In Obama-McCain Race, YouTube Became a Serious Battleground for Presidential Politics

Unlike normal campaign advertising, online video was often more persuasive because it was passed virally from person to person. One video that helped shape the campaign dialogue was created by director Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films, a progressive Web video making outlet, called "McCain. Mansions: The Houses That Greed Built." This video circulated the Web even before McCain flubbed a question about how many houses he owned. "Initially there was not a lot of evidence that people would watch serious political messaging. There was clear evidence that they would watch naked ladies fall down in showers and cats playing the piano, but there was not a lot of evidence for what we wanted to do, so it's been very satisfying," Greenwald says.

But Greenwald says his ambition wasn't just to get people to watch videos online. "The goal is to get them to participate, send the video around, get involved, learn something," the director says. This tactic was also used by the Obama campaign, which used a variety of Web tools, including YouTube, to create a large community online hoping that it would inspire advocacy offline as well. "They used video to gin up interest in Obama's message and ideas, but it was always about what you could do in your neighborhood and your pocketbook," says YouTube's Grove.