House GOP Leader John Boehner just released a couple of charts that illustrate the current intensity gap between Republicans and Democrats online.
The first chart shows how many times people viewed YouTube videos posted by House Republicans over the past seven days vs. how many times people viewed videos posted by House Democrats:
The second chart shows how many people are following Boehner on Twitter vs. how many are following Speaker Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. Boehner’s office points out they added more Twitter followers in the past week than Pelosi and Hoyer combined have accumulated since they joined Twitter:
These charts merely visualize what we’ve been seeing in the streets for over a year now: that free-market conservatives are far more energized than folks on the left end of the political spectrum. Although, in fairness, I must say that this new video mashup from (presumably) somebody on the Left is pretty damn funny:
Filed under: Online Video, Shameless Self Promotion | Tags: americans for prosperity, cap and trade, carbon cops, epa, regulatory reality
The latest Frank Strategies LLC video, produced for Americans for Prosperity:
Filed under: Uncategorized
The latest Frank Strategies LLC video, shot and edited outside President Obama’s health-care reform rally in Fairfax a couple of hours ago:
Filed under: Online Video
C-Span has unveiled a new searchable video library that includes 160,000 hours, or 98 percent, of its archived programming. That cheer you hear rising across America this morning? Opposition researchers for challenger candidates everywhere.
When Twitter first really exploded into the mainstream a little over a year ago, I admit I was a skeptic. At the time, Twitter encouraged people to answer the question, “What are you doing?” Predictably, the answers were generally pretty boring. “I’m eating a burrito!” “I’m watching the Sopranos!” “I’m updating Twitter!” Not exactly exciting stuff.
But soon Twitter users took it upon themselves to stop answering “What are you doing?” and start answering, “What are you hearing?” Almost overnight it turned into Google News on speed – the best place to find the latest, completely personalized news, information, opinion and intel.
This year’s shiny object in the social media world is Foursquare, which allows users to “check in” at their current locations, with the information often cross-posted on their Twitter feeds and Facebook pages. Users are incentivized to “check in” at some locations, such as bars, restaurants, and coffee shops, with discounts for checking in (i.e., providing free online advertising for said establishments) a certain number of times.
Sadly, this has resulted in a lot of essentially useless information clogging newsfeeds on Twitter and Facebook (“I just checked in at Starbucks, corner 21st and P Streets, Washington, DC.”) Personally, I really don’t care when you’re at Starbucks, and I hope you don’t care when I’m at CVS. When it comes to social media, I want to know what interesting op-ed you just ran across, what intel you just picked up about the health care debate, or what relevant new video you just viewed.
The Foursquare phenomenon begs a question, though: Is social media actually regressing? Twitter flourished when it progressed beyond its largely inane “What are you doing?” beginnings. Why is Foursquare now flourishing by essentially going back to Twitter’s roots and delivering little information beyond “Where are you right now?”
I don’t know the answer, and it’s possible I’m as wrong about Foursquare now as I was about Twitter a year and half ago, so if you’ve got deeper insights about Foursquare than I’m comprehending right now, feel free to leave them in the comments.
Remember the runaway Prius in San Diego that resulted in breathless, blanket national media coverage a few days ago? Well, it looks like it’s a big hoax.
And now Megan McArdle at the Atlantic crunches some numbers and finds that the vast majority of “runaway” Toyotas happen with older drivers behind the wheel – a demographic trend that could lead one to believe they’re more likely to be caused by driver error rather than mechanical or electrical flaws.
This isn’t to say that there isn’t a problem with some Toyotas. But the establishment media needs to start asking more probing questions when these incidents occur, instead of just inserting them into the over-hyped narrative they’ve helped establish over the past few weeks. Then again, that’s what they almost always do, and it’s another reason why so few people trust them.
Filed under: MSM, Online Video | Tags: brian williams, chuck todd, david gregory, dylan ratigan, msnbc, nbc news
As the dinosaur media continue to wring their hands over crashing ratings and sinking subscription numbers, they might want to take a look at this video from MSNBC. In the clip, host Dylan Ratigan assaults Tea Party leader Mark Williams with completely unsubstantiated charges of racism and anti-Semitism, barely gives Williams a chance to respond to the outlandish charges, then calls him “offensive,” and demands that his microphone be turned off.
In political journalism, there’s something known as the “When did you stop beating your wife?” question, in which a reporter asks a loaded, accusatory question to which there’s no good answer. Do you respond, “I’ve never beaten my wife,” in which case the screaming headline is “CONGRESSMAN X DENIES BEATING HIS WIFE,” or do you respond, “I stopped beating her last week,” which obviously isn’t a good answer, either.
That’s essentially what Ratigan does in this clip, but he doesn’t even give Williams an opportunity to respond to the absurd line of questioning. This is literally one of the most unprofessional displays of “journalism” I’ve ever seen. It’s long past time for the real, respectable journalists at NBC News – Brian Williams, Chuck Todd, David Gregory, Andrea Mitchell, Mike Viqueira – to put an end to this kind of thing on their network. Because if they don’t, their hard-earned credibility is only going to continue to slide because of their association with this crap.
Filed under: Online Video
There’s an interesting new Pew study out today that shows how Americans get – and increasingly report – news today. Among the most interesting findings is how more people than ever are helping create news on their own:
Some 37% of internet users have actively contributed to the creation, commentary, or dissemination of news. 25% of internet users have commented on an online news story or blog item about news that they read. 17% of internet users have posted links and thoughts about news on a social networking site like Facebook. That translates into 30% of social network site users. 11% of internet users have tagged or categorized content online. 9% of internet users have contributed their own article, opinion piece, picture, or video to an online news site. 3% of internet users have used Twitter to post or re-Tweet a link to a news story or blog. That amounts to 18% of Twitter users.
Read the whole thing here. Tech President also has a good summary here. Take a look, then get reporting!
