Viral Video Chart is a site that monitors viewing figures and other activities of videos on the internet. The webpage presents the current 20 most active clips on the World Wide Web. The vast majority of these are on YouTube.
As you can imagine, the past few months have seen the chart dominated - sometimes even saturated - with clips relating to the US election. These have included:
- Notable TV moments such as interviews and debates
- Campaign videos
- Personal messages (example here)
- Blunders (example here)
- Endorsement videos (example here)
- Clips caught on camera at rallies (example here, story here)
- Satirical videos and parodies (example here)
Incidentally, I have to take this opportunity to share my two personal favourite election video clips. Out of the hundreds that I have had to sit through (how else am I going to find material for this site?), I will never forget the following pair:
The first comes from a man called Stuart Shephard. Mr Shephard is just the sort of person who gives deluded right-wing, evangelical Christian extremists a bad name. Approximately a week before Obama was set to give his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in August, Mr Shephard posted this:
The best response came from YouTube user, johnfromberkeley:
Anyway, that’s a digression. The point is that YouTube has been a key player in deciding the outcome of this election. Do you remember the uproar over the number of houses that McCain was said to own? Or what about the time when McCain was forced to distance himself from the evangelical leader Rod Parsley? Both of these resulted from the efforts of a media company called Brave New Films, who, throughout the election, have been producing anti-Republican viral videos.
Last weekend, two nights before election night, Observer columnist, Henry Porter wrote:
“It is impossible to underestimate the influence of the web in this first YouTube election, in which film and images are shared at will outside the control of the traditional medium.”
Interestingly, whereas some might say that Obama has been on the receiving end of smears from the likes of Fox News (remember the terrorist fist bump?), others might suspect that YouTube has taken an anti-McCain stance. Last month, the McCain team accused the video-sharing site of being too quick to remove campaign videos following any accusation of copyright infringement (story here).
But this new medium was always going to be Obama territory. Theatre director Elizabeth LeCompte says:
People are starting to view politics as entertainment much more. That’s why the number of people voting is up. YouTube has made politicians entertainers. With satire there’s an incredibly powerful challenging of the powers that are, which I think is very healthy. There’s also a trivialising effect at the same time. But it is a change, because young people are going to be involved in politics in a way that they haven’t been before.
YouTube is still home to a huge amount of inane content. That is the nature of Web 2.0, the current climate of the internet which is defined in part by the rise of user-generated content. But it should not be defined by clips of talking cats and shoplifting seagulls. Obama won 66% of the under 30 vote. To the YouTube generation, this new medium is a way of life. Is this the coming of age of YouTube?
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Post election clips
The Viral Video Chart mentioned at the beginning of this article is, of course, still dominated by election-related video clips. Here are a few that have been particularly active since 4th November: