Jubilee Media wants to build political empathy through YouTube debates 

Jubilee founder Jason Y. Lee wants to solve the problem of media echo chambers.

Lee’s idea is relatively simple: Present professionally filmed, two-sided debates on YouTube, and give the exchanges scintillating titles like “Can 1 Woke Teen Survive 20 Trump Supporters?” His bet is that, once they get under the hood of that face-off (which can easily run over an hour), viewers will leave with a better understanding of the other side. 

The bet has paid off. In 2022, Jubilee Media announced a $1.1 million funding round, pushing their total raised to $3.25 million. Among the investors are YouTube cofounder Steve Chen and Patreon cofounder Sam Yam. Jubilee’s bread and butter are those clickbait series which veer hard into identity politics (i.e. “ ">Asian or Not? Test Your Radar” and “ ">5 Gay Men vs 1 Secret Straight Guy.”). But, as the election draws closer, their political debate videos are gaining traction: The last five debates have all crossed the million view threshold, gaining a combined 34 million views. 

But the internet has other ideas for the Jubilee exchanges. The debate’s best “owns” are relentlessly reposted across TikTok, Instagram, and X in clips that are packaged as snippets of partisan victory. That’s the challenge to Lee’s business model: Can he construct long-form political dialogue in a short-form economy? In an era of drastic polarization, where the ideological gap has grown on most major issues from abortion to gun control, viewers could simply be more interested in seeing their side win. 

“We’re actually featuring voices from both sides as equally and accurately as possible,” Lee says. “You’d be hard-pressed to say that Jubilee has a partisan bent. I think that’s something that’s really unique.”

A look at Jubilee Media’s mission

When describing the mission of Jubilee’s debates, Lee frequently comes back to the word “empathy.” He wants to build connections across the aisle, exposing viewers to the viewpoints they won’t hear everyday. One of their series, &list=PLBVNJo7nhINSjBZdNezW15PzOTCc-10m9">Middle Ground, asks partisans from both sides to come together and find commonalities. 

“There is a seat at the table for everyone here, but the rule is, you cannot flip over the table,” Lee says, describing Jubilee’s guiding principle. “Even difficult dialogue is better than no dialogue at all.”

While Lee’s goal is to foster nonpartisanship, some of his debate participants aren’t so convinced that’s a likely outcome. Hannah Cox, a content creator who calls herself a “rabid capitalist,” has now participated in two Jubilee debates. Her first, “ ">Capitalists vs Communists,” was a thoughtful conversation, even if she was annoyed with one of the other side’s debaters for clogging up their time.

In Cox’s second debate, “ &t=8s">Pro-Gun vs Anti-Gun,” she advocated fiercely for her position to protect gun rights. When the video premiered, she was disappointed to see that Jubilee included fact-checking banners, which Cox claims were selectively used and often didn’t address the claims made. 

“If the fact checkers want to debate me, pull up a chair,” Cox says. “It was always against my side. It was never done on the other side at all. There were several times where they would fact check something, they would throw up a statistic that was completely unrelated to what was even being said, but it gave the appearance of debunking.” 

Looking online, Cox saw commenters dunking on her and her fellow debaters. She assumes that most Jubilee watchers lean left, saying that they were “looking for a cop out” to not engage with her ideas.

But Naima Troutt, a left-leaning senior at the University of Southern California, had a different takeaway after appearing on Jubilee’s debates: that the audience base skews conversative. She participated in Jubilee’s ">Surrounded debate, teaming up with other college students to take on alt-right talking head Charlie Kirk. Her offhanded remark that Kirk’s smile was “creepy” immediately turned into a meme. 

After the video’s release, Troutt saw a flood of negative comments, saying she and her peers looked “lost” and “suck.” “I’ve been called the  N-word more in the last three weeks than I have in my entire life,” she says. (Across the board, Lee says he’s found the reactions to be quite equal, something he takes as proof of Jubilee’s maintained balance.)

Troutt has continued to participate in Jubilee videos, remaining positive on the company and their mission. Still, she notes an experience gap in these Surrounded debates. “The one thing that I would like to see from Jubilee is a debate in which the Republican member isn’t at an advantage,” Troutt says. “The level of experience on the conservative type side tends to be a little bit higher.” 

Even with its nonpartisan aim, Jubilee is walking the same tightrope as all other political media companies. It has its critics from both the left and the right; that could be a sign that it’s reached some sort of balance.

Where does Jubilee fit into the clip economy?

For those unwilling to sit for 90-minutes of nonstop debate (plus ads), Jubilee’s content is clipped and strewn about other social media apps like TikTok, Instagram and X. That’s not necessarily a problem for Jubilee’s business; their millions of views are certainly enough to run a fruitful company. But it could pose a threat to Lee’s vision of political empathy and understanding. 

These Jubilee cuts often show a major win for one side or another. One college student got Kirk to admit that, if his own daughter were raped, he’d force her to deliver the baby. The video bounced around TikTok incessantly, scored by mellow beats or sad Billie Eillish songs. After one conservative teen listed the dangers that men face disproportionately, a liberal mom snapped back, “And who set that system up?” The response is now the subject of dozens of fancams.

Lee says that he’s seen both conservative- and liberal-skewed clips of his company’s content across the internet. In fact, he’s watched as the same exact clip gets touted online as a big win by both the left and the right. 

But Angelo Carusone, president of progressive watchdog Media Matters, values Jubilee for its ability to give liberals good talking points. Sure, he argues, right-wingers will get value out of the clips too, but we shouldn’t diminish the value of some of the talking points “simply because others are going to misuse it.” 

Ultimately, short-form edits aren’t Lee’s ideal method of content consumption. To truly realize his vision of political discourse, viewers need to see the debate play out. That’s how you “get the full context of what we’re hoping to do,” he says.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91209470/jubilee-media-wants-to-build-political-empathy-through-youtube-debates?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss