Online Video: A Big Deal for Politics?

My archive of campaign video used to grow in October of even-numbered years and sit idle the rest of the time. Since January it has grown every single week, and almost none of the new clips came from a television broadcast. That shift is the clearest evidence I can offer that online video matters for politics, though perhaps not in the way the excited coverage suggests.

The clip every campaign remembers

On August 11, 2006, Senator George Allen of Virginia, campaigning in the southwestern corner of the state, pointed at a young volunteer from his opponent's campaign who was filming the event and called him "macaca." The volunteer, S.R. Sidarth, was doing what trackers do: recording the other side's appearances in case something newsworthy happened. Something did. The footage was posted online, picked up by newspapers and cable, and replayed for weeks.

Allen, once mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, lost his Senate seat in November to Jim Webb by fewer than 10,000 votes out of more than two million cast. Plenty of factors shaped that race, including a national environment unfriendly to incumbents of his party, and nobody can isolate the effect of one clip. But every campaign manager in both parties took the same lesson: a single unscripted moment, captured on a cheap camera, can now define a candidate.

What changed in the last six months

Three developments since that summer have turned video from a hazard into a central channel.

First, Google announced in October that it would buy YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock, and the deal closed in November. Whatever one thinks of the price, the purchase signaled that the largest video sharing site is not a passing fad and will have resources to keep growing.

Second, candidates began using web video for their most important announcements. In January, several Democratic hopefuls revealed exploratory committees or full campaigns through videos posted on their own sites, speaking straight to the camera in living rooms and offices. Republican hopefuls have been posting speeches and interviews on YouTube as well. The format is now normal for both parties.

Third, outsiders proved they can compete with campaigns for attention. Earlier this month an anonymous user posted "Vote Different," a remix of Apple's famous 1984 Macintosh commercial that places Senator Hillary Clinton's image on the giant screen and ends with a logo for Senator Barack Obama's campaign. The Obama campaign has said it had no involvement. Neither campaign paid for it, nobody bought airtime for it, and it has nonetheless drawn enormous view counts and repeated replays on cable news. Its maker remains unidentified as I write.

Two kinds of video, two different economics

From the archive's perspective, political video now splits into two categories that behave very differently.

The last two rows worry campaigns most. A TV ad that backfires can be pulled. A web clip, once copied and reposted, cannot be pulled back by anyone.

The disclaimer row worries me as an archivist. For every web clip I save, I now log the page address, the date I captured it, the uploader's account name, the view count at capture and whether any campaign has claimed or disowned it. Uploads vanish, accounts close and copies get re-edited, so that metadata is often the only way to reconstruct who said what first. A broadcast spot comes with a filing trail; a web video comes with whatever notes someone thought to keep.

The advice I hear, and why I doubt it

A popular line among consultants right now is that low production values are an asset online. The argument says shaky, homemade video feels authentic, so campaigns should stop spending on polish and just point a camera at the candidate.

My archive suggests otherwise. The widely shared clips from this winter fall into two groups. One group is accidental footage like the Allen recording, which spread because of what was said, not how it was shot. The other group, including the 1984 remix, is carefully produced. "Vote Different" is not rough at all; it reuses a commercial directed by a famous filmmaker and edits it with real care. Its power comes from craft applied to a familiar image.

The candidate announcement videos sit in the middle. They look informal, but the lighting, framing and scripting are deliberate. An informal look and a careless production are different things. Viewers forgive simplicity; they do not forgive dull, and they quickly notice when "casual" is a costume.

So the real lesson is not that cheap beats expensive. It is that distribution no longer costs much, which shifts the scarce resource from airtime money to ideas and editing skill. A campaign with a modest budget and a talented editor can now compete for attention with a much richer rival. So can an anonymous supporter, an opposition researcher or a college student with a laptop.

What campaigns should expect

Based on the clips piling up so far, here is what I expect for the rest of this cycle, regardless of which party a campaign belongs to:

• Trackers everywhere. Every public appearance will be filmed by someone with an interest in a mistake. Candidates will grow more guarded, and spontaneous moments may get rarer.
• Response videos. Campaigns will answer critical clips with their own uploads within hours, not days.
• Disputes over authorship. As more unsigned videos circulate, journalists will spend real effort tracing who made them, and campaigns will be pressed to disown material that helps them.
• Old footage resurfacing. Interviews and speeches from years ago, digitized and posted, will come back during debates over a candidate's consistency.
• Archives as accountability. Researchers and bloggers will build collections like mine, which makes every statement easier to compare with later ones.

So, a big deal?

Yes, though not because online video replaces television. Broadcast spots will still absorb most campaign budgets in 2008, especially in the general election. Online video matters because it changes who can speak, how long a moment lasts and how hard it is for any campaign to control its own image. That cuts against every candidate equally.

Lena's recent post asked whether candidates are talking with us or talking to us, and video sharpens that question: a campaign's YouTube channel can be pure broadcast, while the comment threads beneath it are as unruly as any blog. I will keep cataloguing new clips under online video, and the earlier debate about ads on partisan blogs is worth rereading as paid and unpaid media start to blur.