The Use of Online Videos in the 2008 U.S. Congressional Elections

In a recent survey, 39% of Americans reported using the Web to access campaign materials for the 2008 primary elections. Assuming they are using popular search engines such as Google, it is important to investigate their search patterns and ensure that standards of fairness and balanced coverage are upheld in the results. In this paper, we offer an exploratory analysis of political online video data. This data was collected in the context of a broader project aimed at studying the effects of politically motivated spamming of webpages to manipulate their rankings within search engine results. Using online video parameters such as the submission date, number of views, ranking position, description keywords, political inclination of the submitter, the political message in the video, and comments associated with the video, we construct a picture of how online video medium was used during the last congressional political campaign. Our analysis takes into account three players: video providers (usually the campaigns or other interested parties), video consumers (the users), and search facilitators (Google and YouTube). The results indicate that online video coverage might be susceptible to technological bias that adds to the political bias common in electoral campaigns. Educating the broader public about this inherent bias should be a common effort of the involved players and fairness advocacy groups.