Syria Protests: Dramatic Footage from the Street

March 25, 2011

We're seeing new video coming in today from Syria, where demonstrations have reportedly escalated. CitizenTube, in partnership with StoryFul is curating that footage here.

There have also been reports of casualties in and around the southern city of Dara'a. The clip below is said to have been filmed today in a nearby city. Warning: Graphic.

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Earthquake, Tsunami Draw Major Global Interest

March 17, 2011

Footage of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami were in high demand on Friday and into the weekend as users worldwide sought out information about the disaster. The rise in searches, the number of videos, and the volume of views place it among the biggest international stories on YouTube in recent years .

Early numbers indicate that, in the United States, the spike around "tsunami" searches in the U.S. were considerably higher than any spikes associated with the recent protests and unrest in the Middle East, which is the other biggest news story of 2011 with significant user-generated video. (It's worth noting though that those events extended over a longer period of time, however.) Searches last week for "tsunami" in the U.S. spiked higher than any other news or entertainment story during that period.

Taking a quick look at some of YouTube's top news channels, which were posting earthquake and tsunami footage, further reinforces the point. Russia Today, the Associated Press, and Al Jazeera English -- all of which are among YouTube's top 10 most-viewed news channels -- saw the biggest single day spikes they've ever seen on Friday. The largest was from Russia Today, whose videos make up 5 of the top 10 most-viewed from the past week.

For the first two months of the year, Russia Today daily views averaged 850,000. On Friday, Russia Today videos were viewed around 20 million times globally.

Videos on these three channels were viewed a combined 40 million times on Friday alone.

Other notes:

U.S. regional search interest was by far the highest in Hawaii, followed by Alaska and other west coast states that were expecting residual effects of the earthquake.
CitizenTube has been organizing user-generated video with Storyful since the earthquake and, of those curated videos, 18 have over one million views. In total, roughly four hours of on-the-scene video are available there.
Globally, "tsunami" is the #2 rising search of the past 30 days. In Japan, the top two rising searches for the past 30 days are 地震 (earthquake) and 津波 (tsunami). A search for tsunami-related videos (English and Japanese) will deliver over 25,000 results from the past week.
See the weekend's Most Shared and top trending on-the-scene videos here.

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New Video from Bahrain

March 15, 2011

New, dramatic footage is appearing from the streets of Bahrain as intense clashes continue between security personnel and protesters. Through partnership with Storyful, Citizentube has continued to curate footage coming from the region, including these two clips, which are reportedly from the past few days:

Find more footage from the streets of Bahrain at Citizentube.

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Tsunami Videos Draw Views Throughout the Weekend

March 14, 2011

Nearly all of the weekend's Most Shared and top Trending videos were related to the devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami that occurred Friday in Japan. Today, seven out of our top 10 Trending Topics are related to the disaster.

Initially, we were seeing an influx of video from the earthquake itself, with many of those videos rapidly accruing thousands of views. As more video became available of the tsunami itself, clips of the damage caused by the raging water were heavily shared and embedded on a variety of blogs -- among them were both dramatic clips from Japan as well as on-the-scene footage of the earthquake's effects in Hawaii and the west coast of the United States.

The tsunami arrives at the city of Iwaki, Japan	The view from inside Sendai Airport.

Both of these clips purport to show the tsunami reaching Kona, Hawaii:

Another video reportedly showing the tsunami reaching Emeryville, CA also drew significant attention.

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On the Scene Footage: Japan Earthquake, Tsunami

March 11, 2011

A 8.9 magnitude earthquake, one of the largest ever, struck off the coast of Japan today, causing serious damage and spawning a deadly tsunami. Scores of on-the-scene videos are being posted to YouTube and many have been curated by CitizenTube and in partnership with Storyful. You can view them all here, but below are a few dramatic clips:

Residents capture the frightening experience inside their Sendai home.	Yokohama mall shoppers evacuated as the earthquake strikes.

Explosions and fires are captured in the disaster's aftermath:

UPDATE

Buildings and trains sway as the earthquake strikes:

Video from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration depicting the spread of waves across the Pacific after the quake:

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Inside the Wisconsin State Capitol

March 10, 2011

Last evening, Wisconsin's State Senate voted on the controversial Unions/collective bargaining legislation that has resulted in fierce debate and protest over the past month. Soonafter, protesters began streaming into the previously secured capitol building in large numbers.

YouTube users equipped with a variety of cameras captured the events from inside and around the building in the moments immediately following the announcement of the vote, and we're now seeing a rise in those videos being uploaded. Below you can find a playlist of those videos uploaded in the past few hours.

Also, use our Trends Dashboard to see which videos are Most Shared and Most Viewed today in Wisconsin's biggest cities.

(Use the arrows to navigate between videos or watch them all here.)

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What Wisconsin Is Watching As Dispute Continues

March 07, 2011

Videos highlighting protests and the union debate in Wisconsin continue to be heavily shared and watched in some of the state's biggest cities Monday, according to our Trends Dashboard. The Most Shared and Most Viewed videos today in Madison and Milwaukee run the gamut of both opinion and tone. Some are sentimental, while others are humorous or critical. Here's a sample:

Michael Moore adresses crowd	A thank you to "Fab 14 Senators"

A primer from the Heritage Foundation	Tribute video

A "report" from YouTube celeb Chad Vader	A hip-hop protest video

Also, just rising on Madison's Most Shared list is this protest flashmob performance from the movie, Newsies.

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Mapping the Latest Libya Footage

March 03, 2011

More video has continued to pour in each day from Libya as tensions continue to rise in the north African country. CitizenTube has libraries of over 200 on-the-scene videos from Libya alone. One video that came in today that purports to show the aftermath of a clash outside of the airport in Misurata:

We often focus on viewing and search data on Trends, but there's a lot of geographic information that can be applied to this type of footage that provides additional context around some of the dramatic video we've been seeing from the region.

Our curation partners at Storyful.com went through Google and GeoEye imagery to find what appears to be the location of the footage in question, and have indicated the spot where it's likely the videographer was standing:

(These particular images were captured this week as a part of a special collection. Media interested in this satellite imagery can use this KML file with your edition of Google Earth to see the latest from the area.)

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Footage: Earthquake in New Zealand

February 22, 2011

Overnight, footage continued appearing on YouTube from a large earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand late yesterday evening, United States-time. CitizenTube is curating the video here.

Here's one example:

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Violent Footage from Bahrain

February 18, 2011

UPDATED

As protests continue this week in the Middle East and Northern Africa, CitizenTube is curating the footage coming in from that region in partnership with Storyful. Earlier today, videos surfaced of reported violence in the small island nation of Bahrain, where major demonstrations have taken place at the city's center and soldiers reportedly opened fire on protesters.

WARNING: SOME OF THESE IMAGES ARE GRAPHIC.

Reportedly from today:

Said to be from a downtown hospital on Thursday:

See all the curated videos from this week's protests at youtube.com/citizentube.

Update: New dramatic footage has surfaced of an incident purported to be from earlier today in Bahrain. It can be viewed here. WARNING: GRAPHIC.

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Keywords of a 'Revolution'

February 16, 2011

In attempt to get a wider snapshot of the events in the Middle East over the past two weeks, we've pulled together some YouTube keyword data to examine which words were tied closest to the dramatic footage coming out of the region.

We took 2,000 videos uploaded to YouTube since January 25th that included the Arabic word for "revolution" in the title. We then isolated the keywords tagged to those videos and translated them all to English using Google Translate. What you see below is a visualization of those keywords using the online tool Wordle.

(Click to enlarge)

• Like words? See which words were the most popular among your questions to President Obama.

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Video Posted from Protests in Bahrain

February 15, 2011

As we mentioned, CitizenTube -- through partnership with Storyful -- is curating video this week from demonstrations in Iran, Bahrain, Yemen, and Algeria. In the past week, we've seen over 2,000 videos associated with the term "Bahrain" (in English or Arabic) appear, with around 700 in the past 24 hours.

New footage surfaced today of clashes and large gatherings of protesters in the streets of the island nation, which has an estimated population of just 738,000. Posted below are some dramatic video from Bahrain included in the CitizenTube curation:

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Dramatic Footage from New Protests in Middle East

February 14, 2011

After over two weeks of major protests in Egypt -- which were preceded by major demonstrations in Tunisia -- new protests have reportedly spread to other countries in the region.

Today, we are seeing dramatic footage come in from demonstrations in Iran, Yemen, Bahrain, and Algeria, like this on-the-scene video of a purported confrontation between protestors and police in Diraz, Bahrain:

Through partnership with Storyful, CitizenTube is curating the footage into organized playlists. You can find and view those clips using the links below:

	IRAN		YEMEN
	BAHRAIN		ALGERIA

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Comparing Searches for 'Iran' in 2009 with 'Egypt' in 2011

February 10, 2011

As major demonstrations have taken place in Egypt over the past 17 days, comparisons have been drawn between those protests and the ones that took place in Iran in 2009, specifically in regards to the kind of incredible on-the-scene footage being posted to YouTube.

Looking at YouTube search data for the terms "iran" and "egypt" over the past two years delivered some interesting results.

Video searches for both terms were at their highest during those respective protests -- "iran" was highest the week of June 21st, 2009 and "egypt" was highest in the past week -- but when you compare them directly, searches for "iran" in 2009 were twice as high searches for "egypt" have been thus far.

Here's a chart showing video searches for "egypt" (blue) and "iran" (red) in the United States:

(*Searches measured by proportional interest. Data for the final point is incomplete.)

Why the disparity exists is unclear, but there are a few potential explanations. One is the wider availability in 2011 of this user-generated video on television and other news platforms. Another is the phenomenon surrounding the "Neda" video, the eye-opening and award-winning footage of Iranian protester Neda Agha-Soltan who was killed during Iran's demonstrations.

The top search term associated with "iran" on YouTube during those protests was "neda," while no major second term can be tied to "egypt" this January and February, suggesting their's not one "must-see" video associated with these events. There are certainly some videos of the violence in Egypt over the past two weeks that have spread around the web, however, and drawn high view counts. Perhaps the most iconic clip has been the early video of a protestor facing a police water cannon.

One thing we don't think this data suggests is a lack of public interest in this story. In fact, when you look at Google searches for the same terms, the graph is essentially flipped:

All of that said, Egypt's unrest is currently ongoing and it's unclear what tomorrow will bring. Through our partnership with Storyful, CitizenTube is featuring playlists from each day of the events in Egypt. Here are a few:

	Tuesday, February 8		Wednesday, February 9
	Thursday, February 10		Friday, February 11

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Australia Cyclone: On-the-Scene Footage

February 02, 2011

Wednesday, North Queensland, Australia was hit with a category five cyclone, Yasi, that damaged much of the coast.

Yesterday, the majority of the Most Shared videos in Australia were all from the Queensland Police Service's channel, and in the time leading up to landfall, many users began posting "calm before the storm"-type clips. As the storm arrived, we began seeing videos posted from cities like Townsville, with some users uploading near hourly updates.

Here's a playlist with a sample of that footage:

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Protests in Egypt, One Week In

February 01, 2011

It's been a week since protests started in Egypt, and YouTube's CitizenTube has collected roughly raw 100 videos from the major demonstrations in the country's major cities in the playlist below:

(Use the arrows to navigate between videos or watch them all here.)

In partnership with Storyful, we've also curated playlists with organized footage from each day's events:

	Tuesday, January 25		Wednesday, January 26
	Thursday, January 27		Friday, January 28
	Saturday, January 29		Sunday, January 30
	Monday, January 31		Tuesday, February 1
	Wednesday, February 2

In addition to the footage coming out of Egpyt, videos have also been uploaded from various solidarity protests held outside Egyptian embassies in a number of major cities around the world, which mostly began last Friday. Those cities include London, Madrid, Frankfurt, Toronto, Jeddah, San Francisco, Dublin, Milan, Tunis, and Paris, among others. You can see that footage collected here.

Previously: Protests in Egypt Captured in Dramatic, On-the-Scene Videos

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Protests in Egypt Captured in Dramatic, On-the-Scene Videos

January 26, 2011

Massive gatherings of anti-government protesters swelled Tuesday in Africa's largest city as Egyptians took to the streets of Cairo and other major Egyptian cities for what's being called "the largest demonstration in Egypt in a generation," a great deal of which was captured by bystanders documenting the events on cell phones and cameras and posting them to YouTube.

The most iconic of the videos, which we featured yesterday, has drawn over half a million views so far. The largest gatherings captured were in Tahrir square, which is a focus of some of the more dramatic video. In the playlist below, which is composed of some of the most popular clips as well as those curated by The NYTimes' Lede and Storyful, you can see the crowd grow in large numbers and reportedly be broken up with the use of gas canisters:

(Use the arrows to navigate between videos or watch them all here.)

We will be monitoring for new footage to update from Wednesday's events...

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Footage from Scene: Moscow Airport Blast

January 24, 2011

An explosion this morning at Moscow's Domodedovo airport is reported to have killed 31 people and is being referred to as a terrorist attack. A YouTube user in Russia has uploaded this video reportedly showing the scene within the airport immediately following the explosion:

(WARNING: SOME GRAPHIC CONTENT)

We will update if and when more video surfaces.

More: A montage of some other pieces of bystander footage.

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Footage from the Ground: Brazil Mudslide, Aftermath

January 20, 2011

It's been a week since mudslides in Rio De Janairo left over a reported 700 dead and 14,000 homeless in what's being described as "one of the worst natural disasters in Brazilian history."

In addition to the kind of dramatic news footage that's made its way to YouTube and drawn a lot of attention, we've also seen a lot of amateur footage documenting conditions in the region. Over the past seven days, "enchente" (flood) has been one of the top rising search terms among YouTube users in Brazil.

We've pulled together this playlist of footage from the region, which begins with clips from the disaster itself and progresses to show some of where the recovery stands today:

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