OPEN

According to the Viral Video Chart, half of the top ten most linked to videos online are connected with US politics including:

1. Kerry belittles US troops

3. Bush: “Kerry comments insulting and shameful”

8. IMUS: Please stop it. Stop talking. Go home, get on the bike.

9. New DCCC ad: “New direction”

10. Vernon Robinson for Congress

The videos are a strange mix: a ten second soundbite from a former Presidential candidate, a brief interview on a news programme which I don’t understand the context of, and a couple of the “attack ads” that US election campaigns are so famous for.

Kennedy beat Nixon in 1960 in part because he performed better in a TV debate. In fact, because he looked better – TV viewers polled after the debate thought he’d won, while radio listeners thought Richard Nixon had come out on top.

I wonder what the influence of YouTube will be on this election? It’s not the same deal of course, because we’re dealing with networks and super-abundance of content, whereas the 1960 debates took place when industrial / channel / mass media was at its height of influence.

NB: All of the above videos are hosted on YouTube while nearly all the non-politics related videos are on MySpace Videos (one other on YouTube and the other Google Videos (remember them)).

Does that say something about the relative demographics of the services? Perhaps that YouTube has a much broader reach as a platform and that it almost certainly has a more diverse age demographic.