Internet & Democracy Blog

John Kelly and the other brainiacs over at Morningside Analytics have created a great new political video barometer at Shifting the Debate. Using link and social network analysis of the US blogosphere, similar to what we used for our Iran blogosphere study, you can see what the most popular videos in both the US conservative and liberal blogospheres are, how long they have been around, how many bloggers link to them from each side, as well as how many folks have viewed each clip. It’s updated every six hours, you can also see how certain videos rise and fall over time. For example this clip of the old ‘wassup’ crew appears to have emerged in just the last day but is already the most linked to video on the liberal side (I have to admit, I was living overseas when this ‘wassup’ ad was a thing so probably don’t get the cultural references others might, but still enjoyed it).

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/Qq8Uc5BFogE" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

On the conservative side, the most popular video is of McCain at the Al Smith dinner (via Fox News), which has been around for a bit longer and is therefore a darker hue of orange–I think all sides agree he was funnier than Obama and is worth watching if you haven’t seen it yet.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/Goaj5V4tZoc" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

And smack in the middle is c-span’s coverage of the last debate.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/DvdfO0lq4rQ" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

We’ve been doing more blog research with John on election blogs as well as Russian and Arabic blogospheres. Look for updates on those research efforts this week here on the Internet & Democracy blog. In the mean time, you can play with the political video barometer.

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