Osama bin Laden News Draws YouTube Reaction from Across the Country

UPDATED

Sunday night, President Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan by U.S. forces. As the news broke, searches for videos about the story -- "osama bin laden dead" -- were by far the top rising terms on YouTube. Other top searches were for songs including Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue," "Good Bless America," and Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A," among others.

One of the top trending videos on Twitter was President George W. Bush's famous bullhorn speech from ground zero in 2001.

After the announcement, YouTube began seeing a surge in videos uploaded of both YouTube user reactions and on-the-scene videos from gatherings and celebrations around the country, including at the United States Naval and Air Force academies, Ground Zero, and a number of universities, which can be seen in the playlist of clips below.

Update 9amET: Now with more, clearer videos from the service academies and with clips from Time Square, Boston, and other locations:



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

WE WILL CONTINUE TO UPDATE AS MORE VIDEOS ARE POSTED

On the Scene Footage: Friday Protests Across Syria

Earlier in the week, we highlighted videos coming out of the Syrian city of Homs, which purported to depict large-scale protests as well as gunfire from government forces. Today, we have new footage said to be from cities across Syria of the many Friday protests that broke out in another day that is reported to turn violent.

Here is some of that footage, which has been curated on CitizenTube in partnership with Storyful. It's been labeled by the city it was said to have been shot in.

Damascus:	Zabadani:
Banias:	Homs:

There is also footage of reported gunfire and tear gas used to disperse crowds that's begun to draw some attention:

Gunfire Breaks Up Protest in Syria

Tensions have risen again in Syria, where government forces today broke up a sit-in involving thousands of people that took place in a square in the city of Homs. The videos below were all said to be captured in Homs in the past 24 hours and are curated on CitizenTube through our partnership with Storyful.

Protesters chanting in the square at night	Shots are fired at what appears to be the same location.
Protesters dodge reported fire at dawn	Another video of gunfire in the street said to be from this morning.

New Dramatic Video from Japan

On March 11, Japan was struck by a major earthquake and tsunami, a catastrophic event that drew major global attention here on YouTube where hundreds of on-the-scene videos were posted as events were unfolding there.

Yet over a month later, we are still seeing incredible footage come in with dramatic first hand accounts of the disaster. The video below is said to have been captured near a school in South Sanriku City. The videographer indicated that he was initially hesitant to post the footage:



Here's another recently posted dramatic clip that's drawn a lot of attention.

You can see a full collection of on-the-scene video from Japan at CitizenTube.

Footage from the Scene: London Protests Turn Destructive

Anti-spending cuts protests, which are said to have been attended by up to 500,000 people, went from peaceful to destructive Saturday in London after the demonstrations were reportedly hijacked by "violent anarchists." Many attendees and bystanders uploaded hundreds of on-the-scene accounts depicting both sides to the day's events. A sample of that footage is available in the playlist below:



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

Related: In another form of protest, a UK rapper has targeted Britain's Health Secretary with a viral rap video that's drawing a lot of buzz. It's currently one of the Most Viewed videos on the country. Here's some backstory.

Syria Protests: Dramatic Footage from the Street

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.

Earthquake, Tsunami Draw Major Global Interest

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.

New Video from Bahrain

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.

Tsunami Videos Draw Views Throughout the Weekend

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.

On the Scene Footage: Japan Earthquake, Tsunami

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:

Inside the Wisconsin State Capitol

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.)

What Wisconsin Is Watching As Dispute Continues

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.

Mapping the Latest Libya Footage

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.)

Footage: Earthquake in New Zealand

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:

Violent Footage from Bahrain

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.

Keywords of a 'Revolution'

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.

Video Posted from Protests in Bahrain

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:

Dramatic Footage from New Protests in Middle East

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

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

More Video Arriving Each Day from Egypt

In the last 7 days, "Egypt" is the #3 overall rising search on YouTube in the United States -- and #2 globally -- and those searches will deliver results of over 18,000 videos in the past week and over 5,000 in the past 24 hours.

CitizenTube has partnered with Storyful to organize all of that footage into playlists for each day of the protest since it started on January 25th:

	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		Thursday, February 3
	Friday, February 4

Next week, we'll be following up with even more interesting data around the events in Egypt, but for now we just wanted to take a quick broad look at how searches for the word "egypt" (in English) on YouTube have increased due to the events. As you can see in the chart below, searches for Egypt-related video this week have been higher than ever before in YouTube history.

The other major spikes are soccer-related including those around a 2009 match with Algeria that was preceded by violence.