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View Full Version : White House vs. Town Hall Meetings on YouTube




expendibleater
08-30-2009, 10:39 PM
http://www.tubemogul.com/blog/2009/08/the-white-house-vs-town-hall-meetings-on-youtube/ (http://www.tubemogul.com/blog/2009/08/the-white-house-vs-town-hall-meetings-on-youtube/)

http://content.screencast.com/users/david.burch/folders/Jing/media/3753a82b-ebef-41cd-9608-0f65b09d2c59/2009-08-17_1524.png

While the White House gets more daily views on YouTube than any politician (by far), Obama’s new media team is starting to hit diminishing returns. Consider: July was the White House’s worst month in terms of views since the channel was created back in January, and White House videos are receiving the lowest ratings (i.e. “users give this video x stars out of five”) on record (see above).

It’s worth noting that this is coming at the same time as something of a resurgence on the right, as conservatives and libertarians crowd health care town hall meetings to heckle officials. Whether the events were “astroturfed” or not, they went viral, racking up 6,198,707 views in the past few weeks. Of course, spectacle and hyperbole tend to play well on YouTube, so whether these views represent a political force to contend with remains to be seen.

YouTube - Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee talks on the phone as a woman asks a question at a town hall event (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L3FnWNkIzU)