The "Optics" of YouTube in CO

Once again, YouTube has come into play as an interesting netroot force in this years election cycle, this time in our own senatorial campaign. Mark Udall and Bob Schaffer's responses to five questions submitted by users were posted as part of the You Choose '08 spotlight series Tuesday. The questions drew on the recurring themes of this campaign--energy, unions, guns, water, and education--and were addressed with answers that have shown to be (on balance) equally worn.

Bellow are the candidates responses to the question, "would you consider implementing renewable energy tax credits?"





I think that there are a number of noteworthy things here.

YouTube Semiotics

In terms of aesthetics, which in such a venue translates to: "demonstrates web 2.0 literacy," Mark wins hands down. First, in terms of staging. Schaffer's backdrop is a ridiculously cluttered quilt of campaign viz signs (we get it, your name is Schaffer) that distract from the candidate himself, framed by two mostly off the screen flags. In contrast, Udall's set appears more professional, with a simple blue backdrop that emphasizes and pulls the candidate forward, while actually making the American flag and his sign more visible.

When looking at how the potential viewer sees the candidate themselves, once notices that Schaffer is positioned awkwardly low and to the left in the frame while the camera is, for some reason, located slightly to his right forcing him to look away from the viewer ("he was a shifty bloke, wouldn't look me in the eyes"). Udall, on the other hand, is shot strait on allowing him to "look the viewer in the eyes," and located centrally in the frame--just a natural bit left of the sign over his right shoulder.

The video and sound quality themselves are better in Mark's video than Bob's. Schaffer's video just looks washed out, while the sound has a sort of irritating echo-y metallic-y quality to it. The congressman's also shows the URL in the bottom of the screen, and goes to a clean "stand by your ad"-style closing slide. Bob on the other hand has to awkwardly tell the viewer to go to his website (and almost forgets to in the clip) at the end of each response, and ends with nothing but a smile. It's hard to maintain a narrative suggesting that Bob's experience as an oil executive indicates the sort of shrewd businessman we want in office when his campaign's output is this lo-fi.

I think that the "optics" of this video suggest more than just the banal truism that Republican candidates aren't particularly tech savvy. For Schaffer, the composition of this video emphasizes his lesser stature, and makes him appear shifty, bouncing around but never looking the viewer in the eye, hiding in the corner of the frame: this of course signifying--and likely triggering ripe memories of--8 years of lies that served only to promote the interests of a ruling elite whose wallets were saturated with oil. The aforementioned low video and sound quality itself recalls all the other slipshod government outputs of the last 8 years: the Katrina response, the Iraqi reconstruction contracts, Walter Reed etc.