Google is hoping to encourage legislators, lawmakers, elected representatives and others under the general category of nation-runners to use YouTube to spread their messages and speak to their constituencies and citizens. The company just launched YouTube for Government, a destination that’s designed to make the onboarding process easy for even the most out-of-touch members of congress.
Even those politicians and political icons who are “really puzzled” about the state of modern tech can figure out how to build a YouTube Channel, tailor its look, curate content from other YouTube sources, host livestreams and go back-and-forth with their community. Google also drives interested parties to YouTube Analytics so they can analyze and respond to their viewership trends.
In the larger scheme of things, this is a signal that politicians should be paying more attention to non-traditional media portals, which may have better reach with key youth demographics than do TV and radio. Frankly, reaching an audience online is the new normal, and we’ve seen from the Obama administration’s embracing of YouTube for live streamed events that the interest in online media as a primary medium for method distribution goes all the way to the top.
With more support from Google, does YouTube become the new Agora of the Internet age? That remains to be seen, but if we can use these devices (whatever you call those wacky things!!) to find where the nearest McDonald’s is with a McDonald’s app, then we can certainly use them to engage in public discourse via the world’s largest online video platform.