Obama’s YouTube Diplomacy Redux
July 27th, 2009 — Bruce EtlingBen Smith at Politico has followed up on last week’s news that Obama’s Nowruz message to the Iranian people is one of the White House’s most popular YouTube videos. (Unfortunately for George Bush, we can’t count the clip of him serving as the target for a reporter’s loafers, which we found to be the second most popular video in the Arabic blogosphere, as an official White House video.) Smith quotes our own John Kelly who confirms the popularity of the online overture to the Iranian people:
Within a week, Obama’s Nowruz message (if you total several different versions of it – the official White House one was just one, others were posted to YouTube from different sources, with different subtitles,
etc.) was cited (linked to) by more Iranian bloggers than any other video from the entire year prior – which is a remarkably fast rise.
The timing of the video around Nowruz was also wise since any message directly before – and most certainly after – the election would have been cited by Iranian conservatives as meddling in Iranian politics. As Smith writes in his original post about the video’s popularity:
That’s a remarkable success for public diplomacy, and an end-run around state-controlled media.
You can learn more about the White House video stats here, as well as on TechPresident.
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