That is the interesting viewpoint of Michael Wesch, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University. Welch gave a talk at the Library of Congress Monday and he this question by an audience member:

Why should anyone care about a subculture of homemade video makers, or the fact that some people watch amusing clips on the Internet instead of looking at TV? “I don’t understand how this is going to impact my life,”

The response by Professor Wesch was:

“It will impact politics — it will impact who gets elected this year. And I think it can be argued that Obama would not have taken the election without social media. Clinton with her machine would have just ran right over him.”

This is a really interesting observation. The Yes We Can video’s  have received over 15 million views on YouTube and the Obama Girl videos have been seen well over 10 million times combined and the Obama certainly used social media like YouTube, Facebook and MySpace to reach out and energize its young supporters.

But would Barack Obama have won the nomination without the help social media?  I agree with Professor Welch that the Internet and social media gave his campaign the momentum and word of mouth that it needed to get going, especially in the early days of the campaign.

What do you think? Did social media influence the Democratic primary?