Posts Tagged elections
Euronews on the digital trends study
European lawmakers underuse the internet according to new research. The findings show that while three quarters of MEPs use their personal websites to reach the electorate, only a minority understands the potential of using online technologies to help them interract with people. Only half visit blogs once a week or more, and two thirds have never heard of the social networking tool Twitter.
1 comment May 19, 2009
Exclusive here* – photos of the EP elections “tri-dimensional installation”
* These photos are probably not exclusive, as I happened to be walking by the Altiero Spinelli building yesterday with a camera, so I snapped a few photos. When I left the parliament an hour later, the workers were covering the structure with a blue cloth.
As it turns out, this is the ‘hard’ part of the EP communication strategy for the 2009 European Elections. It asks hard questions, such as “How open should our borders be?” and “How much labelling do we need?”. The “soft” part is the EP elections website, launched a few months ago.
The wall, I presume, shows choices, if if that wasn’t obvious, there is a phonebooth “Choice box” next to it.
Tune in to the EP live broadcast at 10:30 for the official unveiling.
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- Over the hedge?
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- How to hide in front of the EP.
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- Your choice… in a box.
Add comment March 17, 2009
User-generated political parties
Nice development for digital politics in the “ooh-arrghh” west of England. A new political party, the Social Liberalists, was officially registered by the Electoral Commission end July.
It’s been created by 18 year old Ben Lewis and some of his school mates, as reported in the renowned Western Morning News of Plymouth.
Interesting to see how instrumental digital has been in the formation of the party. According to the founder, the ideas for policies and manifestos only came about because he and his friends had been listening and debating for quite a while on online forums and on websites.
Aside from the ongoing use of internet voting in elections, I wonder if the shaping of future party manifestos and ongoing govenrment policies could indeed use digital to canvass public opinion a little more. This would allow for a more bottom up approach to political priorities.
An example: it was recently announced in the UK that knife crime has overtaken terrorism as the No 1 priority for the Metropolitan Police. Couldn’t we easily use use a facebook poll to let the public decide this sort of thing.
Depends if you’re a pluralist or elitist I guess…
Add comment August 5, 2008
Postcard from Germany: Pac-man for Politicians (and Fridays)
As Christmas draws nearer and the lure of day trip across the border to visit a good Christmas market grows stronger, one of our resident Germans Frederik Seeger provides a short overview of the use of the internet by politicians of his native land. This being Friday, he also highlights a number of sites from politicians to whittle away the last working hours of the week.
An in-depth analysis of the web presence of German politicians, carried out by German public affairs magazine p&k, has uncovered the reality of German politicians and their websites. 75% of all (the 2456) national and regional Parliamentarians own a sophisticated personal website.
More surprising than this is the rapid increase in politicians’ web presence: within only 3 years, almost one additional fifth of all regional Members of Parliament have opened a web presence. Clearly, the main motivation is the hope to improve one’s chances of winning elections. Surprised and sometimes slightly angry, some MPs have even asked p&k why it carries out the survey between elections, and not when the voters’ interest for web sites is at its peak! Well, this might well have to do with the idea that transparency, informing the electorate and legitimacy shouldn’t stop once elections are over…
However, contentwise, a few German politicians do remarkably well. Nicolette Kressl, Social-Democrat Member of the Bundestag and since last week Secretary of State in the Finance Ministry, leads the ranking by far. Her website is a school-book example of how to keep the public informed, defend political ideas in a creative manner and exchange arguments interactively. Other MPs set their digital focus on other aspects. If there weren’t a small logo of the Social-Democrat party on the top right corner of the web site of Parliamentarian Linus Förster, “politically interested people would think they clicked on the wrong site’, says p&k. Indeed, Förster comes up with plenty of photos of his rockband (complete with music), his youth and of himself supping beers at the beach… A politician in touch with the internet generation clearly.
Some MPs go even further, offering the possibility to the modern and stressed employee to unwind a bit while at work, Green Parliamentarian Harald Terpe proposes a Sudoku on his site, and Green Kerstin Andreae insisted on having a version of the old-school video game Pac-man on her site. Germany seems to have the right attitude for entering the digital age!
Add comment November 23, 2007
