U.S. Politics to Draw All Eyes to YouTube Debate May Start a New Phase in Web Campaigning

Jun 14, 09:39 AM

Current Headlines: By Katharine Q. Seelye

The quadrennial ritual of American presidential debates has long followed a tried and true format.

A guy in a suit asks mostly predictable questions of others in suits. The voter is a fixture in the audience, motionless until he or she gets to address the candidate, briefly and respectfully. Everything is choreographed.

Now imagine a college student in jeans and a T-shirt asking a question, less reverentially, more pointedly, and using powerful visual images to underscore the point. Maybe he or she will ask about the war in Iraq - and show clips from a soldier's funeral. Or a mushroom cloud. If global warming is the issue, the videographer might photoshop himself or herself onto a melting glacier. The question might come in the form of a rap song or through spliced images of a candidate's contradictory statements.

The presidential debates are about to enter the world of YouTube, the anything-goes home-video Web site that puts the power in the hands of the camera holder.

YouTube, which is owned by Google, and CNN are co-sponsoring a debate among the eight Democratic presidential candidates on July 23 in South Carolina, an event that could help shape the next phase of what has already been called the YouTube election, a visual realm beyond Web sites and blogs.

The candidates are to assemble on a stage in Charleston, South Carolina. The questions will come via video submitted by ordinary people through YouTube. Moderating between the viewer and the candidates will be Anderson Cooper, the CNN anchor.

The video format opens the door for originality and spontaneity - elements usually foreign to the controlled environment of presidential campaigns. Because visual images can be more powerful than words, the videos have the potential to elicit emotional responses from the candidates and frame the election in new ways.

"It's one of the biggest innovations we've seen in politics," said Mike Gehrke, director of research for the Democratic National Committee, which has sanctioned the YouTube/CNN event as the first of six official Democratic debates this year (which means the party has coordinated them).

User-generated video, he said, is changing the balance in campaigns. "It used to be a one-way street," he said. "It would cost a lot of money for a campaign to put together a good TV ad, then you had to buy time, put it on the air and later, on Web sites. Now it goes the other way, too, and you have people talking to each other and to the campaigns."

Cooper's signature style is a personal, informal way of delivering news, but the selection of him as moderator, as opposed to someone less established or more associated with the Web, suggests that the event will retain a mainstream air.

CNN and YouTube are to release details soon on how they will choose the videos and other parameters.

Cooper has already made an appeal on CNN to viewers to be "creative" in their videos. No one knows quite what to expect.

The videos are likely to reflect the irreverence inherent on YouTube. But how far will CNN go in airing the site's often- subversive attitude? If the videos shown are too bland, there could be a revolt on YouTube, where users are likely to post their videos anyway, whether they make it on the air or not.

Michael Bassik, a Democratic consultant who specializes in online political advertising and is not affiliated with any campaign, noted that YouTube offers an "exponentially greater opportunity to reach a young, active, passionate audience," one that is far bigger than the combined audiences of the nightly newscasts and the five debates that have been shown on television so far this season. For those five debates, the majority of viewers were older than 55.

"The impact of the YouTube debate can't be overestimated," Bassik said.

The footage will be available on the Web for anyone to mash up and create new videos. Through the viral nature of the Web, highlights from the debate are likely to get deep penetration in cyberspace. And being shown on this debate will likely magnify the audience because some of these videos will be picked up, linked to, replayed and commented upon by the mainstream media. (The debate will also be simulcast on CNN en Espanol.)

Bassik said one downside for the candidates would be if a negative video about them were tagged to show up when someone searches for the campaign's own video.

But, he said, "the campaigns are so risk-averse, they would be reluctant to engage in a YouTube debate if it weren't perceived overall as a positive experience."

Most of the presidential campaigns are now fully engaged with video. Senator Barack Obama - the Democratic candidate whose campaign is perceived as being more advanced than most in using the Internet, - views the YouTube debate as a chance to "extend the online dialogue," said his spokesman, Bill Burton.

"It's like when the 'talkies' married the moving image with sound in the 1920s," Burton said. "Except this time it's a lot more interactive and there's a lot more color on the screen."

Matt Lewis, director of operations at townhall.com, the largest online source of conservative news, said he would recommend that the Republicans participate in a YouTube debate.

"Yes, there's definitely opportunities for abuse here, for things to be shown out of context," Lewis said. "But then you come back with your own video and show the full thing. Technology will happen, and the question is whether it will happen for you or to you."

While the YouTube debate is likely to give a huge boost to CNN's ratings, whether it prods the under-30 crowd to go to the polls is a different question.

In the last presidential election in 2004, about 49 percent of people between 18 years old and 29 years old voted, according to Michael McDonald, an associate professor of government at George Mason University and an expert in voter analysis.

While that was up from the 40 percent of that age group who voted in 2000, it was lower than the population at large. (In 2004, a relatively high 63.8 percent of all citizens over 18 voted, according to a survey by the U.S. Census. That was up from 59.5 percent in 2000.)

Still, McDonald noted, the under-30 crowd is accounting for an increasing share of the electorate - 16 percent in 2004, he said, compared with 14 percent in 2000.

McDonald said he expected a high turnout in 2008 among voters overall and younger voters too because the race is wide open, with no incumbent running, and voters, particularly younger ones, are often motivated to polls by big issues like war.

In trying to energize these voters, the campaigns are finding that video can be a big help, particularly in presenting the candidates as authentic.

"They are using it as an antidote to sound-bite politics," said Andrew Rasiej, co-founder of the online Personal Democracy Forum and a long-time advocate of bridging the digital divide. "They are posting more and more of their own video and in some cases incorporating video from supporters in the process."

Perhaps some will show up at the YouTube debate in something other than a dark suit. Some may even bring their own videos.

(c) 2007 International Herald Tribune. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.