Riding the Web 2.0 Wave: Candidates on YouTube in the 2007 Finnish National Elections

This article seeks to expand the research on the adoption of social networking Web sites in electoral politics beyond the U.S. by exploring the use and impact of the YouTube video-sharing Web site in the 2007 Finnish national elections. Focusing on uploaded videos featuring candidates, the study shows that YouTube played a marginal role in the elections. Only 6% of the candidates disseminated YouTube videos. Online, the videos did not generally attract much public interest. However, the study also demonstrates that YouTube gave a voice to certain minor electoral players and ordinary citizens in the elections. The findings are compared with scholarly observations from the 2006 U.S. midterm elections--the first "YouTube elections."