page_title: Social impact of YouTube
section_title: Engagement between citizens and government
hierarchical_section_title: Social impact of YouTube / Engagement between people and institutions / Engagement between citizens and government
caption_attribution_description: English: Screenshot at 1:19 of video of U.S President Obama with YouTube video content creators
context_page_description: As the world's largest video hosting website and second most visited website in the world both by Alexa Internet and SimilarWeb ranking of all websites globally, YouTube has had impact in many fields, with some individual YouTube videos having directly shaped world events.
  Constituting one of the world's most popular search engines, YouTube enables inexpensive distribution of educational content, including course material from educational institutions and "how to" videos from individuals. Worldwide video access has spurred innovation by enabling geographically distributed individuals to build upon each other's work, to collaborate, or to crowdsource.
  YouTube has facilitated engagement between institutions and individuals, such as between universities and prospective students, and between businesses and employees. Also, some YouTube videos increase awareness of social issues, allow broadened social contact, and overcome stereotypes of minorities and minority viewpoints. However, other videos have included potentially harmful content, such as those triggering self-harm, or inspiring additional bullying or suicides.
context_section_description: In at least the CNN/YouTube presidential debates (2007) and the NBC News YouTube Democratic candidates debate (2016), ordinary people and prominent YouTubers submitted questions to U.S. presidential candidates via YouTube video. Remarking that YouTube "put power in the hands of the camera holder", New York Times journalist Katharine Q. Seelye noted that because visual images can be more powerful than written words, videos have the potential to elicit emotional responses from the candidates and frame the election in new ways. Quoting a techPresident co-founder as saying that Internet video was changing the political landscape, Seelye wrote that most U.S. presidential campaigns were now fully engaged with video, with seven of the sixteen 2008 presidential candidates announcing their campaigns on YouTube. Campaigns allowed their videos to be embedded, critiqued, and recut per YouTube's technical features, thus surrendering control over the context of their videos. Though YouTube had first been presented as a way for campaigns to engage youthful voters, the videos were said soon after the 2008 election to have profoundly affected popular perception across other demographics and had become more important than direct mail.
  Though television advertising still dominated how 2012 U.S. political campaigns initially reached voters—with only about 10% of advertising budgets being directed at the Internet—the YouTube platform provided quick communication and engaged people in a "one-click" approach to actively participate by volunteering, sharing content or pledging financial support. The director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution said that individuals' sharing videos through trusted networks adds credibility over conventional direct ads.
  Various government entities, such as the U.S. Congress and the Vatican in early 2009, began to use YouTube to directly disseminate information by video. The White House's official YouTube channel was found in 2012 to be the seventh top news organization producer on YouTube. Barack Obama's U.S. presidency, the first to begin (2009) after YouTube gained popularity, was quickly noted for its "overall virtuosity on the visual Internet" and "nonstop cinematography".
  Paradoxically, the burgeoning presence of digital media did not coarsen public figures' behavior, but instead by 2009 appeared to have induced a cautious reserve attributed to a mindful avoidance of possible mockery by video parodists; "avoiding a YouTube moment" had become part of the political vernacular before the website's tenth birthday (2015).  Whereas politicians became more known and accessible than a decade previously, politicians also learned to by-pass undesirable questions from traditional media by using self-produced videos to communicate with the electorate directly. Extensive advance vetting of politicians' public utterances led The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza to assert in 2015 that "spontaneity in politics has been killed—or at least mortally wounded—by YouTube."
  In November 2013, a video, "There is a Way Forward", was posted to the YouTube channel of Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif as part of an apparent attempt to "set the tone and context" of ensuing nuclear power limitation negotiations between Iran and six world powers. Zarif's video was said to be part of an attempt to reach the West, as Iran itself had blocked Iranian residents' YouTube access.
  In February 2014, U.S. President Obama held a meeting at the White House with prominent YouTube content creators. Though promoting awareness of the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") was a main topic, the meeting more generally concerned ways in which government could connect with the younger "YouTube Generation". Whereas YouTube's inherent ability to enable presidents to directly connect with average citizens was noted, the YouTube content creators' new media savvy was perceived necessary to better cope with the website's distracting content and fickle audience. The White House meeting followed a healthcare exchange's December
caption: U.S. President Obama met with leading YouTube content creators to start a dialogue about health insurance awareness and enrollment, as well as anti-bullying, education, and economic opportunity.[60]
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