A Report about YouTube's Election Coverage

Two weeks before the election I wrote about YouTube and PBS's Video Your Vote Project.  In this program we are all invited to grab video cameras and cell phones to document voting experiences. A YouTube channel was set up to accept election video and to share it with the world. The program provided some great advice from the Citizen Media Law Project about how to shoot video at the polling place without breaking the law.  Would people follow this advice and be careful about where and whom they shot, or would they become in-your-face gonzo journalists pushing the envelope to uncover the dirt about the election?  Figured I would check in to see if any interesting material surfaced that I could write about. 

I Like the Google Map Interface

My first impression is that I like the YouTube\Google Map mashup used as the main interface to the program. Log in to Video Your Vote and a map of the United States covered with virtual push pins immediately smacks you in the face.  Each pin on that map represents a video for you to play.  The color of the pin tells you what type of video lies underneath. Purple pins representing voter intimidation videos are the least common.  Red voter perspective pins are the most common. To load a video simply click on a pin and the corresponding video starts playing in a little window that overlaid on top of the map.

A map is a great interface for providing access to user-generated videos sent in from all over the country or the world. Wanna make your own Google map mashup?. It's free and relatively easy to do.

Too Many Push Pins on the US Map?

All those push pins stuck into the US map makes an impressive first impression. But the pins are often packed too closely be very practical.  Fortunately you chose what types of pins to display and what parts of the country or the world to focus on.

Wanna see areas of the country with the largest number of voter problems?.  A few clicks and you can display only purple voter intimidation pins, black registration problem pins, and orange polling problem pins. Turn all of the categories back on, and the map becomes a solid wall of colored pins. I found this way to much data to easily digest and quickly started zooming in and around the map.  Were there any videos posted in my home town?  How about in Asia?  Were all the problem videos clustered in certain parts of the country -- all easy questions to answer using the Google map interface. 

Anybody who uses Google Maps on a regular basis knows that it is  not a perfect system.  Hence the occasional glitch - like the video of voters from Far Rockaway New York push pined into the heart of Africa.  The system is only as good as the data it is fed.

Does 2,000 Videos Represent a Successful Program?

To date Google has posted 2,241 videos on the big map.  I had expected more, especially given the fact that Google partnered with Pure Digital Technologies to give away 1000 Flip Video camcorders to schools and nonprofits that promised to post at least nine short videos.  (Digital Technologies has this great program to help nonprofits purchase cameras for good causes.) 

Most of the nonprofits that picked up the Flip phones were schools, and as an exasperated teacher Cheverus High School implies in her video, getting kids to do what they promise is not always easy.   And this comment came from a teacher whose school posted
15 videos.  If every participating school did as well as Cheverus the site would be offering a lot more videos. Does that mean that YouTube video is loosing its cache among kids? My guess is that video done as part of a school project is intrinsically less interesting than videos about Star Wars parodies or cats stuck in 6 pack cartons

Don't get discouraged YouTube, PBS and Flip. Keep this program going!  Kids understand the value of this technology. With luck by 2010 the teachers will understand it better and find ways to motivate the kids to do a better job. 

My Favorite videos from Video Your Vote:

I gotta admit, none of the Video Your Vote videos completely blew me away.  Maybe too many people followed the Citizen Media Law Project suggestions to create carefully moderated (AKA boring) videos.  But here are a few that were at least interesting, informative or amusing.

• Best overview of Video Your Vote - David Gillette's whiteboard cartoon about the goals of the Video Your Vote program.
• A not so scathing voter intimidation story - Note left on the road implies that Obama voters can't park properly.
• Best long distance voting video - An absentee voter in Thailand.
• Behind the scenes - The Video Your Vote staff works hard to place pins on the map.
• Most Unusualy Polling Place - Voting at McDonalds. 
• 10 Most Influential Election videos of 2008  - from the Silicon Valley Insider website.