232045 1 Million Clicks: The Politics and Poetics of Online Video (S) (SoSe 2011)

As an integral part of various campaigns leading up to the November 2008 presidential elections in the United States, online video emerged as a primary medium of political discourse. A Pew study published after the elections (in April 2009) found that “by the end of the campaign, . . . 45% of all American internet users . . . had gone online to watch some sort of video related to politics or the elections. For example, more than 100,000 videos about Obama were uploaded during the campaign and resulted in 889 million views. These online videos have substantially re-defined the communicative structure between the presidential candidate, his campaign, his volunteers and potential voters.

In this course we will explore the politics and poetics of online video as a complex cultural medium. We will place online video in the changing landscape of converging and co-existing media that offer new ways of communication and new protocols for the organization of political publics.

We will proceed in two steps: In the first part of this course, we will discuss the emergence of online video more generally and examine the function of this new genre for the 2008 presidential campaigns.
The second part of our course will focus on specific case studies of your choice that illustrate the nexus between online video and the emergence of certain cultural-political practices. During this second segment of the course you will produce your own short digital video (3 min max). Your video should investigate the connection between online videos and politics in the United States.