[youtube]RGKF2BZLdFY[/youtube]
YouTube has recently introduced citizentube. This channel kind of reminds me of Jon Udell’s post about recording local politics and making it widely available for a more nuanced look at a candidate’s stance on a wide range of issues. He also suggested here that the idea of making these resources widely available should not simply be for vitriolic attacks and mashups to garner viral attention, but rather for a closer analysis of what candidates are saying and how their own positions can be understood more comprehensively.
So, can we think of citizentube as one potential repository for these resources that we can then augment with a tool like Mojiti? I feebly tried a quick experiment along these lines here. Might a collaborative annotation tool like this broaden the possibilities for a more pointed “close reading” of what the candidates are saying? I am really starting to agree with an off-handed comment that the CogDog made at the NMC Conference on Video Converge: 2006/2007 is the year of the video! (Alan, am I misrepresenting what you said here?) The larger question now is how do we use it to make some kind of intelligent and responsible impact on 2008 and beyond.
You said:
“The larger question now is how do we use it to make some kind of intelligent and responsible impact on 2008 and beyond.”
My reply:
http://www.ExpertVoter.org
gary
Thanks for the comment Gary.
ExpertVoter looks interesting, but I have a question about the editorial process for submissions. According to the site:
So is this a video space for candidates to highlight their “official” and “authoritative” videos? If so -how is it different from their own websites? Does it just provide a space for the authoritative videos to co-exist side-by-side?
Part of what might make some combination of Citzentube and Mojiti interesting for the political process is the ability for people to think and record collaboratively what they believe is important on a wide range of topics. It would be quite interesting to make a whole host of resources available from the various candidates -not necessarily “official.” The process of seeing how candidates frame their arguments to different groups at different times in different regions might prove illuminating for a number of voters, but it also may not make it off the editing room floor before being posted to the official candidate’s video on their website. I guess a wider range of participatory democracy online (in this instance with video) would be closer to the ideal for some kind of intelligent and responsible impact. Does this make sense?
> So is this a video space for candidates to highlight their “official†and “authoritative†videos?
Yes.
> If so -how is it different from their own websites? Does it just provide a space for the authoritative videos to co-exist side-by-side?
Exactly. It’s basically a convenient place for people to compare candidate views on various issues without ever leaving the main page. If you’ve tried finding this sort of thing on the candidate website, you’ve seen that it’s often difficult, if not impossible to track them down. Many of these videos are NOT on the candidate sites. BTW, if you click on the name of the candidate, it will bring you to their official site.
I would also say that I don’t claim my site is the ONLY place voters should visit. For instance my site does NOT inform you about candidates who have changed their mind on issues. Or embezzled funds, etc. Nor does it cover certain issues not listed on my site. ExeprtVoter is just one tool among many.
gary
Jim,
I think I muttered something like this at the conference.
It’s hardly prophetic and I would not stake my life on exactly when it tipped, but at some point this year, it seemed not so out of the ordinary to see video clips as embedded media in blogs, web pages, email. The irony was that 14 years ago, it was a big leap to add embedded images to the pre-1993 text-only web.
And much more recently, the ability to include video into content was a hodge-podge of video formats, plugins, gnarly HTML, and it was not nearly as seemless as the YouTube/Google Vid tools now that make it so darned easy.