. "Every vote counts" now appears to be more literal and tangible.