YouTube and U.S. politics

There’s something about YouTube. It’s a phenomenon. You intend to look for one thing and find yourself an hour later watching more or less topic-related videos. Today it was just the same. But what I found is too good to keep it to myself. My original intention was to see how U.S. parties and politicians use YouTube. I will still write about it, but more than that I will give you a sample of good links that I found today researching my topic. I had a good laugh or two that I wouldn’t want you to miss.

But let me start with videos broadcasted by politicians intentionally. There’s, of course, the weekly republican address. I couldn’t tell you more about the video I found than you can read in the headline. I was too distracted by the representative’s eyes. He was obviously reading from a teleprompter. But it made him look so nervous that I got totally distracted. Poor performance. Next I found an election ad. Though, those are surprisingly hard to find among all the funny clips related. This one is from Massachusetts and I find it representative for American election campaign commercials. Some music in the background, a populist message, then the face of the guy who is going to save the country and finally a ridiculous remark like: “Enough is enough.”

But let’s come to the fun part. Not that those weren’t funny, because they DID have a humorous tone. YouTube comes in handy, when you want to have some insight to crazy stuff happening in a politician’s everyday life. Of course you can see them on the news as well, because most of them are taken from news shows. But on YouTube they live on for everyone to see. For example: Did you know that President Obama got called a liar by a politician while speaking? Or did you see of one of his funniest speeches ever? Where he actually opened his address by saying that he really doesn’t want to be there?! Where else would you see a fan-made video about upcoming elections that refers to Hillary Clinton as “Monica Lewinsky’s ex-boyfriend’s wife”?! And where else would you find all the hesitating answers of politicians when being asked questions about war, comfortably cut together?! 

Some videos are really just funny, some might be offending. Some are totally made up, but they get you thinking about incidents. Just like the funny clip about the Florida voting machine.

YouTube is a channel that is extremely connected with politics. It’s used by politicians themselves (more or less successfully) or used to make fun of speeches. And in this way it’s a way to shape and contribute to debates about politics. And it’s an entertaining way to do so. Of course one cannot take everything at face value. A lot is exaggerated or even made up. But still…!

There’s one last video that really left a lasting impression. It’s a campaign video for Barack Obama. It was created with the help of a lot of celebrities. You see, there are some out there who know how to use the internet. There are some that actually can.

by US_watch

Konrad Adenauer: The first German chancellor on Facebook

Their pictures can be found at the walls of party-offices, their names are used in many speeches. Not unusual, even when the politician is dead. But on Facebook or on Twitter?

Most prominent is the profile of “DerFuehrer” , who is followed by about 25.000 people. Some examples of his last tweets: “Jätzt, wo där Papst Komdomä ärlaobt hat, kann ich Eva nächt mehr längär hinhalten. Das wird mir die Kirche bößen!“ or „ Wänn jätzt allä nor noch öbär Fäisbock kommonizierän, solltä ich da wohl zögigäst einmarschierän.“Sometimes they just want to be funny, but most times you can also read a political message between the lines.

But let’s come to an „ordinary“ profile of a dead politician: Konrad Adenauer. He has, believe me, an own Facebook profile. But this time, no one pretends to be the politician (as done at many other fake profiles” but it is always spoken from “Konrad” instead of “I”. I’d call it an ode to Konrad Adenauer. There are posted many famous quotations, but there also questions posted similar to “What would Konrad say about the rescue of Opel?”. At that point, there seems to be a bigger possibility for participation that at the “active” profiles of politicians.

Unfortunately, the good old Konrad Adenauer died a second death, At the end of 2009, the last entry was posted. But his fans haven’t stopped commenting and haven’t stopped posting at his wall. Goodbye, and maybe we will see you on Twitter nex time. Everything's possible.

P.S.: If you are actually not interested in dead politicians, check out this link and you’ll find a list of other dead celebrities on Facebook.

by Ger_watch

Connect with a dead president via fb

It’s not unusual for a president to have a facebook account. What is surprising, is that a dead president of the United States has a facebook page that totally resembles a normal profile. Richard Nixon, a very controversial president seems to have a huge fan community. Though he died in 1994, his page is updated daily, sometimes several times a day. People post videos and photos of the 37^th president of the U.S.

At first glance it’s make-believe all over the place. The visitor gets the impression it’s a totally usual profile. I caught myself thinking “Wait, isn’t he dead?” for a second as well. This goes on at the information tab. Birthday, hobbies, political view…the usual. It’s not until the middle of the page when the person behind the page reveals that this is a tribute to Nixon. It’s stated that everyone is welcome to contribute positively or negatively, but with due respect. I’m wondering how they would know what his favorite quote was. I hardly doubt he wrote it down in his diary. “A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.” The dead president further reveals that he was a Quaker and likes politics and pianos. That he was conservative is not hard to guess, though.

The page’s goodies are the photos of Nixon. Only 13 wall photos, but 73 photos contributed by others. At first it’s the usual: Nixon in Egypt, Nixon with other politicians, Nixon and Dr. King, Nixon and his family. This is a very cute picture of him with his spouse, two children and a dog taking a walk along the beach. There’s also an old photo showing a young Nixon at the College football team. My favorite photo of him has been taken in China. Nixon tried to eat with chopsticks – the look on his face is priceless.

It’s true: Facebook connects people all over the world – and far beyond that. “Until death do us part” may refer to wedding vows, but it is not valid for a president’s relationship to his facebook account.

by US_watch

Tweets of the German party "SPD"

The Twitter-account of the German party “SPD” is quite active. At some days they tweet more than ten times. But that’s is not such a big miracle, as tweeting the links to your own webside is not the biggest exercise. I guess that twittering is a popular duty for trainees. Probably they copy & paste the sentence “*… in an interview with *” and then they complete with names as Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Andreas Nahles or anyone else and the medium “FAS” “spiegel online” or “SZ”.


Unfortunately, the account stays quite anonymous, it is not clearly to see, who is actually twittering. From my point of view, you have to see some faces behind the account to be able to communicate and participate.

To be fair, the SPD also tweets articles from their followers, but mainly from their own members or local organizations. What is missing, is the participation of followers. Why don’t they ask their followers for their opinion on the subjects they tweet? Only one time the last few days they asked if any follower has blogged something about an SPD-subject.


At least they use some hashtags for popular subjects as #zensursula, #Dioxin or #HartzIV.

“Pr-Blogger” has also published his impression of the SPD-Twitter-Account. He criticizes that the party responds too seldom to followers.


Another useful link: www.parteigefluester.de gives a live-overview of current tweets of every party and also of their politicians. At the moment Sven Kindler of the Green party tweets: “Nice interview in the Spiegel-magazine about Castor, protests and democracy”. And on the other hand you can see the reaction of an FDP-member directly to Sven Kindler: “For this stuff, the Spiegel is always good”. 

By Ger_Watch

Democrats on twitter

Twitter: some use it to tell all their followers that they need to go to the bathroom, are riding the bus or are bored. It’s used vastly by individuals in very different ways. But not only individual persons use twitter to shout out to the world without raising their voice. Whole groups can have a common twitter account. And of course parties wouldn’t miss to use this way of communication.

I took a closer look at the Democrat’s twitter profile. They have nearly 2700 tweets. They tweed several times a day, sometimes every hour and make it to more than 12 tweets a day. I guess you could describe the Democrats as active twitter users. They provide their followers with links and very often they link to their news blog.

Last week they tweeted a lot about president Obama’s State of the Union Address. They provide information and news. But sometimes they can be very entertaining. For example this tweet: “Exercise your right to vote—for our newest State of the Union T-shirt design.” Apart from trying to sell some merchandise and getting everyone to watch the address, they also thought of new and fresh ways to approach this issue. I found the following too funny to be true: Find out who's sitting with First Lady Michelle Obama at the State of the Union. The link that followed led the reader to the website of the White House, where everyone could click on little chairs to find out who will be sitting where. A little window with a picture and a description of the person popped up. The who is who of the white house.  

So now it’s your turn. Tell us what you think about the Democrats twitter profile. Is it a good way to bring politics to everyone’s cell phone or just a ridiculous attempt to be up-to-date?! #Judge now#

by US_watch

A German blogging politician

Unfortunately, only a few well-known politicians have an own weblog. Therefore, I will examine the blog of a local politician: Rainer Zeimentz, mayor of the town “Koblenz”. According to the “Rheinzeitung”, he invests several hours per day for updating his weblog.

One of his latest post comments on the reactions of media on the subject: “How to cope with muslim children at school.” The SPD calls for separated swimming lessons or thoughtfulness during the “Ramadan”. The mayor now criticizes a newspaper article about the reaction of the CDU and thinks, that media is only copying the opinion of the CDU. From his point of view, this reaction shows racist tendencies. As a “real” blogger, he posts the newspaper article, but also the original material, which is object of the debate.

Surprisingly, he also adds some multimedia-material, which seems to be self-made. Some photos and a video with a summary of the photos show a local parking problem. This blog posts give the impression that he actually cares about local problems and also does some research.

He shows a big variety in subjects, the next post is about the revolution in Tunisia, so Rainer Zeimentz has published a post from “ReadWriteWeb”. But unfortunately, the next post is also from another blogger about the political winners in the election year 2011. That’s legitimate, but he could possibly comment it with some of his own words.

The older blog posts show his power: He blogs about social media and its use in local politics. That’s what local politicians should concentrate about and that’s how they reach the people in their region. And if they really want to start some opportunities for participation, they should do it like Rainer Zeimentz and invite the people for a discussion.

By Ger_Watch

Blogging politicians in the US – a long gone trend?!

Our idea for today was to write about blogging politicians. We wanted to focus on rather unknown people. We know about quite a number of blogging politicians in Germany. So I went online and tried to find American politicians who blog. I’ve got to say, what I found came to me quite as a surprise. It’s not that I did not find someone. I found a lot of articles about blogging politicians. But whenever I clicked a link the address was no longer available or the last blog post was more than 5 years ago. I tried very hard. But my efforts bore no fruit. If any of you has other information, or knows about an American politician, who still bloggs on a regular basis, please let me know.

Though I haven’t found what I was looking for, I still think my findings very interesting. It seems to me that blogging (at least for American politicians) is a long gone trend. I found the answer to the question why that is, in Representative John Fritchey’s last blog entry. He quit blogging in August of 2010 after 5 years of keeping his blog updated with the following words: “And while the response and readership were great, I eventually realized that there simply weren't enough hours in the day for me to take care of everything else that I needed to and to continue to do this blog in the way that it deserved to be done. The ability to use Facebook and Twitter to reach an even wider audience essentially sealed the deal.” It’s a bit sad, because I think he obtained a decent blog.

Of course president Barack Obama has a blog. But this is not maintained by himself, so I don’t count it here.

A French guy by the name of Loic Le Meur has put together a nice list why politicians should blog. I recommend this as obligatory reading material to every politician out there. Facebook and twitter are nice, but nothing gives you the in-depth views and conversations like a hand-made blog does. #blog is not dead#

by US_watch