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Dynamic Success on YouTube: A Longitudinal Analysis of Click Counts and Contents of Political Candidate Clips during the 2009 German National Election

Since the 2008 Obama victory, mass media and academic research have contributed to the widespread notion that modern political campaigns are won in the so-called ‘web 2.0’, more precisely on YouTube. While respective studies were able to identify some major factors for the success of political YouTube videos, some videos ‘failed’ to have the presumed success online. This lack of clarity has not been convincingly explained by cross-sectional designs without taking into account the dynamic aspects of the success of YouTube videos. This study evaluates and validates the impact of presentation, professionalism, topic, age and the typical slope of the website-visits over time on the total amount of page visits. Political YouTube videos were analysed over a five-month period before the 2009 German national election. Most strikingly, one has to ignore some of the YouTube conventions to be successful on the platform during an election campaign, like uploading user-generated content.