When Elisa Kreisinger wanted to protest the newly diminished visibility of gay characters and story lines on television, she didn’t launch a petition drive or write an angry op-ed piece. Instead, like many other members of the YouTube generation for whom the visual language is a native tongue, she found a way to have her say with video rather than words.

Kreisinger remixed scenes from “Sex and the City’’ into a pair of pro-gay narratives, and uploaded the resulting videos to her blog, drawing 21,000 hits.

[...]

One way or another, whether the cause is bringing relief to earthquake-ravaged Haiti, protecting the environment, kindling grass-roots support for a favorite political candidate, or protesting the perceived depredations of corporate America, it is now a video, rather than a picture, that is worth a thousand words.

“Making media now is a powerful way of participating in all kinds of life, including civic and political life,’’ said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. “These people are now deeply connected to the political process in a way that their parents, at their age, could never be.’’

Read More