When I was at Michigan State doing my Ph. D. studies back in the Stone Age, I was exposed to a whole new world of thought. I went there to major in Speech, and I expected to take courses such as the rhetoric of Aristotle and the history of British Public Address. and indeed I took such courses. But the tides of academia were turning, and Michigan State was in the process of converting from traditional rhetoric to a brand new way of looking at communication under the leadership of David Berlo, Gerald Miller, and other social scientists. In order to graduate, I was required to turn my program of study into a hybrid that incorporated major elements of both approaches. Rather than look only at what rhetoric ought to be, as it was in ancient Greece and in the speeches of Pitt the Elder, Fox, and Burke (Edmund, not Kenneth), my classmates and I had to study models, statistics, and topics like interpersonal and organizational communication.

One of the "aha" moments for me about the differences between the two approaches, rhetoric vs. comm studies, was when one of my professors asked the class, "What is the first thing that starts a telephone conversation?" Somebody said, "When you pick up the receiver and say Hello." But the prof said, "Wrong. It's when the telephone itself says "Ring, ring."

Rhetoric is tied up in verbal content and persuasive strateies, public influence, etc. Comm studies from the social scientific standpoint is interested in the processes of making meaning, and coming to a some sort of meeting of the minds.

Context is all important in both rhetoric and comm studies.

Before you can "rank" questions, what, exactly, are you trying to learn from studying about them?

How do you define a "question?" Is it a statement of words that is supposed to have a rhetorical purpose in a verbal argument? As in, cross examination? or as in a rhetorical question?

Or is it just a manifestation of how one party to a given communication event is attempting to participate to generate meaning?

It is one thing to reduce the Youtube debate to a written transcript, like a press conference, where the questions are stated and the answers are written out, so you can diagram them in some semantic or argumentation schematic.

It's another thing to think of the Youtube debate as a TV program with characters playing out their roles in a script. Even though the "script" involved is not created in advance by a screenwriter like an episode of "Law and Order," nevertheless the program as a whole is scripted in advance by writers -- the CNN production and editorial team -- to create an episode of "Youtube Debates." It has to come across as resembling previous debate programs.

Seen in this sense, you can easily envision the team of writers assembled in a large studio looking at the 3,000 or so questions that viewers around the country had so kindly given them at no charge, and cherry picking through them to find just the right ones to insert into the show, in a sequence of the editors' choosing, to be asked of the candidates as a group, or individually, by the moderator, Anderson Cooper.

What is the Youtube Debate Show's functional equivalent of "Ring, Ring?" What do you see as the context for all of those 40 something questions that "made the cut?" What were the editors thinking of when they lined up the questions in the specific order in which they came throughout the progess of the show? What would be a good opener? What would be a good question to wrap up the show as the final one?

Or did the show's producers reserve some discretion as the program proceeded, to choose topics and questions that adapted to the candidates' answers -- I think the producers could pretty well anticipate how each candidate would answer every question based on the boiler plate or sound bite approach candidates have of always giving the same responses to them in other contexts. But there is also the factor of the unexpected, and the intangible sense of how the event is "flowing" for the sake of continuity and dramatic interest.

To rank the questions, you can't do it in a vacuum. You can't just limit yourself to a written transcript of the questions, and the answers, if you want to make a judgment or evaluation of the importance of the questions to the overall impression the show tries to achieve.

You have to look at the pictures that accompany the questions. Or, as some would have it, the emphasis really ought to be the the other way around. The pictures are more important than the words themselves. Look at the words that accompany the pictures, so to speak.

The general visual scene is the now traditional one of showing the candidates lined up across a stage, the moderator standing before them (moderators used to be confined to a desk; CNN's debates allow the moderators to have hand mikes and pace over the whole range of the platform), and a live audience in the room.

As far as the rest of the visual scene, I think the most important new variable, the big innovation, is the fact that the moderator's questions come from the Youtube contributors. The clips were produced by the questioners themselves on their very own cameras and computers, and emailed as is to the CNN site.

And there is a very wide range of questioners included.

Take the question that your study ranks as no. 5, Do  you support gay marriage? What difference does it make that in the Youtube debate,  the question was asked in the clip submitted by, and showing, two women who actually phrased the question differently: something to the effect of "Do you think WE should be allowed to marry -- each other?"

As I recall, Sen. Dodd was the first one to answerr the question, and he also began his reply by framing it personally: how would I respond if my own children, when grown up, would ask me that question? And he offered a personal, somewhat compassionate response that was sympathetic to the questioners personally.

That is quite a bit different, don't you see, than it would have been if the Youtube clip were not there, and it was just Anderson Cooper throwing out the question in its more generic and impersonal form, "Do you support gay marriage?"

In my opinion, the seeming personal context for considering the question, both from the questioners (as two Lesbians who want to know something important to their own lives and future) and the politicians (who were constrained to answer in the same mood and tone, making it personal to their own families.) The context, in other words, encouraged the candidates to make a more empathetic and quite possibly a more "liberal" answer, than in any previous TV debate format, including previous town hall formats.

Important variables to consider:

Who is asking?

What do you think they really want to know by their question? That is, what is their motivation for asking?

Who is answering? Does it matter whether Hillary gets the first crack at answering, or Obama, or Mike Kucinich?

Does it matter whether Anderson Cooper directs the question to specific candidates, or just throws it out to the group as a whole?

What difference does it make to the Youtube Debate Show that also-ran candidates are in the mix? What difference does it make that Mike Gravel or Mike Kucinich or (You fill in the rest of the 2d and 3d tier candidates) are up there? Imagine if you can what the program would be like if they were not present? If it were only, say, Hillary and Obama, or Hillary-Obama-Edwards? Or pick any two or three candidates and limit the head-to-head comparisons just to those few?

For instance, in one of the most dramatic exchanges, your report's Question 3, "Would you meet diplomatically with these countries' leaders?" we are aware that Obama said yes and Hillary said no. That gave some "meat" to the commentators to chew on in their post debate spinning. But consider that in the post-debate commentaries, nothing was ever mentioned about the fact that several other candidates also answered that question, mostly saying Yes just as Obama had done. (Or perhaps some more measured, waffling answer, if they had the advantage of hearing Hillary rip Obama a new one.)

Did those other candidates just not exist in the minds of the commentators and program editors afterwards?

Finally, it is highly salient to the enterprise of evaluating debate questions to know what the target audience is that you are thinkng of.

Who is listening to, and viewing, the progam?

This is the viewership, or audience segmenting, part of the analysis.

I believe the Youtube Debate Program cuts a new trail in the political debate format by opening up the images of the questioners to the viewers as being a very diverse bunch of individuals who,, presumably, are all voters. Now we have expanded the playing field immensely to include gender (and sexual orientation) age, race and ethnic differences, class distinctions, different intellectual and social distinctions, and other important contextual clues as to the meaning of the exchanges.

What is also important is the invisible viewing audience of millions of people who also break down into all of these categories, who presumably will identify more strongly with their "own" set of questions (and questioners).

In the final analysis (or, in the jargon of the pundits and spinners, "at the end of the day,"), who really cares WHAT the candidates say in so many words. Isn't it also important to consider HOW they answered, and what their demeanor and composure does to their perceived credibility, to their images? Why doesn't Kucinich get any more respect? He's been absolutely clear and consistent about his opposition to the key issue (thus far), the Iraq War. Why doesn't Biden get any traction in the polls with his performances? Is it the content of his answers, or is it something about him personally?

And why wasn't Chris Dodd's white hair Youtube gag funny to one of your student bloggers? Personally, I thought it was a nice touch that helped me relate to the man, since before this campaigns I was pretty much unaware of who he is and what kind of person he is. Up until then, I thought he was kind of a liberal wonk. That Youtube gag, plus his compassionate answer on the gay marriage question, gives  me a whole new perspective towards him. But then I am a 68-year old hetero sexual Southern white male, with a 42-year old son who is married to a Colombian woman, and who has a mixed race 12-year old son himself. I'm pretty sensitive to the race-contextual questions on the list, myself.

I take it that the debate question research project was conducted among high school debaters and/or other groups of students available to the researchers at Wake Forest University.

Suppose the methodology of the study were to be expanded such that CNN itself, with its vastly greater budget and media, and internet research capabilities, were to conduct a similar study on a nationwide viewership basis? Maybe conducting a series of focus groups among different demographics viewers.
And so on. What differences would possibly, or even  probably, emerge by asking a different sets of viewers, with their own different expectations about the meanings that emerged from the episode?

And why would those differences, whatever they might be, make a difference that matters?