BackGetting it right on YouTube
YouTube has the potential for effective political use. But mastering it requires a degree of agility
Premium(Ramesh Pathania/Mint)
Talking eagerly about using social media is one thing. Getting it right is another.
Does the Congress party have a YouTube channel? Do its people know which one it is? Three or four pop up when you search, and the real McCoy is called Indian National Congress. The exclusive interview with Sonia Gandhi done by Rajdeep Sardesai on this one dates back to 2005. Hasn’t the lady given any after that?
You are also likely to get Congress India with a bunch of very modestly viewed Rahul Gandhi videos (less than 200 views) and a whole lot of the party’s Jai Ho films, some heavily viewed, but all four years old. Another called the Indian National Congress channel seems to be the handiwork of a man called Sathar al Karan whose face features on the masthead. Several videos of Priyanka and Sonia Gandhi, some one year old, others four years old. But high on the first page of Google links would be the Indian National Congress channel auto generated by YouTube, It puts the most accessed videos first, mostly rude ones uploaded by Congress baiters.
Rather than Twitter and its daily one-upmanship, it is YouTube which has the potential for effective political use. But mastering it requires a degree of agility which the social media managers of the Congress party don’t seem to have acquired. Narendra Modi’s YouTube channel and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s YouTube channel do better. Both draw on the Internet TV channel the party has set up called YuvaTV. The latter is busy dishing out aggressive videos which use the ruling coalition’s assertions (including the Aamir Khan “kuposhan" advertisements on malnutrition) to slam the government. It also has an aggressive video on secularism. All being lapped up by the supposedly BJP-inclined Indian Internet population? Not yet. Just some 300-plus views for this one.
The rules are commonsensical really. Don’t upload entire speeches, splice them under different topics. Ditto with recordings of Google Hangouts. But the Indian National Congress has entire speeches of its three top leaders. The PMO (Prime Minister’s office) channel on YouTube is more selective. The speech with most views is the one the PM made after Delhi gangrape (16,000-plus views), and one on what inspires Manmohan Singh (5,000-plus.)
Other rules: make all those TV discussions on myriad channels work for you by repurposing what they have aired. If the politician manages to deflate the anchor questioning him, even better. Sample: “Narendra Modi mocking at the foolishness of media channel Aaj Tak" from the Modi channel on YouTube.
Does Rahul Gandhi have a YouTube channel? Unsurprisingly for this self-deprecatory gent, no. The chuckle-inducing videos of him are to be found on Modi’s channel. The earnest ones on the Indian National Congress channel.
Political parties, apart those that want to sharpen the debate on the elections, use the same platform and approach. The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) has a YouTube channel—National Election Watch. And they have learnt the rules too—if you do not want to make your own videos, you upload those segments of TV programmes in which you feature. ADR also links to the videos they have made featuring Aamir Khan, on choosing your politicians well.
A Brookings Institution research paper lists the elements of clarity required in selecting material for YouTube. Is the intention to provoke fear, or anger, or is it to inspire specific action, as a three-part comradely chat by Modi seeks to do? Is the intended audience partisan supporters or those with minds not made up, seeking more information?
A nimble YouTube operation when adequately publicized among the party’s own rank and file would provide ammunition at the local level to counter the allegedly misleading statistics that the opponent may dish out. We’ve seen various Congress party leaders countering what Modi tosses out on TV. Are those counter statements uploaded on their party’s channel? No. Never a slouch in pushing their own use, YouTube and Google have come up with their own toolkits for the political class. One piece of wisdom on offer: “Control the story. Stay ahead of the news cycle by posting videos in response to current events. Media sources will often incorporate your videos into their stories."
The classic election operation when this platform was deployed was the Obama campaign in 2008 and 2012. They had live streaming of the Democratic National Convention on the party’s YouTube channel masthead. A nice touch.
Finally, both main contenders for 2014 have some way to go in getting the YouTube pitch right. Modi’s populist video projections (riding poker-faced in a public bus, surrounded by bemused fellow commuters, then getting off with commandos in tow) smack of trying too hard. Will the BJP’s Mr. Smart learn to get it right? And will the Congress’s Mr. Diffident learn to make less convoluted submissions? The online audience is not a captive one.
Sevanti Ninan is a media critic, author and editor of the media watch website thehoot.org. She examines the larger issues related to the media in a fortnightly column.
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