The Labour Party thought that the 2008 New Zealand general election would be won on the issue of trust (i.e. voters becoming suspicious of ‘slippery John’ and his ‘hidden agenda’), whereas National thought it would be won on the issue of leadership personality and engagement with voters (i.e. the idea of Helen Clark being an out-of-touch elitist vs ‘common John’ who could relate socially to ordinary Kiwis). In the end, Labour was wrong and National was right, and critical ‘image events’ helped determine National’s win according to Claire Robinson’s chapter entitled ‘Images of political leadership in the campaign’ in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 (edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts) In fact, National effectively won the election back in mid-2007 by fighting and winning on the issue of leadership personality. [Read more below]
The National and Green parties won the battle of YouTube in the New Zealand general election of 2008 according to a chapter entitled ‘2008: The YouTube campaign’ by Rob Salmond in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts. The chapter looks ‘at the different ways in which political parties used YouTube to communicate with New Zealanders’, and argues that successful strategies involved putting positive-themed political advertisements on television and using YouTube for the negative, attack-advertising. Unsurprisingly, twice as many YouTube clips were negative, and on average these were watched by 2.5 times more than positive videos. [Read more below]
Helen Clark never really took to Facebooking with much enthusiasm, and in the 2008 general election her most commented on status update on Facebook was: “Helen Clark is stuck at the airport”. John Key, in comparison, gathered up twice as many Facebook registered friends and fans as Clark. These are some of the facts presented in the chapter entitled ‘2008: The campaign in cyberspace’ by Nicola Kean in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts. This blog post discusses the chapter, mentioning some of the more salient facts and observations made in terms of 2008’s campaign on the party websites, social networking and blogs. [Read more below]
How well were electronic forms of politics utilised in last year’s general election? How effectively did the political parties and electorate candidates use websites, email, social networking in their campaigning? What about bloggers and the mainstream media? These questions are addressed in a chapter by Peter John Chen about ‘the role, use and impact of online media in New Zealand’s 2008 election’, published in Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig of the University of Otago Politics department). This blog post is the fourth of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book (which I also have a chapter in). [Read more below]
The new professionalism of the early Act party was represented most starkly by its organisational structure. The party did not just have a ‘leadership’, but also a ‘management’. The leadership obviously consisted of the public figures of Roger Douglas and Derek Quigley et al., while the management included the higher echelons of the party activists and paid organisers. The founders were attempting to create a modern highly-professionalised political party with a structure very different to the traditional ones. [Read more below]
The campaigns of New Zealand’s political parties are increasing run by PR and consultancy companies, and this reflects their increasingly similarities and electoral-professional nature. Related to this, David Fisher asks in the latest Listener: ‘Which New Zealand political party has undeclared links to a foreign-based political strategy firm that has been accused of underhand tactics?’ The answer isn’t National and Crosby Textor, but Labour and the ‘Washington-based strategy and technology experts Blue State Digital’. [Read more below]
Political parties in New Zealand have been looking at ways to make the internet work for the organising of membership. This is still an evolution of organising in its infancy. [Read more below]
ePolitics meets political finance in the case of Andrew Moore’s Don’t Vote Labour website being shut down after the Electoral Commission informed Moore that he stood to be fined up to $10,000 if he continued to publish it without providing his personal details. In stark contrast, the Commission has also publicly stated that political party websites don’t necessarily need to comply with the same rules. The shutting down of this anti-Labour website is the first case under the EFA that shows just how ridiculous and anti-democratic the EFA is. [Read more below]
The growing ePolitics phenomenon in NZ is hopefully going to involve a number of academically-rigorous specialist blogs. Possibly the first of this kind has been set up by University of Otago Political Studies student Geoffrey Miller, who has just launched a blog that focuses on the Act party entitled Douglas to Dancing. No doubt this will be an intelligent and dispassionate ‘Act-watch’ website that will add considerably to the local political blogosphere. The site draws and expands on Miller’s Otago honours dissertation From Douglas to Dancing: explaining the lack of success of ACT New Zealand and evaluating its future prospects (PDF) which is usefully downloadable. I’ve read the dissertation, and think it makes an important intellectual contribution to the academic study of party politics in New Zealand – I’ll do another blog post about it in the future.
Is YouTube the hustings of the 21st century? Will blogs turn citizens into full participants in democratic debate? Is internet activism a fad? Does ePolitics favour the Establishment or the political outsider? These are some questions that I hope to look at in a series of blog postings on ePolitics. This first ePolitics post jumps into the issue with some introductory and optimistic thoughts.
Political parties in the west are finally starting to use the internet in significant and innovative ways. The use of such technology is clearly intended to find new ways to connect with a disengaged population who are no longer interested in the traditional party political processes. The latest example is Segolene Royal's new internet-based participatory way of mounting an election campaign - as reported in the Independent. Royal's website welcome's policy advice and messages, which she has 45 staff to sort though and synthesis into policy for Royal's presidential platform. Such a technique will allow Royal to partly bypass her more ideological Socialist Party and put forward a more centrist and non-socialist programme.
Jackie Ashley has also warned in the Guardian to: Beware the powerful when they hail the new democracy. Citing internet takeup figures for the UK, she reminds the reader that the internet 'has a class bias and is not the voice of the people'.
