Obama Will Use YouTube to Reach Out Directly to Voters

Obama Will Use YouTube to Reach Out Directly to Voters

President-elect Barack Obama will add a new media wrinkle Saturday to his weekly radio address: the first YouTube video version, to be posted on both his transition site and the popular Internet video site.

It's the first visible result of a major transition-team effort to make Obama's conversations with the electorate more direct. In addition, members and supporters of the White House media upgrade want more input opportunities for the public.

Many of the changes, if adopted, also would curb the power of a traditional but often unpopular middleman between presidents and the populace: the mainstream media.

Alan Rosenblatt, who directs Internet activism efforts at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, predicts that Obama's future videos will break through radio's five-minute limit to become a communications form of their own.

Indeed, in a 2007 YouTube interview, Obama said he intended to use the medium for "fireside chats."

YouTube, which wasn't a factor in politics until 2006, proved a cheap, powerful and effective tool for Obama. It drew more than 110 million viewers for his 1,800 campaign-related videos.

Another proposal before the transition team is to give Obama's Internet audience a chance to question him directly, either as part of a traditional news conference or separately.

Andrew Rasiej, the founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, and others envision an online voting system that enables Internet respondents to decide together what the most important questions are to ask the president.

A prototype of sorts went live this week at www.Obamacto.org. It's enabled thousands of respondents to vote on what the top priorities should be for a new position that Obama has created, chief technology officer.

(The leader late Friday, with more than 10,000 votes, was "ensure the Internet is widely accessible & network neutral," which Obama backs. Not so the second-ranked priority, repealing the USA PATRIOT Act.)

"If 10,000 people say they want Obama to answer a question, he's probably going to respond," said Rasiej, whose group seeks to use the Internet to enhance participation in government, promote its transparency and produce grass-roots political effects.

Whether Obama responds at a news conference or in a separate message to his Internet questioners, Rasiej said, they'd make news. And they'd usurp the power of traditional journalists to ask questions.

November 14, 2008

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