Political parties and the internet or: why I now own www.finegael2013.com

DeVore

(NB: I had no connection whatsoever with the hack of either FineGael2011.com or the DUP site, nor do I know anything about it. I am not a member of Anonymous, no one is. Or perhaps better put, everyone is or can be...)

This week Fine Gael launched their, purportedly "absolutely secure", website illiciting feedback from the general public in an electronic "suggestion box" sort of way.

From a "Social Media" point of view, it was toe-curlingly naive and transparently a "spin" move. Change, without change...soliciting opinion without engaging in debate. It is the appearance of interaction.

In the 5 years since the last General Election, the world changed. Actually it had changed a good while before that but Ireland can be slow to keep up sometimes. The internet enabled interaction with and between the general public.

To paint the true picture of the change we need to briefly look at the world before the change. In this world, "spin" had just reared its unwelcome head and the PR people had identified that there were in fact only about half a dozen really important communications "people/outlets/corps". As a result that half dozen organisations could be "handled" and managed. Spun. There is a disturbingly comfortable quid-pro-quo between journalists and politicians. The former wouldnt ask too many hard questions or they would simply fall out of favour with the latter. No access meant no questions meant no job.

These communications points I like to call "Ivory Towers". They were safe bastions where politicians could talk and we, the public, could listen. This was passed off as the only workable way it could be. A dash of insincere regret that a means didnt exist to really connect with the grass roots constituents was usually added.



Enter, stage left, The Internet.

Since its arrival it has been wilfully and studiously ignored by politicians around the globe but it grew and grew until the question to politicians wasnt "are you online" but rather "why arent you online". The truth of the matter is that politicians have become afraid of losing that comfortable, cosseting blanket of spin and control they have enjoyed. And I dont blame them... really, I dont. This may sound like I'm lambasting politicians but its understandable that they would rear back from direct engagement with the great unwashed. Sen Giffords attack is simply the extreme end of that fear.

Lately we have seen politicians jump on the social media bandwagon, ever since Obama seemed to have leveraged it to win the US Presidency. Twitter is the route du jour because it most directly maps to the old Ivory Towers. You have your twitter feed and you post to it. Your followers (and I'm not being ironic using that term) simply consume it. They can write back of course, as can your detractor but you and more importantly your constituents wont see it unless they specifically look. Hey presto... more fake "social interaction". Tweets from the throne.

So how did I end up with www.finegael2013.com? I bought it, plain and simple. Whoever was doing the "strategy" for Fine Gael bought FG2011.com and FG2012.com and left it at that. Two years forethought seems very poor in a party which is asking to be elected for 5 years at the very least!

But I like Fine Gael. I want them to win because, God help us, they represent the current best option for escape from this nightmare of political parish pumps, gombeenism and GUBU Nation corruption. So here is what they, and every other political party should do.



1. Do not build your own Social Media website. I have NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER in entering your own private Ivory Tower where my voice is subjugated to your spin. I wont believe a word I read there anyway and you are asking for accusations of censorship even if you are extremely fair about it.

2. Do not build Facebook or Twitter pages and think "oh we are engaging now". You arent. Those outlets are good and you should embrace them but dont fool yourselves that you are engaging with the public. Those are still Ivory Towers which you control.

3. You need to accept that the world you once enjoyed, the world of comfortable relationships with journalists is over. Quite literally if you want to have a chance of being re-elected you are going to have to come out of the Dail and engage with the mass public. If not this election, certainly the one after it. First mover advantage is going to play here, just like it played for Obama. Be first or play catch up.

4. Get some new advisors because not one party has yet stepped up and even begun to look like doing this right. Its a jungle out there and you need some jungle guides who know the right and wrong ways to do things. Fine Gael walked straight into the jungle with a picnic basket and now look stunned that they got eaten by a lion on the first day of the trip.



Fine Gael can have the domain for the cost of its registration plus a pint of Guinness.

Next time, plan ahead... longer than say, 2 years.

End of Part 1.

DeV.

zig

I think it was a perfectly good strategy. The election was likely to be either 2011 or 2012, very unlikely to be 2013, so im afraid you wasted your money.

sceptre

DeVore wrote: »

Whoever was doing the "strategy" for Fine Gael bought FG2011.com and FG2012.com and left it at that. Two years forethought seems very poor in a party which is asking to be elected for 5 years at the very least!

While I reckon it's nuts that anyone marketing anything would include a date in their product name or web address, given either how out of date their name will seem in subsequent years or requiring people to remember to change the name to keep up to date, I'm assuming they bought 2011 and 2012 as the next election has to be held in 2012 at the latest.:) One could call that a short-viewed marketing strategy but then my school of thought is that it was nutty to include the year in the address in the first place.

Eliot Rosewater

DeVore wrote: »

Twitter is the route du jour because it most directly maps to the old Ivory Towers.

That's a really good point. I never understood the attraction of Twitter, but I think you're right in saying it does maintain some of the uni-directional nature of printed media. My impression of Dan Boyle on Twitter has always been one of him logging in, making some controversial comment, and then metaphorically legging it.

The length restriction on tweets is also kind of symbolic of our political discourse: too many sound-bites and populist tidbits, and not enough substantial debate.

DeVore wrote: »

Fine Gael can have the domain for the cost of its registration plus a pint of Guinness.

Might I suggest that, in the interim, you post up some message on finegal2013.com related to this? It would be a good means of spreading your point of view expressed here. Unless you wish to keep the domain neutral...

I-Shot-Jr

zig wrote: »

I think it was a perfectly good strategy. The election was likely to be either 2011 or 2012, very unlikely to be 2013, so im afraid you wasted your money.

Its more the principle though. Still, thought provoking stuff.

pagancornflake

DeVore wrote: »

(NB: I had no connection whatsoever with the hack of either FineGael2011.com or the DUP site, nor do I know anything about it. I am not a member of Anonymous, no one is. Or perhaps better put, everyone is or can be...)

I used to be a member of anonymous; but then I got excited and told people.

Wolfe Tone

Is it just me thinking that this may have a "come use my website, twitter and co are not good enough" conclusion?

Dannyboy83

I read the Fine Gael Newsletter and I look at their website.

I find it decent enough, they raise a lot of issues, some interesting, some not so interesting.

That's fine as long as their in opposition.

When they get into power, then it will become spin, and will probably be less apppealing.

DeVore

MUSSOLINI wrote: »

Is it just me thinking that this may have a "come use my website, twitter and co are not good enough" conclusion?

Oh absolutely... sorry, I'm not even thinking about hiding that. In fact I'll be recommending that in the second part. Sorry, I thought after P. Gogarty that that would be evident

However, its not so much "DeV owns boards so it making a case for it" as much as "DeV started Boards because thats how strongly he feels about public discourse". Search back on my posts for 11 years, particularly anything including "Pompei" and you'll see I've been banging this drum for a very long time.

DeV.

DeVore

Dannyboy83 wrote: »

I read the Fine Gael Newsletter and I look at their website.

I find it decent enough, they raise a lot of issues, some interesting, some not so interesting.

That's fine as long as their in opposition.

When they get into power, then it will become spin, and will probably be less apppealing.

But again, thats one way traffic. You read their newsletter... but you cant ask questions, you cant make suggestions, you cant query an assumption or even agree and give supporting evidence from your background... its just another Ivory Tower.

DeV.

zig

I-Shot-Jr wrote: »

Its more the principle though. Still, thought provoking stuff.

Maybe, I agree with the overall point of that thread, namely, politicians are out of touch.
I think the classic example happened on here, when there was a post about the constitutionality of the bailout, this spread, the same on politics.ie. Politicians had weeks to think to come up with this one, and it wasnt until posters here and over on politics.ie started emailing TDs that it was brought up in the dail.
So, in effect, people were more clued in online than the TDs were

All that said, I think in this case theres a big deal made out of nothing.
The developers said to themselves, lets make a new site, they ask FG what domains dyou want to buy, and they probably said eh 2011 and 2012. "what about 2013?" "Naa you can leave that, there wont be an election that year."
Simple as that, they wouldnt have thought of buying 2 years and not another one.

DeVore

Yes, I wouldnt say it is a huge deal but I do think it points to a lack of coherent, over-arching and at-the-core-of-the-party thinking about how they want to move forward in a century which is going to be *dominated* by technology.

This isnt a group of people who are looking to run the next toll road franchise, these are people who are looking to set the budget and policy and public sector plans for the next 5 years.

(Oh and as far as people saying they bought 2012 because it might be an election year... this isnt supposed to be an election website... they closed finegael.ie in favour of this site... and I can barely see us getting out of *January* without an election, never mind 2011... so 2012 has the same chance of being an election year as 2013...)

DeV.

Sergeant

Is the role of "new media" overstated when it comes to politics in Ireland? I personally think so. There is a massive number of voters who don't know what twitter is, don't care what politics.ie is, or don't offer their opinion on boards.ie.
I'll take my parents and many of their generation. They still place faith in newspapers, radio and TV to provide them with what is happening. A Dan Boyle tweet is something that is served up on the Internet, and then fed to the majority of the populace by people like Vincent Browne, George Hook and Rachael English.

Inverse to the power of one!

Dev!

It's probably fair to call you a senior professional in IT, so if you have any ideas or frameworks for what your suggesting, would be cool to see you put them out there.

I wish that we could expect such ideas to be picked up upon, but all the same theres more then a few round here who'll be interested.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Agent Smith

donegalfella wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

.ie's are harder to get

But www.sinnfein2016.com is available

nkay1985

You make a good point Dev. It seems that there's a generation of potential voters to be tapped into if it's done in the right way. The problem is that political organizations the world over know this since Obama's campaign but still fudge it because they're trying to retain some form of control over it.

You can the the thinking behind this. If politicians start to engage directly with their constituents, they might be held accountable and find it difficult to duck and dodge uncomfortable issues. Fair play to anyone who gives it a go. They may find it tough but hopefully their courage would be rewarded and it would be shown as the way forward.

DeVore

Sergeant wrote: »

Is the role of "new media" overstated when it comes to politics in Ireland? I personally think so. There is a massive number of voters who don't know what twitter is, don't care what politics.ie is, or don't offer their opinion on boards.ie.

Currently social media doesn't have a huge impact in Ireland on politics but that is changing fast. The first party to take the leap of faith will harvest that first mover advantage. I'm all about the future me

I mean, it worked for a black, reportedly Muslim lol, newbie called Huessin Obama.... While they were in two wars no less.... It's harnessing that power that's the trick...

I'll take my parents and many of their generation. They still place faith in newspapers, radio and TV to provide them with what is happening. A Dan Boyle tweet is something that is served up on the Internet, and then fed to the majority of the populace by people like Vincent Browne, George Hook and Rachael English.

Your parents are unlikely to be swing voters, are they.... Consequently they are of little interest to politicians. Either they will vote for the TD as they always have, in which case, great... Or they will vote against him, in which case booooo. Either way they are of as much interest as someone who doesn't vote at all.
Swing voters are the targets and they are increasingly to be found and more efficiently engaged with through the Internet.

DeV.

DeVore

Inverse to the power of one! wrote: »

Dev!

It's probably fair to call you a senior professional in IT, so if you have any ideas or frameworks for what your suggesting, would be cool to see you put them out there.

I wish that we could expect such ideas to be picked up upon, but all the same theres more then a few round here who'll be interested.

Given that I'm coming up on 41 and I've worked all my life in IT, with the last 10 at director level, yeah... I'd like to think I could call myself that too ;p ...

Part II will be much more instructive about staffing and how to organise a communications strategy... I really should charge a metric fnckton for this but as you say... It's unlikely any of them will read or adopt it anyway

DeV.

meditraitor

I would say that FG are blowing their load thinking about this one......

The owner of the biggest privately owned website in Ireland has just rolled in behind them to give them a little push.....

Ivory towers popping up everywere...

southsiderosie

DeVore wrote: »

A dash of insincere regret that a means didnt exist to really connect with the grass roots constituents was usually added

DeVore wrote: »

This may sound like I'm lambasting politicians but its understandable that they would rear back from direct engagement with the great unwashed.

DeVore wrote: »

Quite literally if you want to have a chance of being re-elected you are going to have to come out of the Dail and engage with the mass public.

nkay1985 wrote: »

You can the the thinking behind this. If politicians start to engage directly with their constituents, they might be held accountable and find it difficult to duck and dodge uncomfortable issues

I don't really get this critique of politicians, particularly in Ireland. Irish politicians have an incredible level of interaction with their constituents. There is a lot of research on this: Irish voters expect politicians to be accessible and to come and ask for their votes, both in local and Dail elections, and Irish citizens are not only comfortable with contacting their representatives directly, they do so at a higher rate than any other country in Europe (there is very good data on this from the European Social Survey). In fact, one of the complaints we hear (particularly on boards) over and over again is that Dail politicians spend too much time with "the great unwashed" at chicken dinners, mass meet-and-greets, and funerals, and not enough time in the Dail dealing with actual policy issues.

This is not to say that the political system isn't rotten, or that there are no need for institutional reforms. But I don't think that access is a major problem in Ireland...access to politicians anyway. Actually, one of the biggest problems in Irish politics is public access to information about what politicians are doing - in particular who they are meeting with, and how they are making decisions. The bank guarantee is a prime case in point.

Bottle_of_Smoke

southsiderosie wrote: »

I don't really get this critique of politicians, particularly in Ireland. Irish politicians have an incredible level of interaction with their constituents. There is a lot of research on this: Irish voters expect politicians to be accessible and to come and ask for their votes, both in local and Dail elections, and Irish citizens are not only comfortable with contacting their representatives directly, they do so at a higher rate than any other country in Europe (there is very good data on this from the European Social Survey). In fact, one of the complaints we hear (particularly on boards) over and over again is that Dail politicians spend too much time with "the great unwashed" at chicken dinners, mass meet-and-greets, and funerals, and not enough time in the Dail dealing with actual policy issues.

This is not to say that the political system isn't rotten, or that there are no need for institutional reforms. But I don't think that access is a major problem in Ireland...access to politicians anyway. Actually, one of the biggest problems in Irish politics is public access to information about what politicians are doing - in particular who they are meeting with, and how they are making decisions. The bank guarantee is a prime case in point.

I think that's a slightly different angle. The research you mention would to me indicate Irish people want to ring up their TDs so they'll pull strings for them rather than debate policy, which I think DeV is talking about.

Laminations

While Gogarty on here was a short lived novelty I don't think it was a rip roaring success. He just spouted the party line, defended the indefensible and lied - I seem to recall him saying that the political donations legislation was a top priority to be brought in before Christmas and if not they'd immediately pull out. He avoided awkward questions such as giving his views on Bertie and those who voted confidence in him. I think rather than a virtual forum which affords hiding places that clinic meetings should be reformed so that once a week (month) there are public representative meetings, not one-to-one where local favours are asked, but town meeting types, where a community gets to discuss national policy. This way Gogarty has to justify/explain policy to his constituents who may expect very different things from policy (i.e. They may be greener). Also politicians are now meeting their constituents to keep them informed and get feedback but they're not doing it in by attending funerals and filling potholes. If you raise a local issue you'll be reminded that it's a local forum for national issues and reminded that the appropriate contact is the local authority. The Internet with all it's bells and whistles will never replace face to face dialogue

southsiderosie

Bottle_of_Smoke wrote: »

I think that's a slightly different angle. The research you mention would to me indicate Irish people want to ring up their TDs so they'll pull strings for them rather than debate policy, which I think DeV is talking about.

The issue raised in the original posts suggested that representatives were hiding from constituents in the Dail, and I don't think that is the case. And the Weeks and Quinlivian book makes the distinct point that voters expect local officials to hit the doors - the ones who do not don't get elected (they have years of data on this). Finally, even if people are just asking their representatives for favors (and I don't think that is always the case), that still says something. In countries where citizens have no sense of efficacy, they don't bother to ask politicians for anything.

But even if the point is to debate policy rather than complain about something or call in a favor, I agree with Laminations - I don't think the internet is the best way to do that, and town hall meetings or clinics would be more effective. And regardless of the format, most elected officials will stick to their talking points; from their perspective, these events are a good way of taking the temperature of their districts, rather than getting into the finer aspects of existing policies (which staffers are usually better at anyway).

That said, canvassing is another opportunity for voters to talk to parties and representatives about policy, and from an organizational perspective, investing time money and energy in training canvassers and getting face time with registered voters within a given constituency is a better use of time and energy than anonymous internet posting with people who may or may not live in the district and may or may not be registered to vote.

Scofflaw

southsiderosie wrote: »

The issue raised in the original posts suggested that representatives were hiding from constituents in the Dail, and I don't think that is the case. And the Weeks and Quinlivian book makes the distinct point that voters expect local officials to hit the doors - the ones who do not don't get elected (they have years of data on this). Finally, even if people are just asking their representatives for favors (and I don't think that is always the case), that still says something. In countries where citizens have no sense of efficacy, they don't bother to ask politicians for anything.

But even if the point is to debate policy rather than complain about something or call in a favor, I agree with Laminations - I don't think the internet is the best way to do that, and town hall meetings or clinics would be more effective. And regardless of the format, most elected officials will stick to their talking points; from their perspective, these events are a good way of taking the temperature of their districts, rather than getting into the finer aspects of existing policies (which staffers are usually better at anyway).

That said, canvassing is another opportunity for voters to talk to parties and representatives about policy, and from an organizational perspective, investing time money and energy in training canvassers and getting face time with registered voters within a given constituency is a better use of time and energy than anonymous internet posting with people who may or may not live in the district and may or may not be registered to vote.

I have to completely agree with that. While many of our politicians are technological dinosaurs, the prevalence of actual face to face interaction in Ireland is a major reason, quite possibly the major reason, why the political use of the internet is so limited in Ireland.

All the available research on internet-mediated social interactions suggest that they're very much shallower than RL interaction - so one can expect a similarly much slighter effect on voting preference from internet 'canvassing' compared to doorstepping. The internet's value proposition for the politician, other than as another channel of mass communication, is very slight - it only becomes of value as an interactive medium where the politician has little hope of meeting constituents face to face - and that's only because it's better than nothing.

I don't think people are really thinking this through from the right perspective - what we're saying, as people used to online interaction, is that we want politicians to come here, to us, to interact - and we're looking at ways to do that, not looking at how the politician can use the internet for their benefit.

I'm going to an event on Sunday in Galway where I hope some of these issues will come up - and I expect the expectations will be similar there, that the politicians should come to see us where we're comfortable. The thing is that there aren't many more of us here than there would be at one charity fundraiser, and politicians attend several of those a year.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Wolfe Tone

I thought the Gogarty thing was a waste of time, if they wont/cant come on here and be treated as a normal used then it is putting them into a somewhat controlled environment, like fb or twitter.