Spreading Politics And Political Propaganda On YouTube And Social Media

Creating your own channel on YouTube and uploading videos in it could be an efficient and effective avenue to advertise and promote a product or service, an event, or yourself as well. However, getting views and thumbs-ups on a video is one thing, but having viewers to really subscribe and support your channel is a different thing. Between both, the latter determines more how influential you and your channel is since subscribing to your channel means viewers are looking forward t more videos from you. This is one reason why owners of a YouTube channel who are only starting opt to buy youtube subscribers.

The Prevalence of YouTube

YouTube is a place where you could find an extensive category of videos, from health and wellness, beauty and fashion tips, music videos, movie trailers, home videos to DIY projects, the list just goes on and on.

YouTube as well as YouTube stars over the years have increasingly become more immersed, involved and participative in the political environment even roping in the younger generation, from interviews and dialogues with political figures to political debates on political issues.

Politics and YouTube

In each local and nationwide election, the source of great and deep influence is propaganda. However as technology evolves, propaganda is also compelled to evolve alongside it. TV ads, digital banners and signs, computerized visuals and graphics as well as campaigns on social media have more and more become widespread and mainstream throughout the political field especially in the U.S. where their presence dominates every single form of media particularly as the Election Day approaches. This puts much responsibility on YouTube which is one of the leading and influential media platforms.

In a period shaped by the digital revolution, wherein information has transformed into a commodity that is easily and effortlessly accessible through handheld electronic devices as well as the usage of the web and internet, collecting political data ad info has practically become uncomplicated.

For the most part because of the popularity and dominance of social media, propaganda was streamlined and modified to match wide-ranging demographics as well as to reach every single part of the globe. YouTube, the widely used website for video sharing across the world, hosts thousands and thousands of videos that are barely censored as well as politically charged, which are shared and circulated on other platforms of media, disseminating their message at a pace that is extremely fast.

Political Communication – YouTube Responds to the Challenge of Becoming a Responsible Social Media Platform

Political institutions encompass not only parties of political candidates seeking for government positions. They also include advocacy organizations pushing for reforms and activists seeking for equality and justice. Now more than ever, social media can provide the most effective channel in which political institutions can deliver their political communication.

There is no shortage of social media platforms in which to communicate ideas, but if for purposes of delivering political messages, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have become the frontrunners in the array of choices. Yet Twitter is out of the picture as far as political ads are concerned, as Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey prefers promoting political endorsements that garner organic support.

Facebook, albeit leading as a social media platform, suffers from trust issues; given the data breach scandals particularly the Cambridge Analytica case that revealed how Trump’s digital campaign team manipulated FB user accounts in advancing Trump’s political campaign.

Google’s YouTube therefore has become an important Internet marketing space where political institutions can put forward their political communication. Given YouTube’s current ranking as the next largest search engine on a global scale, and its present count of 2 billion active users, the largest video-sharing social media platform has evolved into becoming a major source of political and social information.

It does not come as a surprise at all, why there was a mad scramble among political campaign teams when Google announced the activation of a new advertising app called “Instant Reserve.” The software gives political institutions, tools that enable them to buy and reserve advertising slots in advance. At the same time, they can customize their political advertisement according to their budget, as well as program them to appear in geolocations where the ads will be most timely and relevant.

In addition, Google and its YouTube platform made certain policy changes that aim to avoid committing Facebook’s political advertising errors in the 2016 presidential elections.

Google/YouTube’s New Ad-Targeting Policies

Political adverts appearing in Google and YouTube will have to tailor-fit their advertisement around the age, gender and postcode of their target audience. This denotes that publishers of advertising campaigns can not target voters based on the issues they either support or do not support (e.g. abortion, LGBTQ marriage, marijuana legalization.)

That being the case, uploading personal info data other than the aforementioned demographic factors to target specific sets of audience, is not allowed

Nonetheless, the Google and YouTube platforms will direct political advertisements to users who read and watch content related to specific issues occurring as published content.

The policy updates also address ads and content that aim to mislead voters by insinuating there is voter suppression, or by making unfounded claims that there is a breach in the integrity of the elections. Apparently, this update took into consideration the the slew of fake political news the discouraged millions of voters from going out and exercise their right to vote in the 2016 presidential election.

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