Code Politics: Federal Party Leaders and Partisans on YouTube Spring 2007

Party Leaders on YouTube from May 25 to June 1, 2007

Highlights of past week:

Dion's leadership dominates partisan videos on YouTube: Harper's leadership goes unquestioned by top viewed videos for month of May

Liberal and Tory Bloggers both hype same Dion Speech/Video

Low Tech Liberals Out duel Tories on YouTube?: Tory ads flop online

Highlights of past week

Few new YouTube videos enter the top five as the house takes a break. Video rankings remain the same with a few exceptions in the top five. Overall viewership is down.

Research at Ryerson University’s Infoscape Research Lab has found that attack ads from the federal parties are up to thirty times more popular than policy focused videos on YouTube.

• Attack ads posted by the Conservative Party of Canada, for example, have averaged over 5000 views. Policy videos uploaded by the Tories on to YouTube, by comparison, averaged only 170 views per video.
• The popularity of attack ads was, however, much less pronounced for Liberal Party videos. Liberal Party attack videos averaged over 2600 views, while policy based videos averaged only 105 views per video.
• The federal NDP and Green parties have not yet posted attack ads on YouTube. The Bloc have restricted their videos to their website. The NDP policy ads have averaged 1491 views, whereas the Green averaged only 84 views per video.

Greg Elmer, Director of the Code Politics project, also noted that the findings mirrored previous research at Infoscape that noted the relative popularity of partisan bloggers videos on YouTube.

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

Highlights of past week: Sarkozy Media Prank top Youtube Video

Harper Videos

• The “Justiciers Masques” (96.9 CKOI FM), Marc-Antoine Audette and Sébastien Trudel, succeeded in prank calling Nicolas Sarkozy Sunday, for a few painful minutes after his election to the presidency of the republic of France. Thinking he was speaking to the prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, Nicolas Sarkozy stayed on the line with the Justiciers for almost three minutes before hanging up irritated. The incident was captured on audio (with image of Sarkozy) and uploaded onto Youtube.

Dion Videos

• Two Blogging Tories videos entered the top five Dion tagged videos on YouTube. Blogging Tories Catherine McMillan and Steve Janke both posted videos that mocked Stephane Dion’s green politics.

There were no new videos for any other federal leader.

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

Partisan Bloggers, Blogger networks, & Federal Politicians Dominate External YouTube External "Referrals", Facebook begins to incorporate videos

• A preliminary Infoscape study has found that a select number of partisan bloggers and federal politicians are dominating referrals to YouTube political videos. The study found that nearly 55% of all external links to YouTube videos are facilitated by bloggers embedding videos on their own respective websites. 13% of all external referrals are being made by federal politicians (namely, Garth Turner & Elizabeth May).
  

Highlights of last week

Critical Income Trust Video Continues to Grow on Youtube; Liberal Bloggers and Garth Turner turn back clock on Youtube to support new Party TV ads; Tory bloggers dissect Mansbridge’s Body language

Stephen Harper Videos

• A seemingly innocuous video of a Peter Mansbridge interview with Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert was the top viewed YouTube video last week (tagged by “Stephen Harper”). However, on closer examination we found that the video was first promoted and debated on the “Small Dead Animals” Blogging Tories site. A series of comments posted on the blog accompanying the embedded video target the CBC and question Mansbridge’s objectivity.
• There was almost a threefold increase in the number of weekly views of a critical video of Harper and the conservatives’ decision over income trusts.
• A “Three strike” violent crime and justice video was the second most viewed video this week. The video was posted by a film school student from Toronto and uses graphic content to draw attention to violent crime and a government proposal to introduce a “three strike rule” for harsher criminal justice.
• Lastly, the third most viewed video for Stephen Harper lampoons his recent public image / grooming issues.

Stephane Dion Videos

• The top video for Dion is a re-edited version of a previous official Liberal party TV advertisement. The original version was the second most watched video for Dion. The videos were posted one week apart (the first original video on April 18th, the second re-edit on April 25th). The more recent video, takes more of an attack stance, promoting Dion’s credentials and criticizing the conservatives on the climate change issue.
• Jason Cherniak (Liblogs) and MP Garth Turner blogs directed internet users to a YouTube video that sets the context in which Dion’s leadership played a starring role at the Montreal climate change conference. Even though this video was originally uploaded on January 31st , it received over 1000 viewings this past week. Cherniak and Turner used the YouTube video, a CBC news clip, to support the messages contained in the official Liberal Party’s new TV advertisements.

Gilles Duceppe Videos

• The top Duceppe video was taken from a talk show dealing with the controversial radio commentary of Jeff Fillion. Duceppe was a guest on the show and took part in the discussion.
• There were no new or significant videos for either Elizabeth May or Jack Layton.

Highlights of last week

New Liberal Advertisement Released on YouTube Gets Over 6,000 Views; Liberal / Conservative Blogger Videos Prominent This Week.

• There was a sharp increase in the number of views of YouTube videos related to Stephane Dion this week. Most of these views resulted from an official Liberal Party of Canada advertisement uploaded on April 18. The ad received 6,259 views in two days; the most views of any party leader YouTube content this week (and the highest of any clip since we began our tracking). Perhaps people have been waiting to hear a response from Dion to Harper’s frequent attack ads.
• Perhaps in response to the prominent Liberal bloggers’ videos last week, many Tory bloggers’ videos were in the top clips. Splattoman, a conservative blogger, had his videos appear in the top five viewed videos for Harper, Dion, and May; while none of the Liberal bloggers’ videos remained in the top clips this week.
• Surprisingly, even with the launch of the Liberal’s new website on April 17th, the Bloc Quebecois are the only Federal party to date whose website allows viewers to download and save video clips, which could then be sent virally to YouTube and other social networks independently. The Liberals and Conservatives host their videos on their websites, and instead prefer to load their ads to YouTube on their own. The NDP are the only party to link directly to YouTube.. This is an interesting point given the success of such tactics in the United States, especially in Barack Obama’s fund raising campaign.
• In the past three weeks, the total views for content tagged for Stephen Harper were higher than those tagged for Stephane Dion content, which is not surprising given that there is more material mentioning Harper on YouTube (see the chart below for the trend lines).
  

Highlights of last week

Olivia Chow’s Pet Project Takes Off, Green Party Candidate Raises the Bar, Quebec Political Videos Push Satire

• Olivia Chow’s own YouTube Video, uploaded in concert with a press release supporting her call for pet food regulation, topped the most viewed videos of the week. The video was viewed just over 1500 times last week after media reported the video on April 6.
• The Green Party candidate in Peterborough released some of the most polished campaign style videos this week.
  

Highlights of last week: Digital Partisans battle over copyright issues on Youtube, YouTube Video Stalks Conservative B.C. MP

This week saw a considerable jump in the popularity of pre-election YouTube videos, due in large part due to nation wide press reports on the release of Liberal blogger videos (charts ranking top viewed videos per leader follow below). The popularity of videos on Dion and the prime minister are considerably higher than those of the other party leaders (see bar chart below).