Do you have the ultimate idea about how to close the poverty gap? Here’s your chance to tell the world. For the fourth year, through the Davos Debates program, one lucky YouTube user will get an all-access pass to the World Economic Forum in Davos, where global leaders gather to tackle the most important issues facing our world.
To enter the running, all you have to do is submit your 1-minute video summarizing your ideas on the importance of inclusive growth - a key theme of this year’s event. Not sure what inclusive growth really means? Past Davos Debates winners break it down for you here:
The winner with the best video will be selected as an informal YouTube community representative to participate in the Annual Meeting and take part in a special panel during the event. You’ll not only have the opportunity to rub elbows with the most powerful leaders in the world, you’ll be given a platform to share your views with them.
The deadline to submit your ideas is January 14, so visit the Davos channel today to make your voice heard.
Ever been interested in what the Department of the Interior does? Now is your time to ask!
The Director of New Media for the Department of the Interior is asking you to submit your questions and Secretary Ken Salazar will answer them on YouTube at the end of next week.
You can submit questions right in the comments to the linked YouTube video as well as on the other social media channels listed at the end of the video!
The US Mission to the UN just launched an innovative interactive series entitled "Your World, Your Future: Voices of a New Generation" in which they're inviting young people around the world to lead the political dialogue. From December 2nd until the 14th the US Mission to the UN is welcoming anyone under the age of 21 to submit an answer to the following question either in writing (less than 250 words) or via YouTube (1 minute or less):
“What is the most vital challenge to international peace and security facing your generation? Tell the UN Security Council what issue you believe deserves more attention, and explain why it is important.”
The US Mission will select the three most compelling submissions and pose them as topics for debate amongst the UN Security Council at an event on December 21st. This event, hosted at the UN Headquarters in New York, will also be live streamed at www.un.org/webcast.
The Transportation and Security Administration has been a hot topic in the past month, and today a top trending video is footage captured at an Oklahoma City airport of wheel-chair bound Tammy Banovac who stripped to her underwear to avoid a search. That clip, which you can view directly below, has been viewed over a million times in the past day.
Over the past month there are a handful of TSA related videos that have "gone viral".
The holiday season is still young, and we're still a few weeks off from the next surge in domestic air travel, but the height of TSA hysteria might be behind us for now. Looking at data for users searching "TSA" on YouTube, you can see on the graph below that search interest peaked on the 22nd, the busiest travel day of the year and the day that two of the most-viewed videos received the most media attention.
Searches first began to pick up after John Tyner posted the video above of his experience at the San Diego Airport.
Two other interesting asides about the search data: 1. The largest spiking search term associated with "TSA" in the past 30 days was "pat down." 2. The state "TSA" searches were most popular in? Utah. (The video of the young boy being searched was captured in Salt Lake City.)
There's an excellent post on the official Google blog in which Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the UN, uses Google Earth technology to demonstrate the human effects of climate change:
Climate change is too often misunderstood to be simply an environmental issue, rather than a human issue. For our children and grandchildren, climate change is an issue of public health, economics, global security and social equity. This human side of climate change is explained in a new Google Earth tour narrated by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. Within these stories, you’ll find data and tools to explore this topic in more depth, and meet some of the people who are actively working on managing the risks of climate variability and change. We encourage you to take the tour to learn more about these human issues and the inspiring work of groups like the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) that are helping farmers cope with climate change. We hope this video will serve as a useful tool as educators help students around the world understand the complexity of this issue.
To continue reading visit here or watch the video below.
We've been following the story of the three American hikers detained in Iran for over a year now, as their friends and family have used video to raise awareness for their captivity. When one of the hikers, Sarah Shourd, was released a few months ago, members of freethehikers.org posed a question to President Clinton in our YouTube interview about what needs to happen to release her two fellow hikers, Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer. Now Sarah has produced a music video, with lyrics she wrote in prison, to raise awareness for their captivity. You can buy the song directly from Amazon, the proceeds will go to funding the advocacy work of freethehikers.org.
And here's more background on Sarah, Shane, and Josh's story:
Chris Christie, the Republican Governor from New Jersey, has amassed a significant following on YouTube, regularly posting compelling (and often testy / controversial) videos. While not the only politician to embrace YouTube as a platform to engage citizens, Christie is one of the most adept at regularly posting entertaining content that showcases his direct approach. His YouTube popularity has been noticed by mainstream media outlets, with an article in the New York Times today (read here) and a piece in Slate a few weeks back (here).
To check out Christie's YouTube channel visit here and see below for a recent video from a town hall in Clifton, NJ.
As a big fan of cartograms I find the video below fascinating. This video uses isarithmic mapping to showcase the shift in the two-party vote in the US over the past 90 years. When the historical red-blue political balance is shown visually I'm reminded that despite how deeply entrenched our current political state feels the winds of political favor do shift quickly and dramatically.
How do you think this map will look 30 years from now?
For more information on the math behind the mapping visit here.
This Halloween partiers in the Coconut Grove neighborhood of Miami were subject to something more alarming than the standard fare of ghosts and goblins.
Caught on tape below, policemen went "above and beyond" their duties by roughing up some of the holiday revelers. With a crowd of costume-sporting Floridians watching (and hollering), police officers seemed to cross the line between keeping order and abusing their power as they dragged people from the crowd and forcefully arrested them.
What makes this occurrence particularly interesting is that one of the witnesses recorded the entire incident on their camera phone, brazenly shouting "That's on tape! That's on tape" throughout the arrests. This amateur footage is reminiscent of the shocking clip of Oakland resident Oscar Grant being shot by BART police.
When politicians and pundits speak of increased government transparency it often comes across as a top-down initiative -- the legislators will open their doors and show the inner workings of their political operations and budgeting. At the end of the day though, there is no greater way to force government transparency than empowering citizens with video cameras to capture and broadcast the injustices of the day.
Reports from CBS 4 and the Miami New Times state that this video was shared amongst various government department and an internal investigation into the offending police officer is underway.
Graham Taylor, a fourteen year old in Michigan is making waves online after standing up at a local school board meeting and advocating on behalf of teacher Jay McDowell who was suspended for ejecting students from his class who made racist and anti-gay remarks. Watch the impassioned speech for McDowell's reinstatement here:
This is the latest in a slew of other enormously popular videos that advocate against bullying and prejudice against gays. Other viral hits in this vein include the enormously successful It Gets Better Project and this video from Joel Burns, a Fort Worth City Councilman.
In the video above, Taylor speaks of the "silent holocaust" occurring in America, citing that millions of gay teens have taken their lives as a result of bullying. Judging by the groundswell of support for these videos, and the fact that others are creating their own videos to speak out, it looks like many teens are now using YouTube to end the silence.
In February of 2011, Yoweri Museveni, the Ugandan President, will be up for re-election - and his campaign strategy includes dropping some hip hop knowledge on the Ugandan citizenry. Recently, Museveni release a video for a rap song called, "You Want Another Rap?". The video has received close to 50,000 views on YouTube (additionally, the song is apparently a staple in Ugandan clubs):
The video and song was created after Museveni recited lines to an African folks song at a rally - reminiscent of "Yes We Can," another viral hit that was derived from a political speech. The song also includes lines of Runyankore, an African tribal language.
And public YouTube Insight data shows that Museveni is targeting his constituents well on YouTube. The video has received most penetration in Uganda and surrounding nations. And he is also reaching his goal of relating to a younger audience - the video is most popular with males ages 25 - 44.
In these 2010 midterm elections, campaigns, voters, and interest groups have continued to innovate new ways to share their political opinions on YouTube. Because YouTube is a platform where anyone can post and share videos globally, you’ve made this platform the vanguard of the political media discussion. Some of these efforts to influence the political dialog on YouTube were more successful than others. Today, we’re sharing who emerged on top of the YouTube elections heap - and we’re going strictly by the numbers.
The top 10 most-viewed videos, sourced from all videos categorized as “News & Politics" on YouTube, are a mixed bag of official campaign videos, user-generated content and videos from interest groups:
Now, let’s take a look specifically at the 450 candidates for public office who registered for official Politician channels on YouTube this fall. Here’s a rundown of the top 10 most-viewed Politician channels on YouTube in the last month:
Leading the pack is Christine O’Donnell whose “I’m You” video inspired hundreds of thousands of views... and quite a few parodies. Here's the original:
YouTube Insight allows us to see where the view counts were coming for any individual video. For example, parodies of O’Donnell’s “I’m You” video (like the Gregory Brothers’ “Songify This," above) received millions more views than O’Donnell’s original campaign video nationally, but Insight shows us that O’Donnell still received more views in the state of Delaware than any parody video.
Similarly, the memorable “Why” video from the #5 politician on the list, Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway, shows that he too, did an effective job of targeting the voters in his state - even though the video went viral nationally.
Stay tuned tomorrow for more YouTube and Google video and trends data, during our special Election Night coverage with CBS News.
CitizenTube is YouTube's News and Politics Blog. Here you'll find important breaking news videos from citizens; developing trends in the use of YouTube by news organizations, activists, politicians, and governments; and lots of other YouTube goodness. Hit us up on Twitter, @citizentube, if you see something worth posting here.
