Think.MTV

This election season, MTV is inviting young voters to Think.

The immensely popular cable television network, which is geared toward teens and young adults, has launched the social networking site Think MTV. It includes features that are typical of networking Web sites – photo and video sharing, forums, messaging, groups and “friends” lists. Think, however, also incorporates ideas that most people probably do not associate with with its target audience, which is 18- to 24- year olds, according to a press release: politics and citizen journalism.

This initiative is indicative of a larger trend that that organizations and advertisers alike seem to be noticing: using the Internet and multimedia tools will get the attention of younger audiences.

Last December, MTV unveiled “Street Team ’08,” a group of 51 young citizen journalists, one from each state and Washington, D.C., who were selected to cover the 2008 elections with weekly multimedia reports. In order to make this possible, street team members were equipped with laptops, video cameras, mobile phones and computer software. Their reports, which are in the forms of text, video, photos, animation and podcasts, can be found on Think, MTV Mobile and more than 1,800 sites in the Associated Press Online Video Network.

“Street Team ‘08 is in many ways an experiment, we're trying to see if we can reach more of the youth vote if we start a conversation with them, using the means that they're already using to communicate with one another,” said Kristen Teraila, 24, the street team member representing Maryland and a graduate of the University of Maryland. “Do most 20-year-olds watch the nightly news and read the newspaper on a daily basis? Probably not. But are they online consuming, sharing and creating media everyday? I think so.”

Teraila, who went to school for journalism, recently posted this video story of nearly professional quality about the ability of 17-year-olds who will be 18 by Election Day in November to cast a vote in the February primary elections in Maryland.

Several attempts were made to get comments from those directly involved with creating and running Think, but no communication could be made beyond MTV’s public relations specialists.
MTV is no stranger to encouraging its young viewers to get politically involved. MTV News first started covering politics during the presidential race of 1992 through their “Choose or Lose” campaign, which has also geared up to cover every presidential election since. These days, when users go to ChooseorLose.com, they are automatically redirected to the section of Think dedicated to Street Team ’08. The implication is that citizen journalists are the new Kurt Loder.

Scott McLean, 18, a high school student from Millis, Mass., confirmed Teraila’s speculation about what young people are doing on an everyday basis.

“I look at videos online pretty much every day.” he said. “My friends do too, and we send each other things that are funny or interesting. I’m on YouTube and CollegeHumor all the time,” he said while sipping on coffee in a Boston Starbucks, his laptop, logged on to YouTube, sitting on the table in front of him.

McLean is not alone. Research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project has concluded that 57 percent of online adults have, at some point, used the Internet to download and watch videos, and 19 percent do this on a daily basis. Among broadband users who have high-speed connections both in the office and at home, the number of regular online video viewers increases to 74 percent. Fifty-seven percent of the online video viewers reported sharing links to video with others, and 75 percent reported receiving links to video from other people. The most active participants of video-watching adults were classified as “young adults,” although no further specific data on this was given.

Members of the street team span across many demographics. Some are journalism school grads, some are totally new to multimedia, some are liberal, and some are conservative. All are young, intelligent and easy for most 18-24-year-olds to relate to.

Before the street team got to work, Erica Anderson, 23, the team member from Washington, D.C., posted this video blog on YouTube about the research she was doing in preparation and her anticipation of the intensive orientation that all street team members attended, where they learned what was expected of them and how to operate their new equipment. In her blog, Anderson says that she wants to get in touch with more people who are younger than her, specifically, she says, 16-, 17- and 18-year-olds.

So, is Think on the right track to getting young voters’ attention with videos and other forms of multi-media? Is this the way to get more young people involved and interested in casting their vote?

“The answer unfortunately is that nobody really knows yet whether these tools are ‘pushing the dial’ on young voter participation or not,” said Aaron Smith, a research specialist at the Pew Internet & American Life Project. “This is one of the big questions of the election.”

Although there’s no way to know for sure if initiatives such as Think will be successful in increasing young voter participation, they can’t hurt the cause, said Smith.

“To a somewhat greater extent than older adults, young people have internalized technology – they’ve grown up with it, gone to school with it, it’s the primary way they communicate with each other and learn about the world,” he said. “So when they want to do something or get information, the Internet is often their default starting point.”

MTV’s Think is a good example of the growing trend in companies and causes reaching out to youth audiences via the Web and multimedia.

Focus The Nation, an organization associated with Think and dedicated to global warming solutions, has also jumped on the multimedia bandwagon in order to get the attention of the younger crowd. The organization is the host of a grant competition called Project Slingshot. Applicants to Project Slingshot, who must be between the ages of 18 and 25, will submit their ideas for a global warming solution, and the three winners will be given a grant of up to $10,000 to carry out their ideas. Unlike similar, but more traditional programs, Project Slingshot is accepting audio and video entries, in addition to essays. Project Slingshot also uses its own commercial video as promotion, giving the details about the contest with interesting graphics and animation. The commercial can be found here.

“Part of the way that media is changing is that it’s just sort of expected to have multi-media in all communications, it’s just part of being in the Internet age,” said Alex Tinker, program manager for Focus The Nation. “So, we thought it would make sense to have that kind of information included in the application process so that applicants would be able to express the way they think their projects should be handled in the way they see fit.”

Tinker says that having information and the video about Project Slingshot on Think has been beneficial. “It has certainly helped to make people more aware,” he said.

In addition to providing a platform for discussion and networking, Think aims to educate its users about issues, candidates and voting, putting it a step ahead of sites like MySpace and Facebook for those who want to discuss and learn about politics more seriously. Although those sites do have potential for hosting discussions of politics and important issues, and some people do use them for those functions, their most common use is for entertainment and socializing. Think, on the other hand, is portrayed more seriously and makes it clear that its main focus is politics, making it a great place for anyone truly interested in learning and debating.

MySpace offers this Politics News section, but it’s difficult to find on the site unless you’re looking for it. On the main page, there is a small “news” link that is barely visible in a box among about two dozen other small one-word text links.

“I’m on MySpace all the time,” said Anjelica Carlsen, 20, of Virginia Beach, Va., “And I never saw anything about news. I doubt anyone notices that. Anyway, isn’t it a little too late for anyone to start taking MySpace seriously? Even if I did know it was there, that is definitely not where I would have gone for news.”

The MySpace news section also does not offer anything unique that would make it stand out from any other mainstream news site.

Teraila says that this is another reason that Think has been successful with young people.
“I think the way we're approaching our election coverage on Think is more of an invitation to join the conversation and less of a mandate to sit and listen, which is why so many young voters are turned off by mainstream news coverage,” she says.

And Think really does seem more like a friendly invitation to participate than a boring lecture or dry political coverage. Actually, the only “boring” and not-so-interactive part of the site was this section, which provides clear directions on registering to vote, finding out about primaries, candidates and local representatives. Boring? Sure, but information like that is a necessary evil.
Having young, multimedia citizen journalists on Think seems to be working to get people involved. The site’s forums are active and street team member’s blogs and videos seem to generate a decent amount of traffic, considering the amount of active participation in forums and groups – especially considering that there is still over eight months until the election, and the street team just got to work in January.

“The main thing I want people to take away from my work is the desire to start a conversation,” says Teraila. “The more people talk about this election and the issues that concern them, the more invested people become and then they're more likely to vote or even get involved in their communities through volunteering, which is what we hope Think will inspire people to do.”