Going Viral

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By Kevin Wallsten

The “Yes We Can” music video was the most popular online political video of the 2008 election season. This “supporter-generated” video, which included cameo appearances by celebrities such as Herbie Hancock, Scarlett Johansson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, featured black-and-white clips of Barack Obama’s concession speech following the New Hampshire primary set to music written by hip-hop artist will.i.am. Initially posted on YouTube on February 2, 2008, “Yes We Can” quickly spread across the Internet and, by the time Obama secured the nomination, the video had been viewed over 20 million times.

It is easy to assume that the video’s popularity was preordained by its combination of celebrity cameos, emotive imagery and a memorable refrain. A careful analysis of the dynamic relationship between online viewership, mainstream media coverage, blog discussion and campaign statements about the video, however, reveals that the video’s success was driven, in large measure, by the active support of the Obama campaign and by the eager enthusiasm of bloggers.

While “Yes We Can” was undoubtedly unique, it is possible to distill two general lessons about “going viral” from analyzing it.

Campaigns should follow their presence on YouTube closely and act quickly if their supporters upload content. When campaigns send emails and post messages on their official blogs about a supporter-generated video, Internet users, bloggers and journalists are likely to take this as a cue that the video is something worth paying attention to. Politicians seeking to make a big splash online, therefore, can do much more than keep their fingers crossed and hope that their rhetoric will inspire will.i.am et al to record a song in support of their candidacy. They can serve as effective midwives for viral videos by promoting them with their existing online tools.

Online political video makers should cater to the interests of bloggers. If you want to attract a large audience in both the online and offline political worlds, look to bloggers. Journalists, who use blog discussion as a heuristic for determining which events deserve coverage, are likely to report on videos receiving widespread attention in the blogosphere, and the links provided in blog posts can drive up viewership statistics by making it easy for interested readers to locate and watch a video online. Put simply, without the support of bloggers, online political videos are more likely to die in obscurity than to go viral.


Kevin Wallsten is an assistant professor in the department of political science at California State University, Long Beach. His paper can be viewed here.