Interesting Ad
Quick bleg here: I'd love to get some commenters opinions on this Boing Boing post. Read more...
Shirky points us to a Youtube advertisement, featuring an Iraq War veteran arguing against Obama. The video is actually not all that important for the purposes of discussion. What is important is Clay Shirky's arguments about its mode of transmission.
It was seen 13 million times in 3 months, which topped Obama Girl in absolute views, and I've got a Crush...on Obama was up a year and a half. This is why this video is really really important: the simple message and Blair Witch production values (good enough to be effective, bad enough to seem unplanned) made this video like Democratic kryptonite. The video was largely circulated via homophilous forwarding along conservative channels...The video might as well not have existed for all it was seen in Democratic circles. Since the video's sole speaker can't be criticized without making the criticizer look churlish at best, almost no Dems forwarded it, linked to it, talked about it.
He's definitely right about that last part. I'm more politically tuned-in than 99.999% of the population, and I've never even heard of this ad. But the Youtube stats bear it out--this got more views than Obama Girl, and in much less time. It's possible that the stats were juked somehow, but in all likelihood, this was an absurdly popular video. Nevertheless, I had never heard of it, and it attracted almost no media attention (certainly much less than the Obama Girl spots, or the will.i.am "Yes We Can" song, which attracted just a million more views). So there are really a few questions here.
First of all, if you're reading this, let me know if you've seen the video in question. Am I the only one who missed this, through some improbable trick of fate? I'd be especially interested to hear from a conservative audience, but liberals should chime in as well. How could something be so widespread in one audience and so invisible in another?
Second: do you think the lack of mainstream attention hurt this video? Is will.i.am more effective just because he got mentioned on the evening news and CNN? Or is pure viral transmission enough to matter? I'm frankly not sure what my thoughts on this are.
Very Interesting
I had not seen this. I'm glad you brought it to my attention. The lack of mainstream press attention does not seem to have limited it's popularity. In fact, in the eyes of those who it was aimed at, the lack of mainstream media attention probably enhanced it's appeal and made it more "authentic".
I regularly listen to conservative talk radio (Sean Hannity, Savage Nation) because I think it is important to understand how these individuals are spinning and twisting the news. Quite frankly they are brilliant. They are dead wrong (and someitmes they outright lie), but they are very persuasive.
The far right accuses the mainstream media of having a "liberal" bias. Given the success of FOX News, this seems to be a rather outdated accusation, but it still has a lot of power in certain parts of the country. But, I think the left has failed to develop a persuasive progressive counterpoint to Talk Radio (I don't consider Air America to be a success and NPR is far too constrained).
But, perhaps this video provides a lesson. The demographic group most attracted to progressive ideas just happen to be the EXACT same demographic group attracted to the Internet. I believe the success of sites like Daily Kos and The Huffington Post underline my point. But, as good as these media outlets are, they are not as accessible to a broad enough demographic. Some kind of a radio or video blog, that could be easily streamed via the web may be the most effective means of communicating with the group of people most likely to be sympathetic to the progressive agenda.