About those “Viral” Rev. Wright Videos…
Over at Politico, Ben Smith observes that the actual magnitude of those so-called viral videos of Barack Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, may have been largely overblown by the media. Take, for example, this story in today’s Washington Post that says, “In the church of the Internet, call him the preacher heard all around our YouTubing world.” The emphasis of the story is on the video response to the Wright video, the “thoughtful videos uploaded by angry, pensive, frustrated, annoyed, confused, provoked YouTubers responding to Wright’s controversial remarks.”
However, as Smith notes, in the relative scheme of viral video, those videos are still pretty obscure. The most popular one that I could find had been viewed 500,000 times, which is enough to make it on the top 20 list for the past week, but it’s really not that impressive. In comparison, take, for example, Obama’s speech in Philadelphia yesterday (which we reposted below): in less than one day, that video has fetched more than 1.2 million views, more than doubling Reverend Wright’s viewership over the past week. And according to the Viral Video Chart, the most popular of the Wright videos has already peaked, while the spread of Obama’s speech appears to have only just begun:
Smith also suggests that the momentum gained by the Wright videos was somehow more organic than that of Obama’s speech because the Obama campaign posted the video and circulated it widely, but I would argue that conservative blogs did the same thing with the Wright videos. And it’s also worth noting that the most popular of the Wright videos was taken from FOX News, which, along with other cable news networks, did its part in circulating the “scandalous” videos.
Naw dude. There are many many versions of the Wright video, and relatively few of the Obama speech.
I’d imagine that the Obama speech will “win” in terms of overall views, because instead of being stupid and inflamatory, it’s kickass.
The various wright videos have come from various sources - fox, cnn, etc - but also more homegrown sources. As one commentator on Ben Smith’s blog pointed out, a couple of the Wright videos were taken down for copyright information.
Its interesting to try and compare “viral” videos and see what their “virality” really is. But I think that the wright and obama clips are apples to oranges, because of the multitude of sources for the wright videos and the relatively few sources of obama’s, straight-to-the-vein hope.