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Caught in the web

By Kevin Steel ⋅ April 9, 2007 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

Internet video could have a big impact on the next federal election

First it was innovators like Matt Drudge shaking up the political scene by using the Internet to break stories the mainstream media wouldn’t report–including Drudge’s scoop about Monica Lewinsky. Then it was bloggers, citizen journalists and commentators challenging the established order with raw and edgy opinions. Now get ready for Canada’s next political volcano, Internet video. Still in its infancy in the last federal election, Internet video has since exploded.

Political parties are already gearing up, though they won’t talk specifics. Tait Simpson, a Liberal party communications officer, believes Internet video will be huge in the coming campaign. “Where blogging was once pushing the boundary, now video is pushing boundaries,” says Simpson. It’s actually already started, he says, with Liberal supporters responding quickly with several video parodies to answer negative ads run by the Conservatives. The party has also started what it calls LiberalTV, one person with a camera walking around Parliament. Someone using the nickname “liberalvideo” has already posted 23 videos on YouTube, mostly clips of leader Stéphane Dion.

Conservative party spokesman Ryan Sparrow is tight-lipped regarding his party’s strategy and will only speak about Internet video in the most general terms. “I think it would be poor communications form for governments and parties not to utilize as many communications tools and devices as possible to get their message out,” he says. Whether Internet video will have the impact in Canada’s next election that it did in the U.S.’s November vote remains to be seen, Sparrow says.

Last summer, Virginia Senator George Allen, a Republican, was caught on video jokingly using the word “Macaca”–an obscure racial slur–while referring to a young Democrat at a campaign stop in a small town in the southwest corner of his state. Posted on the Internet, the video spread like wildfire, becoming known as the Macaca Incident. Within a week, Allen’s lead in the polls dropped 17 per cent and kept spiralling downward. He wound up losing what was thought to be a safe seat for the Republicans, and with that his party lost control of the Senate.

Allen’s gaffe coincided with a surge in popularity of the main player in the Internet video market, YouTube, where the Macaca Incident first appeared. The website allows anyone to sign up for free and post almost any type of video, from amateurish, grainy webcam productions to clips of professionally made films. Videos can be easily linked and viewed from any other website.

YouTube was launched in February 2005, though it didn’t make its official debut until October of that year, just a few months before Canada’s election. By the summer of 2006–right around the time Senator Allen stuck his foot in his mouth–YouTube was ranked as one of the Internet’s most popular sites. Last October, web giant Google bought the site for US$1.65 billion. And YouTube has a host of competitors–Myspace, IFilm, LiveVideo, Veoh and Putfile, among others.

Elections Canada spokesperson Anna Erasmo says Internet video falls under Section 3.19 of the Canada Elections Act, and is therefore regulated as a possible campaign expense during an election. That means any videos posted before an election aren’t subject to the law. With the cost of production so low and distribution mostly free, Internet video is virtually unregulated by Canada’s election law.

Unregulated might sound like a blessing politically, but as the Macaca Incident illustrates, it can quickly become a curse. University of Alberta communications professor Marco Adria believes we’ll see more of this kind of video, and that it’s going to create problems for political campaigns. “Increasingly, it’s difficult for people running for office to keep things under control and present themselves in the way they would like,” Adria says. Instead, things pop up from their past or from areas of their life they would prefer people not see, and these things cycle among the various media with the mainstream–television, newspapers–validating things on the web.

In the last federal election, voter turnout increased for the first time in many cycles. No one is sure why, though the popularity of blogs did stir up some excitement. Internet video could have a similar impact. It might not raise the tone of the debate, but it sure will be fun to watch.

[This article appeared in the April 9, 2007 issue of the Western Standard.]