NPR: The Candidate's Guide to Manipulating YouTube

The Candidate's Guide to Manipulating YouTube

So, your candidate has made a serious flub while giving a speech. It's been captured on video by your opponent. Suddenly, you find that the video is making the rounds on YouTube. What do you do?

Why, you "flood the zone," adding dozens and dozens of other videos about your candidate that will confuse YouTube users, who can be counted on to have a "slight case of undiagnosed ADD (attention deficit disorder). If they don't find what they're looking for seconds after the search has begun, they'll tire and give up the search."

That's the advice from GOP consultant David All, who offers "Five Essential Tips for the YouTube Campaign Trail" on his Web site. Other All advice includes making sure your campaign has a two-camera strategy: one for your opponent, to get everything he or she says on tape, and one for your own candidate, so you can add context to a clip being used against him or her.

However, Ben Smith at Politico argues that while All's advice about flooding the zone might work on YouTube's site, it won't affect the blogs and other Web sites that link directly to a damaging video.

For instance, it wouldn't help much for a video linked to on several blogs and Web sites that shows former Sen. Fred Thompson in a campaign debate several years ago in Tennessee. In the clip he states that, while he supports many of the limitations that states have placed on abortion, the federal government and the courts should not use abortion as a political football or turn women and their doctors into criminals. It will be interesting to see how Thompson's yet-to-be-officially-declared campaign will deal with the video's appearance and its potential effect on his standing with conservatives.

11:37 AM ET | 06-12-2007 | permalink

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