Politics and Social Media

Social media, namely Youtube has been a wonderful place for eleven year olds to share videos of them hitting their friends in the junk for several years now, and it's been a great success. One day, politicians thought that this would be a great possibility to be able to reach out to the younger voters, by posting videos online tailored to getting their votes.

Politicians making official posts on YouTube was an interesting step, because generally, political videos prior to this generally attacked Zionism, the CIA or the Americans adopting the gold standard, so you can see what these pollies are up against.

US President Barack Obama now has his own YouTube channel, which he championed during the run up toward the 2008 elections, saw him gain prestige as having a connection to the younger voter. Australian Prime minister Kevin Rudd has also made several YouTube addresses, which are sensationally hard to find, due to the possibly thousand to one parody ratio. If I didn't spend ten minutes actually looking for Mr. Rudd's own channel because i already knew he had one, I would have thought that his only YouTube penetration was eating his own earwax, and praising the communists in a shady re-subtitled video.

So is the online exposure actually worth the millions of parodies you're bound to receive? I'm not really sure about that. Being from the targeted demographic (A young, left leaning voter) I can tell you that I haven't watched Rudds' online videos, and nor could I give a damn. The videos are long, and full of obvious word turning. I'd much rather spend my time on YouTube watching someone get hit in the junk with a steamboat named Ivan the Mystical lay about.

There are some benefits to the online exposure however. There is indeed a large chunk of young voters that haven't had their attention spans destroyed by the mass media who will find these videos interesting and enlightening, and it is possible you could see a voter change in the polls due to this. However the inherent risks pose a serious risk to countering the trend of people actually watching the online posts. Posting video and audio online is literally GIVING that footage and sound to parody makers. they don't even have to try to get a hold of the footage anymore, because they can simply use a program to download it off YouTube. Turning it into mixes, completely removing context, anything they want, is possible with supplied footage from the politician himself. It's a considerable risk to take, when reputation in the politics game is everything.

Good parodies can be spawned however. Take a look at Obama Girl, a scripted video with an attractive young woman expressing her love and affection for Obama all the way through the campaign towards Obama's election. This young, intelligent girl no doubt had an effect on young male democratic voters, because let's face it. Most young men will do almost anything for a pretty face.

Produsage: the wonders of "Kid falls over lolol remix remix remix of a remix dubstep trance techno remix"

Produsage can be a wonderful thing. It allows a user to take a great piece of media, be it a film, a picture or even concept such as Star Wars, and then build on it in different ways than what the original creator had imagined. The Star Wars film series has managed to develop and blossom far beyond the scope of George Lucas thanks to the viewers at home writing their own fan fiction within the universe, and even making their own films (such as the hilarious and only slightly on topic: star wars kid)
This concept can be a pretty darn good idea when it comes down to it. A film gets released and is exposed to its target audience, such as the film "Downfall" being released to Germans, and the world war two minded. A hilarious youtuber then got their hands on a section of the film where Hitler has a hissy fit, and then subtitles about how much the new Halo game sucked. The films exposure has now exploded thanks to curious youtubers wondering what exactly it is that curious mustached fellow was saying to begin with.
So, old ideas are being reenergized and reused, and at the same time, people without access to a full film studio or publisher, are able to pimp their own creative additions to the already existing universes.

Which is totally awesome, until somebody manages to MAKE SEINFELD NOT FUNNY AND SERIOUS AND SAD, thank you very much, CollegeHumor.com.
Wikipedia is also a great example of produsage. The original content is there: The event, and information is slowly added and improved with the more people that visit the page that have worthy information. However, this free exchange of ideas and information can also lead to data being smudged with spam or bogus data. For instance, I knew a person who altered every word "Jew" in the Mountain Jews webpage, to "Dew" which to a high school kid was positively hilarious. A wonderful example of produsage.