Capitol Hill Goes Online, Congress Ends Up on YouTube

To bring citizens closer to politics, the U.S. government launches videosharing site channels: HouseHub and SenateHub, on the air with the work of the House and Senate.

“Broadcast Yourself” reads the motto of YouTube. After millions of users from around the world arrived with their clip on the most popular video sharing site, American politics takes on a serious invitation: in an effort to reduce the gap between the lives of citizens and what happens on Capitol Hill, Congress has created two channels exclusively dedicated to broadcasting parliamentary work.

HouseHub and SenateHub – so they were baptized as on YouTube channels – allowing citizens to choose on an interactive map of the United States of which ever congressman or senator from a specific state for whom they want to follow the activities: each elected representative has his own page, managed by his personal team of collaborators, which can upload videos of their speeches in the House, the Senate or by the media. Every personal page, whose appearance can be characterized by a series of skin graphics, contains data on the synthetic character, a list of all the videos published, statistics on the number of visits and a button to subscribe to the page, as well as tools to share and comment on the content.

Although both channels have their own entrances, they share a common structure: in addition to the United States map, the home page contains a presentation of the service, a video welcome signed by major personalities of the Congress – the speaker of the House Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and leaders of the majority and the minority to the two rooms – a list of contributions chosen, in addition to tools for sharing and some special content such as videos of parliamentarians who have chosen YouTube to answer questions from citizens and clips of “Behind the Scenes,” showing the lesser-known aspects of the work of politicians.

The experiment that Capitol Hill wanted to launch with these two instruments is certainly also the triumph of the election campaign of Barack Obama, an online tool that has made his winning weapon, demonstrating to Washington the strength of an online network of citizens: feedback is good, with more than 2,100 subscribers to the channel of the House, nearly 1,300 to the Senate and hundreds of thousands of visits to the most popular videos.

This does not lack criticism: with a tool like this at their disposal, “politicians can show people what they want,” warns Paula Youra, a professor of technical communications at Lynchburg College in Lynchburg, Virginia. “This does not mean, however, that the goal of greater participation of citizens can be said to be reached,” continued Youra: “If you cannot beat them, join them and discuss.”