How YouTube is being used on the ground in the general election

Richard Osley as an entertaining piece on his blog titled, “The YouTube War: Hornsey and Wood Green”.

I’m not quite sure what Lynne Featherstone will make of the description of her as an “old aunt”… Not very gallant of you Richard, but the full description is friendly:

One of the reasons, Featherstone has been a hit locally, it seems, is her obvious knowledge of the area and her apparent interest in even the smallest of issues. She is the interfering old aunt that the fragile Labour council in Haringey must be sick to the back teeth of. Featherstone has after all micromanaged the constituency to a tee. Take her YouTube efforts below. She plays the part of peeved of train customer superbly.

The full piece is well worth a read, particularly for the good spot about a problem with one of Labour’s films in Hornsey & Wood Green, saying of the Labour candidate:

She has fewer outings on YouTube, but there is this gem in which she attempts to tell voters that she is a candidate that should be taken seriously… by hauling in the John Prescott battle bus. He grinds his teeth about the Liberals and insists he’s here to help win it back for Labour. Shame then, that at about 1min 11secs [actually 50 seconds] in the film, he looks sleepy-eyed and half asleep on the stage when Jennings is addressing a members rally.

One point not mentioned is that YouTube views can give a sense of how well different campaigns are running. They are not a perfect standard by any means, but they are more useful than the web polls we sometimes see which are open to anyone to vote in and easy to vote in more than once.

So in Hornsey & Wood Green, where the future of the Whittington Hospital is a big issue we see the following numbers of YouTube views:

• For the Hornsey & Wood Green Liberal Democrat films on the topic: 378,224
• For the Hornsey & Wood Green Labour films on the topic: 7,322

You can watch all Lynne Featherstone’s films at www.youtube.com/lynnefeatherstone