Party Leaders on YouTube from May 4 to May 11, 2007

Highlights of past week: Blogging Tories Push Youtube Videos, Income Trust Investors Video Targets Harper

Harper and Layton saw slight increases in their views this week while the other leaders remained relatively stable. There were five new videos in our sample this week. Overall, this week's findings demonstrate clearly the link between referrals and their impact on creating a hierarchy of new videos viewed on YouTube. Particularly, referrals from specific blogs have an impact in terms of the ranking of the video on YouTube. For example, Small Dead Animals - a blog affiliated with the Blogging Tories network - seems to be a major 'feeder' of clips: if a clip is picked out by such a blog (as in the case with the top video clips for Dion and Layton), it increases in view count significantly. Furthermore, Tory affiliated blogs dominate on YouTube with two conservative blogs accounting for four out of five of the new top videos posted: www.no-libs.com and www.officiallyscrewed.com

Harper: Income Trust Investor Group Attacks Harper

• The last week's newly posted Canadian Income Trust Investors (CAITI) video that we predicted would begin to rank highly did indeed make it into the top five for Conservative tagged videos this week. Canadian Income Trust Investors (CAITI) posted a video critical of the government taxation of income trusts and complicity in foreign ownership increases. This is the first example in our dataset of a lobby group successfully breaking into the top five.

Dion & Layton: Highly Aggressive Attack Ads Most Viewed Clips for Dion and Layton

• One of the new videos for Dion this week is "Mr. Green" by Let Freedom Reign ( www.no-libs.com). The video poaches CTV content and shows Stephane Dion at home; it compares the green measures Dion takes in his house to the green measures taken by "Dick, an Albertan." The clip is a highly aggressive ad that implies both that Dion is "not really green" and is a bigot.
• One of the new videos for Layton is "Taliban Jack" by Let Freedom Reign ( www.no-libs.com), and was uploaded May 4th, 2007. The video features poached footage of question period that is strongly negative towards Jack Layton, suggesting that Layton is in favour of making documents protected for national security reasons public.
• Another top video for Dion is "Smackdown" by blogging tories' www.officiallyscrewed.com uploaded Dec. 12th, 2007, but has recently risen in views again. This clip shows Dion challenging Harper to a debate over environmental policy and emphasizes Harper's rebuttle as a "smackdown." Harper compares Dion's record on the environment to Alfonso Gagliano's record on public accountability.
• The other top video for Layton is "Hit the Road Jack Layton" by blogging tories' www.officiallyscrewed.com, uploaded September 11th, 2007. The video features poached footage of an NDP convention to question Layton's accuracy regarding childcare benefits program. This is an ongoing example of an older video returning to the top five during a slow week.

[1]Party Leaders on YouTube from May 4 to May 11, 2007

Stephen Harper

Stephane Dion

Jack Layton

Gilles Duceppe

Elizabeth May