Mann: Obama Campaign Lassoed Internet Potential
by Adam Kealoha Causey - Shreveport Times (excerpt)

YouTube and Facebook cashed in for Barack Obama. And if you're unsure what those two words mean, you might have missed a major point of the presidential contender's campaign.

LSU professor Bob Mann, a former Shreveport Journal reporter, talked Wednesday at LSU-Shreveport about how the Democratic senator from Illinois capitalized on the Internet's ability to empower many young supporters on their terms.

The League of Women Voters Caddo/Bossier, the Shreveport Mayor's Women's Commission and the LSUS Department of History and Social Sciences and College of Liberal Arts sponsored the lunchtime chat.

"The Obama campaign adopted the Internet as the very foundation of its effort," said Mann, a professor at LSU's Manship School of Mass Communication, who covered politics for the Journal and the Monroe News-Star in the 1980s.

Mann's talk included several clips of professionally produced and amateur videos from Youtube, a popular Web site that allows anyone to upload content. The smattering included Black Eyed Peas member Will.I.Am's "Yes We Can," that interlaces singing and chanting with bits of Obama speaking. A slide show of still photographs showed political rallies with city skylines in the background put over a music track.

And then there is a R&B video from a woman whose Youtube username is Obama Girl. She sings "I've got a crush on Obama." She poses in a bikini beside a still photo of the shirtless senator on a beach.