Power and Limitations of media in political campaigns.

In the US presidential election, YouTube looks as if it will play a key role.

The video networking site is already providing what may be the biggest ever audience for a political speech, 13 million and counting.

A politician's address to the party faithful is not something normally noted for its entertainment value, but an online version of Democratic candidate Barack Obama's concession speech from the New Hampshire primary on January 8 is currently attracting more than a million hits a day.

Granted, it was a rousing address, but it has been made considerably more palatable by the addition of light hip-hop beats, a softly strummed acoustic guitar, and a chorus line of celebrities singing out the rallying cry, "Yes, we can." Artfully shot in black and white, faces and voices layered one on top of the other, this is the political speech as pop video.

Cut from the speech's original 13 minutes to a concise and uplifting four and a half, the video achieves things politicians can usually only dream about, but which pop takes for granted: it puts emotion at the centre of the message, it never bores, and it is effortlessly cool. It is a party political broadcast for a generation who would never watch a party political broadcast.

The song was conceived by Will.i.am of superstar hip-hop trio Black Eyed Peas, and the video was shot by Jesse Dylan, son of rock's original protest superstar, Bob Dylan. The pair claim that it took just a few days from conception to completion. Will.i.am had the idea while watching a televised political debate on January 29, and by Feb 2 it was online, in time for the Super Tuesday polls.

The speed with which it was made is reflected in the slightly haphazard list of celebrity participants they managed to cobble together. Soul star John Legend, jazz supremo Herbie Hancock and indie film pin-up Scarlett Johansson are among those lining up to singalonga-Obama.

If anything, these familiar but slightly alternative faces (joined by sports people, actors, comedians and ingénues) lend the project a counter-culture hipness that might have been undermined by the usual A-list suspects.

The retro feel of the black-and-white images is particularly inspired, invoking notions of the '60s Civil Rights movement, and drawing oblique yet deliberate comparison to two of the most inspirational and affectionately recalled American leaders, President Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr: "A president who chose the moon as our new frontier, and a King who took us to the mountaintop", as Obama calls them in his speech.

Legend sings this last phrase, arms thrown wide in exultation, while Adam Rodriguez from the hit TV show CSI: Miami intones, "Si, se puede!", referencing the catchphrase of Mexican American labour rights activist César Chávez and directly appealing to the increasingly significant Hispanic vote.

Although made without the Obama campaign's participation, Yes, We Can is an almost perfect piece of political propaganda, aimed at exactly the young voters who might be inclined to support a socially liberal black candidate but are often apathetic when it comes to actually turning up at polling stations.

It is a rallying call that bypasses the usual media channels to bring the message directly to the people who need to hear it, in a place where they will be most likely to find it, in a form in which they might actually pay attention to it.

What works most effectively on YouTube (with its small screen, low visual resolution and download speed limitations) are soundbites and visual gags. Hillary Clinton's campaign team got in early with a spoof Sopranos video introducing her campaign song, Céline Dion's overblown ballad You and I.

While it achieved generally positive media coverage, in retrospect it looks hammy and badly tuned to the tastes of the internet audience, and consequently generated hit numbers in the mere thousands.

The first real internet success of the campaign was I Got a Crush on Obama, a witty video by satirists Barely Political, in which a scantily dressed girl gushes over Obama footage to a light R&B backing track, suggestively singing, "You can Barack me tonight."

It quickly notched up in excess of six million hits, becoming one of YouTube's most popular clips of 2007. Although it was not created by the Obama campaign, the Senator's mild reaction to something that might have been deemed disrespectful suggests that he understood its potential benefit to his campaign. "It's just one more example of the fertile imagination of the internet," Obama commented. "More stuff like this will be popping up all the time."

Obama is arguably the first natural candidate of the internet age. He has underdog status, while his skin colour alone lends him a (possibly spurious) association with a century of American counterculture cool. Crucially, at 46, he is young enough to be comfortable with the medium.

Websites such as Facebook.com, MySpace.com and YouTube.com now offer candidates new opportunities to build networks and share video. They also give voters a freewheeling venue for unauthorized commentary and videos. Candidate sites now supply, along with views and life stories, tools for supporters to organize events and raise money without campaign supervision.

Obama has more than 581,300 supporters on his Facebook page, compared to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose page lists more than 119,300 members.

"The new factor in 2008 is not just what the campaigns do using the Internet, but what individual voters using the Internet will do to the campaigns," says Micah Sifry, co-founder of TechPresident.com

HOWEVER,

New-media experts say contenders need the Web to compete, but caution that it's not a substitute for politics as usual.

"Traditional politics still matters, and you can't forget that," says Joe Trippi, who pioneered online organizing and fundraising as manager of Howard Dean's 2004 campaign and now advises Democrat John Edwards.

The ideal campaign, Trippi and others say, combines online tools with television, direct mail, personal appearances and conventional fundraising.

"Rich people still need to be courted face to face," says Michael Cornfield, who analyzed Internet use during the 2004 election in a report for the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

"Candidates are learning to integrate the Internet with the face-to-face and the broadcast media so that everything is working together," he says.