This week's top news stories on YouTube

To help you learn about the big stories of the week, we’re kicking off a new series from CitizenTube, a YouTube channel focusing on global news and politics.

Everyday on the CitizenTube channel (and @CitizenTube on Twitter), along with our curation partners @storyful, we look at how the top news stories are covered on YouTube. Each week, starting today, we'll post a weekly recap of the top news stories of the week, as seen through the lens of both citizen-reported footage and professional news coverage.

• We witnessed widespread protests in Cairo, Egypt after the tragic deaths of over 70 people at a soccer game in Port Said.
• We monitored reports of violence in Syria, where fighting intensified causing the Arab League to suspend its monitoring mission in the country.
• We observed parts of Queensland and New South Wales being declared natural disaster zones due to flooding after days of heavy rainfall.
• We watched Eastern and Southern Europe come to a standstill due to freezing temperatures and unprecedented levels of snowfall.
• We followed the GOP candidates do battle in Florida as tensions grew on the US campaign trail, with Mitt Romney emerging as the comprehensive victor in the Sunshine state.
• We watched social networking giant Facebook announce that it was going public, as it sought to raise $5bn in the largest IPO by a technology company.
• We viewed Occupy Oakland protesters burn the Star Spangled Banner after clashes with police.
• We saw Novak Djokovic defeat Rafael Nadal to claim the Australian Open final, in a match that will go down in history as one of the greatest of all time.
• And finally, we looked forward to Super Bowl XLVI, as some companies released advanced versions of their half-time commercials.

Olivia Ma, YouTube News & Politics Manager, recently watched “Inside Syria: Escalating violence pushes country toward full-blown war”.

From the West Wing: Hanging out with President Obama on YouTube

You asked, and today President Obama will answer. This afternoon at 2:30 p.m. PT (5:30 pm ET), President Obama will head to the Roosevelt Room of the White House to connect face-to-face with people across America over a live Google+ Hangout. This first-ever virtual interview will be streamed live on the White House YouTube Channel so you’ll have a front row seat.

In the past week, over 225,000 of you have asked a question or cast a vote on the White House YouTube channel, voicing your interest in everything from military benefits to online poker, outsourcing to the Occupy movement. During today’s post-State of the Union interview, a selection of the top-voted YouTube questions will be asked, and several participants will actually join the President in the live Google+ Hangout to pose their questions directly.

Tune in today to watch Your Interview with President Obama live at 2:30 p.m. PT on youtube.com/whitehouse and see how President Obama addresses the issues that you care about.

Ramya Raghavan, YouTube News and Politics Manager, recently watched “Ask Obama: Why Tuesday”

Your Interview with President Obama

If you could hang out with President Obama, what would you ask him? Would your question be about jobs or unemployment? The threat of nuclear weapons? Immigration reform? Whatever your question is, submit it on YouTube for the opportunity to ask the President directly in a special interview over a Google+ Hangout from the White House.

On Monday, January 30, a few days after delivering his State of the Union address to the nation, President Obama will answer a selection of top-voted questions you’ve submitted in a live-streamed interview. Starting today through January 28, you can visit the White House YouTube channel to submit your video and text questions and vote on your favorites. Your YouTube questions will drive the interview, and several participants with top-voted questions will be selected to join the President in the Google+ Hangout to take part in the conversation live.



So take out your camera, check your hair and go to youtube.com/whitehouse to submit your question now. Need ideas? Visit youtube.com/whitehouse on Tuesday night to watch the President’s State of the Union address live. The address will be followed by the Republican response on Speaker Boehner’s YouTube channel.

Video questions are preferred (though we also accept text) and should be about 20 seconds long. In the video description, be sure to tell us a little bit about yourself, like where you’re from.

Your Interview with President Obama will be streamed live at 5:30 p.m. ET on January 30 on youtube.com/whitehouse. You have until midnight ET on January 28 to submit your question and make your voice heard on the issues that matter to you.

Ramya Raghavan, YouTube News and Politics Manager, recently watched, “How to Buy a Car, Using Game Theory”

Keeping up with the 2012 U.S. election with Google.com/Elections

From the nineteenth century’s pamphlets to the twentieth century’s TV ad revolution, our elections have always been shaped by how we communicate and consume information. There’s no question that the Internet is set to deliver more political information, opinion and news than any other medium throughout the 2012 U.S. elections. The web offers candidate and issue info to voters; networking and fundraising platforms for campaigns; and research and productivity tools for journalists.

Today, just in time for the Iowa Caucuses, we’re launching google.com/elections, an election hub where citizens can study, watch, discuss, learn about, participate in and perhaps even make an impact on the digital campaign trail as it blazes forward to Tuesday, November 6, 2012.

The site enables voters, journalists and campaigns to quickly sort through election info by popularity, race or issues. People can also check out the Trends Dashboard to take the web’s real-time political pulse by comparing candidates’ YouTube video views, search traffic and Google News mentions. Campaign staffers, advocates and everyday citizens can utilize our tools and features to reach, engage and inspire voters.

There are a lot of miles to cover and coffee to be consumed before Election Day. We hope you’ll make Google.com/elections one of your regular online stops along the way.

Posted by Eric Hysen, Google Politics & Elections Team

(Cross-posted from the Politics & Elections Blog)

Magic moments in Egypt’s parliamentary elections, thanks to the web

Today more than 50 million Egyptians started heading to the polls to cast their votes for an independent Parliament, many for the first time in their lives. The revolution in Egypt, which captured the attention of the world beginning in Tahrir Square on January 25, 2011, made this possible by opening the floodgates of political participation.

With the free flow of information online, people can connect and engage in a open dialogue about the future of Egypt. The web is enabling many new voters to become better informed on their choice of candidates, and letting politicians reach electors in new and exciting ways.

Getting information about the new rules and the new players is no small feat for Egyptians: there are nearly 11,000 candidates vying for 498 seats across 27 governorates nationwide during a multi-stage election that started today and lasts until March 2012. We’re doing our best to organize information to make it easier for voters to find everything they need in one place. For example, millions of Egyptians have learned where they can vote through our landing page, www.google.com.eg/elections.

We’ve also worked to give a voice to thousands of candidates to reach voters through interactive video. The YouTube Townhall includes nearly 400 videos posted by candidates and political parties explaining where they stand on issues from education and the economy to health care and political reform, sparking vibrant conversations in cafés from Alexandria to Aswan.

We’re helping voters and politicians connect not just in Egypt, but throughout the entire Middle East and the world. For Tunisia’s recent parliamentary elections, we partnered with startup news portal Tunisia Live to offer a training workshop in Tunis on Google tools and social media for politicians. In France, we set up a special YouTube site for the upcoming parliamentary elections.

The Internet is playing an increasingly significant role in Egypt. It’s bolstering civic engagement and becoming a powerful mechanism for information sharing—crucial to helping the nation make the tough transition to democracy.

Posted by Samir ElBahaie, Head of Public Policy and Government Affairs for Google Middle East North Africa

Tunisia Talks on YouTube

The Arab Spring started in Tunisia, and it’s appropriate that Tunisia is now leading the way to a full democracy with their landmark free elections scheduled to take place on October 23. To help in this process, we recently partnered with startup news portal Tunisia Live to offer a training workshop in Tunis on Google tools and social media for politicians.

The turnout was fantastic; members from more than 40 parties and independent coalitions attended. The same day, Tunisia Live launched the Tunisia Talks channel on YouTube, channeling the enthusiasm of politicians to leverage social media and engage with voters. In this project, Tunisians are encouraged to submit and vote for top questions to the candidates, and many did so—for a flavor, see this example or this one. So far, more than 400 questions have been submitted.



This outreach is all the more exciting because YouTube was blocked for so many years in Tunisia. But when the regime collapsed last January, the site was unbanned and quickly became popular. Many Tunisian media outlets have set up channels to organize their video libraries on YouTube.

In this weekend’s elections, Tunisians will choose a constitutional council to write a new constitution for the country. Voters will select from lists of party members and independents. The Tunisian electoral committee has set up an official site www.isie.tn and is actively using social media to encourage voter registration—check their channel YouTube.com/isietn.

This is an exciting time in Tunisia. The media landscape—once limited and government-controlled—is now opening up to online platforms. Tunisians finally have access to a free Internet—and it’s playing a key role in building an encompassing political environment.

Posted by Samir ElBahaie, Regional Policy and Government Affairs Manager, Middle East and Northern Africa

(Cross-posted on the European Public Policy Blog)

YouTube.com/Politics: Tracking the 2012 election campaign through online video

From the infamous “Macaca” moment of 2006 to the recent Fox News/Google Debate, YouTube is a place where you can keep track of the latest political stories and connect with the candidates. As the 2012 election heats up on YouTube, we want to make it even easier for you to keep your finger on the political pulse, at youtube.com/politics.

The new YouTube Politics site will feature the latest campaign ads, parodies, gotchas, and speeches, offering you a 360-view of the election.



Wondering which candidate is surging and which candidate is falling flat on YouTube? The channel will also let you take a deep dive into each candidate’s YouTube stats, so you can see which one has the most video views, subscribers and shares, as well as how they stack up against each other. And from each candidate’s dashboard, you can subscribe to their YouTube channel to receive regular updates and videos from the campaign trail.

There’s a long way to run in the 2012 electoral race, but one thing’s for sure - there will be some unforgettable YouTube moments along the way. Youtube.com/politics will help you keep up with the story.

Ramya Raghavan, YouTube News and Politics Manager, recently watched “Republican Debate: Books, Boos, Gay Soldier and Ron Paul.”

European Commission President Barroso takes your questions on YouTube World View

Cross-posted from The Official Google Blog.

Tomorrow, September 28, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso will deliver his annual State of the Union Address. In these turbulent times, we wanted to give people a chance to make their voices heard and ask their questions about the EU. So we teamed up with broadcaster Euronews and invited President Barroso to answer your questions in a special, live YouTube World View interview that will take place on Thursday, October 6 at 10:00am Central European Time.

Starting today, we invite you to submit your questions for President Barroso via youtube.com/worldview. Questions can be on any topic, from the Euro crisis and austerity measures to growth and jobs, from foreign policy and immigration to ethnic minority issues, human rights and the environment. You can ask written or video questions—and view and vote on other people’s questions—in any of the European Union’s languages, thanks to Google Translate.

During the interview on October 6, hosted by Euronews anchor Alex Taylor, the President will answer a selection of the most popular questions, as determined by your votes. The interview will be streamed and broadcast in multiple languages on both YouTube and Euronews.



President Barroso’s interview will be the first multi-lingual livecast in the World View series, which gives anyone with an Internet connection the ability to pose questions, vote on what’s most important to them and get answers directly from senior politicians and world leaders. President Barroso’s interview follows interviews with U.S. President Obama, President Kagame of Rwanda, U.K. Prime Minister Cameron, Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Whatever your question, President Barroso wants to hear from you. Be sure to submit your question via the World View channel before midnight CET on Wednesday October 5.

Al Verney, Head of Communications, Google Brussels, recently watched “The YouTube Interview with President Obama 2011.”

Grade the candidates in last night's Fox News/Google Debate

Last night’s Fox News/Google Debate brought your top-voted questions to the Republican candidates right here on YouTube. In the lively two-hour debate, over a dozen of your questions were posed to the candidates, while search trends and question data provided more information on the issues you were most interested in.

Now it’s time to grade the candidates on their answers. Did they answer the questions directly? Did they answer them well? Visit youtube.com/foxnews now to watch individual clips of each question-and-answer exchange and provide feedback on how the candidates did.

The Fox News/Google Debate was the most-watched debate of the 2011 season, averaging 6.1 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. If you missed it, you can also watch the full broadcast here:

In addition to voting on videos of the debate, you’ll find a “Pulse” tab on the channel that shows data visualizations of the questions you submitted. You’ll also be able to watch clips from our online show with Shannon Bream and Chris Stirewalt, where we examined your questions and issue searches in more detail.

During the debate, we also looked at what searches were spiking on Google. Of all of the candidates names, the underdog former Governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson’s name saw the biggest spikes.

Viewers were also interested in finding out more about Herman Cain’s “9-9-9” plan -- every time he mentioned the plan, searches for it on Google spiked.

Check out more search trends on the Google Public Sector Blog.

As the GOP primary continues to heat up, you’ll be able to find information straight from the candidates right here on YouTube. Our next scheduled debate is with PBS and the Des Moines Register on January 12th in Iowa -- stay tuned for more information on how you can participate.

Steve Grove, Head of News and Politics, YouTube, recently watched Fox News/Google Debate (Full Length)

The Fox News/Google Debate live tonight on YouTube: GOP candidates answer your questions

Cross posted from the Official Google Blog.

Since we announced the Fox News/Google Debate on September 1, people across the country have submitted more than 18,000 questions to the Fox News YouTube channel on topics ranging from immigration reform, to health care, to foreign aid to social security. Tonight, the Republican presidential candidates will answer those questions in the Fox News/Google Debate, which will be live-streamed on YouTube and broadcast on Fox News Channel starting at 9pm ET. We’ll also have an online pre-debate show starting at 8:30pm ET, featuring Fox News’s Shannon Bream and Chris Stirewalt, and Steve Grove, YouTube’s Head of News and Politics.

Even if you’re watching on TV, you can visit youtube.com/foxnews during the debate to vote on real-time polling questions and submit live commentary. Throughout the evening, we’ll share Google politics-related search trend information and public data that will provide context to the issues discussed. Fox News moderators will ask specific questions that were submitted by citizens through YouTube, and we’ll be looking at overall trends that emerge from the questions in aggregate. To give you an idea, here’s a look at the most popular words people used in their submissions (the bigger the word, the more often it was used)

Flex your democratic muscle and tune in to youtube.com/foxnews tonight at 8:30pm ET for a political debate that puts you in the driver’s seat of the discussion.

Ramya Raghavan, YouTube News and Politics Manager, recently watched “Candidate Question IRS.”