Greetings Blue Blog! My name is Thea Cole and I’m a Senior in the lovely School of Industrial and Labor Relations. I am one of few ILRies interested in Human Resource Management—no law school for me. (WARNING: shameless plug for my organization coming) I am President of Society for Human Resource Management here at Cornell and I encourage anyone interested to come check us out in the ILR School.
Honestly, I barely knew what a blog was before this past summer when my boss introduced me to the notion of a professional blog. I was intrigued and a little perplexed by the fact that these hard-working businesspeople took the time out of their lives to share their expertise with the world via internet. But I digress, because this is not the internet phenomena that I wanted to discuss. What has truly surprised me is YouTube’s appearance in the media.
YouTube definitely falls into Wallace’s seventh category: interactive video and voice. Last year I separated myself from the YouTube fad for fear of procrastinating my life away. Now, fast forward to this summer—where I was trapped in my hotel room with nothing to watch except for CNN; imagine my surprise when the “YouTube Democratic Debate” was announced to begin. What?!—a chance for any YouTube user to submit a video-message question to the eight Democratic Presidential candidates. I was intrigued. I must admit that it was the most captivating political debate that I have watched in a long time. Was using YouTube for a debate a way to attract the younger crowd of US citizens who refuse to vote? Is YouTube the way to give a voice to the “Common (Wo)man?” How will “user-generated video” evolve and influence political campaigns in the future?
Sidenote: If you are submitting your question to the Democratic Presidential Candidates to be aired on CNN, please edit your video. There is no reason the camera should be up your nose or that your question is riddle with “umm”s and “eerr”s. Isn’t editing the beauty of submitting a question through video versus in person. Wouldn’t you want to put your best foot forward? Sorry, my own personal venting.
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3 comments:
Hi Thea! I must agree; I was surprised with the YouTube Debates as well. I found the videos very enlightening. The format was very interesting - inviting members to submit questions rather than the host.
I think an interesting part of this site is the asynchronous discussion forum it has developed into. YouTube now allows you to tag other videos you respond to, which forms an intricate web of responses. YouTube has almost become an online video forum.
In regards to the YouTube Debates, this event was highly asynchronous in regards to the interaction between video submitters and the politicians. The discussion it engendered was highly synchronous (and face to face).
I think it is also very interesting to analyze the distinct environments and media used during just this one debate - the Internet, TV, and Face to Face!
Hey Thea.
Yea I agree with everything you as well as jennifer both said. I really do think that having Presidential debates on Youtube is a sign of how far we have come as a country. Not only does it show how important the Internet is these days, but it also shows how much the political world recognizes that it is not just kids anymore playing around on the Internet.
No longer is the Internet simply a playground for teens. More and more members of older generations are reaching out on the Internet to learn new ways of communication. Placing a Presidential debate on youtube only affirms even moreso that the Internet has become accesible to everyone.
I also agree that one thing you could have mentioned was the fact that youtube is asynchronous, and especially in relation to the political debates, it is amazing to think that someone can long on three weeks before the election in order to re-watch the debate or read people's comments.
I like the points you made though!
YouTube has definitely taken off since Google acquired it, and the Democratic Debate is a clear example of the positive direction the video-hosting site is headed.
The Google transaction also came with a large crackdown on the censorship policies and the removal of many popular movie clips and professional sports highlights.
The Debate found a clever way to get people interacting in a synchronous discussion about political events using a website many people perceived to be about sharing random funny and extreme videos like many other of the websites out there, and the Debate actually takes advantage of that fact.
Since there are so many high school and college kids using video hosting sites, YouTube was a good forum not just to spur intellectual discussion on the web, but spark the political consciousness of teenagers.
YouTube campaigns seem to me to be a great idea to attract a younger audience. I know my friends and I would be much more likely to watch YouTube debates than sit through an hour of a debate on CNN.
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