With less than 35 days away from the USA presidential election, YouTube has created a new prompt this week, when you search in YouTube about election-related search queries, you get a “Learn More” button for the official election website. This will helps to increase awareness about the voting process and understanding of both candidates. This new strategy will maximize the polling rate and fight against rumors and misinformation around the elections.
Below the screenshot, the prompts will be displayed in searches for terms like “How to register to vote” and “How to vote”, with these alerts are lead the users to the Google’s official voting tools by this “Learn More” CTA button. In addition to this feature, searches for 2020 federal or presidential Congressional candidates will also show a similar information panel with extra details about the presidential candidates above the results.
“We’re also providing two additional information panels on voter registration and how to vote, in English and Spanish.”
YouTube also adding a new in-app reminder feature, on how to register, how to vote, and where to vote. YouTube promoting information from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission about volunteering at the polls, so users can know more about how to get involved and assist with community participation.
YouTube also starting to launch two YouTube Originals to show the highlights of election-related information
YouChoose 2020 – This is an interactive voting special video which takes viewers through the key steps in the voting process using with YouTube meme of your choosing – “from a cooking tutorial that compares voting to following a recipe, to an auto repair video that breaks down the ‘nuts and bolts’ of voting”.
Kids Correspondent – This four-part election special episode is mainly designed to help parents and families to better understand and talk about civic engagement and the democratic process.
YouTube is always one of the main sources of news and information during election time. A date from Pew Research states that around 38% of YouTube users get regular news updates, which only behind Facebook Inc. This report clearly shows YouTube is in a significant position of influence when users search for reliable information.
Though Youtube can also drive users down to conspiracy rabbit holes as well as similar steps are like this very important to ensure that the audience is receiving the right information about the process of voting during the viewing activity.
In 2020, this is even more important due to this global pandemic COVID-19 & lockdown situation people spending more time on the internet. The watch time of YouTube content on TV screens has been increased by 80% year over year. More regional TV news channels and newspapers have been forced to close due to the economic impacts of the pandemic and also increasing internet usage people moved to the world’s biggest social media platform Facebook and YouTube to get instant news updates.
So that social media platforms are playing a vital role in providing relevant and accurate information that jumps high this year. That’s why it is very important that each and everyone should add links to the reliable source of information while sharing social media profiles. Like these new prompts created by YouTube in users’ queries.
