The Internet is carrying the campaign strategies of all three major political parties in the run-up to next month's Ontario election, albeit in different ways and to varying degrees. In Part 3 of our Ontario Politics 2.0 analysis, Toronto-based writer Lydia Perovic examines the usefulness of Web 2.0 features and, if any, for whom exactly are they most beneficial.
Previous page: Web electioneering: What's in it for me?
Let's look at the individual candidates' Web sites for a moment. It is obvious to anyone who's ever visited more than one in sequence that the Web sites for candidates from the same party are colour-by-numbers business. Not only are they made by the same group of people using the same layout with the same overarching electoral strategy in mind, but they also look it.
At the moment, Tory candidate sites seem much less canned than Liberal candidate sites. NDP candidates by and large do not have Web sites or even their own pages within the NDP site. Rare exceptions, like the non-incumbent candidate for Etobicoke-Lakeshore Web site, and dips into social media sites by two of the Toronto incumbents - Michael Prue Campaign on YouTube, Cheri DiNovo Campaign on Flickr - confirm rather than refute the rule.
Although they share recognizable branding, the early Conservative candidates' sites demonstrate that some effort has been made to provide localized and up-to-date content as early as possible.
The Liberal candidates' sites currently all look alike, with much of the content shared word for word and image for image. The recycling of material is bound to happen among sites and electoral cycles, but this should be kept invisible.
Up until recently, the Liberal candidate's site in the Parkdale-High Park riding had a photo gallery containing images of "Vic in the community" - seemed like Vic Dhillon, the Brampton-West Mississauga MPP's constituency events pictures, but one couldn't tell because of the quality of the photos.
What most candidates, and their staff, do have on the Web right now are Facebook profiles. By rule, there is very little content to any of these profiles apart from a list of Facebook "friends." The forum board is usually used to post events information, but not with any particular alacrity.
What electoral or professional function such Facebook accounts have (except perhaps serving as signposts that mark Web expansion for the campaign) is difficult to discern. We should try to assess the new Web 2.0 features in politics by whether they expand the sphere of public life and help foster more engaged and knowledgeable citizenry or not. Do candidates' and parties' blogs, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube or Flickr accounts have such effects or do they serve advertising purposes?
In addition, textual content is losing ground to visual in just about every medium of campaigning where the two types of content share the same platform. Let's pay attention to images to copy ratio in campaign Web (or paper-based) communication. What kinds of pictures of candidates are we being offered? Who and what gets to dominate the visuals?
The Liberal campaign earlier this year came out with the unapologetically leader-centred site, Dalton.ca. With its extremely high visual-to-textual ratio and protagonist's manner of addressing the camera, it comes across as an infomercial.
There is a bit more visual diversity on the Liberal campaign site. Although this site also has a strong leader focus and the candidates are presented in mugshot images on their one designated page, there is a minimal degree of other imagery, such as citizens or party symbols. As the campaign progresses, it would be worthwhile to follow the shift, if any, of visual emphasis between being Ontarians-centred versus premier-centred.
Perhaps things will change once the election campaigning gets full steam. Perhaps candidates' sites will begin to inform precisely where they claim to be informing, and to engage via features created for interactive use. Perhaps those "Shared Stories" will eventually be published.
I do not envision citizens' discussions like the American PressThink blog or Canadian forum Babble circa 2002 taking place on any party or candidate Web site soon. The voters will not be invited to provide substantive textual content to the site and the campaign. And I do not expect to see local events posted on campaign sites' calendars (which even the Bush 2004 campaign made use of).
But we are witnessing early steps in the direction of more interactivity and campaign outsourcing, and this will undoubtedly be an important dynamic to watch in the coming weeks.
Related content:
Read Part 1: Politics 2.0: Web campaigning in the Ontario election
Read Part 2: Ontario Elections: An online kaleidoscope of campaign features
Political parties tap IT for election advantage
Gearing up for the Ontario election
Tory's Tories: The Ontario PC Party's Web sites
The Ontario Liberal Web site: Kodachrome or black and white?
Election? What election?: The Ontario NDP Web site
Would-be Toronto mayors reaching new voters with YouTube
Ryerson students leverage YouTube popularity
Toronto elections campaigning for transparent funding
Liberals (e-)challenged
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