Politics as Usual? When and Why Traditional Actors Often Dominate YouTube Campaigning

ABSTRACT

This research explores the extent to which YouTube helps democratize campaigns by allowing nontraditional political actors to be heard. We examine political advertisements posted on YouTube in races for the U.S. Senate in 2010. We find that ads posted by citizens and quasi-political organizations are viewed just as often as ads sponsored by some traditional electoral actors, such as parties and interest groups, but that ads sponsored by candidates are most likely to be viewed. However, news media coverage of ads posted online by nontraditional actors is dwarfed by coverage of traditional television advertisements.

KEYWORDS:

• Media coverage
• online political advertising
• political campaigns
• YouTube

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Mike Franz for helpful comments on this research, and we thank the Knight Foundation, the Sunlight Foundation and Wesleyan University for their support for the collection of the advertising data.

Notes

1. We chose these races because they were at least somewhat competitive. Indeed, all but two of the races ranked in the top two competitiveness tiers by CQ. We do not have data from West Virginia, which was rated as a toss-up, nor Connecticut’s race. The Arkansas race was the only one included that was ranked by CQ as a lean (Republican). Although this sample does not allow us to speak to all Senate races, it makes sense to focus on competitive races given that most of the advertising and media coverage are concentrated there.

2. We were unable to code some videos because they were “private videos” that ContextMiner was able to track but that we were not authorized to view. This is unlikely to have biased our sample because these restricted “private videos” likely had few viewers. There were also a small number of videos that we were unable to code because the video had been taken down before our downloading began.

3. Coders were asked: “In your judgment, is the primary purpose of the ad to promote a specific candidate, attack a candidate, or contrast the candidates?”

4. Our specific search was: (ad OR advert* OR video) AND (Candidate1Name OR Candidate2Name OR Candidate3Name) AND senate.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Travis N. Ridout

Travis N. Ridout is Thomas S. Foley Distinguished Professor of Government and Public Policy at Washington State University. His research interests are in political communication, campaigns, and political advertising.

Erika Franklin Fowler

Erika Franklin Fowler is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and Co-Director of the Wesleyan Media Project. Her research examines political communication in elections and health policy contexts with an emphasis on local media and political advertising.

John Branstetter

John Branstetter is a doctoral candidate in political theory in the Department of Political Science at the University of California–Los Angeles. His research interests include the politics of language, the history of political concepts, and translation theory.

Porismita Borah

Porismita Borah is Assistant Professor in the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, Washington State University. Her main areas of research are political communication and emerging communication technology.