Online elections in the US and France

Jonathan Bowers, April 24th 2007, 11:22AM

It seems to me that politicians are really harnessing the internet now and truly undertanding the power that it can afford them. Well, they are in the US and France anyway. It's not just that the presidential candidates themselves are doing it but by extention the online community is also creating a buzz about each politician.

So while the Huffington Post is announcing that it will host the first online debate for the US Presidential election race and the French are racing online to scrutinise each of their candidates websites, I had a look at our probable leader-to-be and his presence online.

If it weren't for Theyworkforyou.com and the No:10 website, Gordon Brown would have a very limited online presence indeed. He doesn't have his own site or blog and the labour party seem to be making much less effort as a whole to garner support on the web than their Conservative rivals. Most importantly, Brown is making no effort to be available to people online.

I wouldn't be surprised if Brown's own website appears at a time when his advisors convince him it is necessary. The only problem is that by then, it will be too late to win the real support of people who want to trust and respect the candidate that they vote for.

Tags: politics, websites
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Politics and social networking

Jonathan Bowers, March 23rd 2007, 10:59AM

If anyone still needs convincing that politics can feed its message through social networking then they only need to look at the battle going on between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

MySpace has created a section called Impact in the last week to encourage closer ties between the American Presidential candidates and it's users. Similarly YouTube's most linked to video this week is called One Voice and has been made in support of Obama, mashing up George Orwells 1984 with a speech by Hillary Clinton.

A few weeks ago at a presentation, somebody asked me the question - is there room in online PR for guerrilla tactics. This shows clearly that there are new unconventional channels through which to deliver your message to a whole new audience and with over 2 million viewing of the video on YouTube it difficult to argue that it's not a valuable piece of campaigning.

Tags: politics, socialnetworking
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Polticians and the power of the web

Jonathan Bowers, October 4th 2006, 11:58AM

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt has been to meet Tony Blair and talk at the Conservative Party Conference this week. He's been talking about the people power the Net has created and its effect on politics.

It's an interesting topic. It has already been said that the next US election will be won on the Internet and there are a growing number of UK MPs with their own blogs encouraging debate online.

I went to Boris Johnson's blog site today to see what his views on Schmidt's talk were, but he may be too busy taking on Jamie Oliver at the moment to give comment on this Internet issue.

Tomorrow, I am going to a Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce event to produce a podcast on Ed Balls, MP for Normanton's talks to local businesses. As one of Gordon Browns inner circle, I might ask Ed what involvement he sees the Internet having in the next UK general election.

When the podcast is finished I'll post a link here.

Tags: podcasting, politics
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