Australia's "Google" Election: Labour and Liberals adopt new Youtube tactics

Executive report (Election day is November 24)

• Google's "Australia Votes" portal has pushed Australia's main political parties to make campaign videos explicitly for Google's subsidiary Youtube.
• Australia's two main contenders, incumbent John Howard (Liberal party) and Labour's Kevin Rudd (leading in the polls), have engaged in a series of 'response videos" where a leader shows a clip of their opponent's previous Youtube designed video before critiquing it. Some response videos have gone on to produce yet more video responses becoming "threaded" campaign discussions and debates, not unlike those found on listservs, emails, and other forms of internet communications.
• Unlike in other countries, including Canada, official party video in Australia have sometimes received as many views as uploaded TV clips and blogger's videos. Many Australian news outlets (most notably newspapers) have included links to the parties' Google votes channels.
• Australian campaign videos have received substantial views from outside of the country - in large part because of the tremendous growth of video aggregation sites around the world (which mirror videos hosted by larger sites like Youtube).
• Labour, unlike the Liberals, have used social networking and blogging as an effective means of referring internet users to campaign videos.
• The Australian media have provided John Howard with more Youtube video views (through hyperlink referrals) than Kevin Rudd. 36% of links to all videos on Youtube focusing on John Howard came from Australian media. Howard videos received 4% of links from international media. Conversely, the international media provided more links to all Kevin Rudd Youtube videos than the Australian media - a possible sign that international media are anticipating a Labour victory.

Backgrounder

Date of the vote is November 24, 2007. The writ was dropped on the 17th of October, for a total campaign duration of 39 days. The minimum is 33 days and the maximum is 68 days.

Official Party channels on Australia Votes (video)

Australian Labour

Australian Labour has had the most viewership of their videos since Oct. 17th. Their leadership candidate is Kevin Rudd. Labour / Rudd has 57 videos in total. 9 favorites.

Top 5 Rudd Pre-campaign videos

Australia Liberal Party

Australia Liberal Party has posted less viewership and has less videos than Labour, with 34 videos and no favorites.

Top 5 Howard Pre-Campaign Videos

Pre-campaigning is very important in Australia, which is much different than Canada. The viewership numbers in the pre-campaign period in the Australian case are very high. Average advertising campaign spending is $8.50 per voter in the USA and in Australia it is $1.20 per voter (Australian dollars Young, 2002). Australian election campaigns are publicly funded, with the Labour and Liberal National parties reimbursing 93% of campaign costs in 1996 (Ibid).

Genre / Style Analysis Rudd Pre-campaign

Pre-campaign video Findings: Three videos apply a "poached footage" and graphs / headlines style. Two of these focus on the same issue: interest rate increases by Howard. The top video is a word on the street style video that highlights 'average citizens' addressing the camera, some wearing Rudd T-shirts. Social conscience and anti-Iraq war protest were the major themes of this top video. A made for TV high production value video rounds out the top five, showing a fictional Howard in bed asleep despite multiple alarms (on the issue of climate change).

Genre / Style Analysis Howard Pre-campaign

Pre-campaign video Findings: A 'real-time' genre emerges in Howard's pre-campaign videos, the pattern is that of Howard addressing and commending YouTube and viewers while using the medium to announce daily events in advance of the 'real world' photo op or press conference. This strategy of taking the agenda setting initiative has been pioneered by the Australian Liberals and was effectively used by the Conservative Party of Canada in the last Canadian federal election. A further genre effect is the prevalence of Howard addressing the camera directly in an exclusive shot of the PM, a technique used in four of the five top pre-campaign videos. We speculate that this technique may be an attempt to capitalize on Howard's existing media profile, promoting familiarity. The pre-campaign videos also show one example of questioning Labour's economic competencies.

Top referral sites to the top 5 videos

Rudd Pre-Campaign Videos

Howard Pre-Campaign Videos

There is a marked difference in the use of social networking sites in pre-campaign referrals to the Howard and Rudd videos. Although, the majority of referrals to the Rudd videos came from the Australian media, video aggregators, bloggers and social networking sites, there was a greater plurality of referral types than for Howard's videos. Bloggers provided the referrals for many more of the Rudd pre-campaign videos than the Howard videos (28% to 4% respectively) suggesting that Howard has not been taken up in terms of Web 2.0 activity whereas Rudd has been to a greater extent. Howard's referrals are highly self-referential with 25% coming from his own Myspace account. However, the majority were Australian media and video aggregators. We suspect that video aggregators use Howard's content in order to boost their site traffic.

Campaign Videos Analysis

Top 5 Rudd Campaign videos

Top 5 Howard Campaign Videos:

Genre / Style Analysis Rudd Campaign

Rudd Campaign video Findings: A major theme of the top five Labour campaign videos is a unique and arguably postmodern "video thread" style. Three videos feature this format, wherein the video begins with TV showing a Howard video and then zooms out to show Rudd, holding a remote control, who stops the video. Rudd then goes on to refute Liberal "scare" tactics and present alternative narratives and issues. This 'video within a video' genre has also been taken up in response by the Howard campaign (see below) showing a 'viral' spread of genre effects within the campaign timeframe. The other two videos show high production value with one being a traditional television style ad including footage of the earth and of Rudd talking with Al Gore. The final video is done in a realistic faux-documentary style wherein an average working class mother questions the claims of the Howard government on the well-being of the working class.

Genre / Style Analysis Howard Campaign

Howard Campaign Video Findings: As mentioned above, the "video thread" genre-effect initiated by Labour here reverberates in the Liberal videos; the top most popular Campaign video for the Howard campaign begins with a TV playing a Howard video, then zooms out to show Rudd refuting the original, and then zooms out yet again in order to this final time show Howard holding the remote control, stopping the Rudd video and refuting its claims while sitting on a desktop. The other major theme of the Liberal campaign videos is demonization of Labour regarding Labour's union background, lack of originality on policy and the "risk" associated with giving power to Labour.

Top referral sites to the top 5 videos

Rudd Campaign Videos

Howard Campaign Videos

Social networking sites and blogs continued to provide the majority of the referrals for both the Rudd and Howard vidoes. The Howard campaign received dramatically more referrals from bloggers compared to the pre-campaign period with blogs accounting for twice the Howard video referrals than Rudd during the campaign. Most of these referrals are attributable to http://andrewlanderyou.blogspot.com/ [21] (an Australian anti-Rudd blogger who posted more videos with the commencement of the election). Australian media represented almost equal referrals for Howard and Rudd videos, indicating a nearly equal portrayal of the two campaigns in the domestic media. However, international media linked to Rudd videos in much greater number than Howard.

Unofficial Videos

References

Sally Young (2002) "Spot On: The Role of Political Advertising in Australia". Australian Journal of Political Science. Vol 37, no.1. PP.81-97