Politicians are lost deep in cyberspace, struggling to reach a new generation of tech-savvy voters through blogs, social networking sites and video-sharing.
In the United States, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama used their websites to launch their 2008 presidential campaigns.
In France, supporters of the main presidential candidates have clashed over policy in the computer game Second Life, a virtual world that has more than two million users. In January, a spat between the far right and left that featured exploding virtual pigs made a newspaper’s front page.
Across the world, political candidates have posted profiles on the social websites MySpace and Facebook, even set up offices in Second Life.
But there is a sense it is mostly one-way traffic — from ”them” to ”us” — and analysts say politicians need to expand their online ambitions towards interactivity and user-generated content.
”Governments have been very slow to do this,” says Professor Helen Margetts, director of research at the Oxford Internet Institute, part of the University of Oxford. ”If you look at governments across the world, there is very little use of Web 2.0 applications [short-hand for the second, more interactive internet age]; very little opportunity for citizens to generate content.”
To reach an electorate bombarded with messages from the new and old media, politicians will have to make more use of online journals or blogs, and sites such as Facebook and MySpace. They also need to move into video-sharing sites and forums where ideas and policies can be challenged online.
”They haven’t been very innovative,” Margetts says, adding that old-style politics of knocking on doors to recruit members and spread the word is no longer valid. ”They tend to hark back to the idea that they’re going to have lots of members again and people are going to tramp the streets and persuade people. I think those days are dead.”
And if politicians don’t show the way forward, others will. The row this month over World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz’s pay rise and promotion for his girlfriend triggered the revival of website Worldbankpresident.org to air speculation of possible successors, even though Wolfowitz had not quit.
‘Talking to the kids’
This month, British Prime Minister Tony Blair appeared on YouTube to launch his ruling Labour Party’s ”Labourvision” campaign to allow ministers to speak directly to voters.
Many applauded it as a valiant attempt to find a new way to publicise and debate government policy. But critics derided it as a ”cheap stunt” that stuck out like a sore thumb among the usual clips of pop music, dancing dogs and computer games.
”Does he really think ‘talking to the kids’ like this comes across as anything other than a dad trying to be cool at a teenager’s party?” asked one YouTube user. Another said: ”Fantastic! Now I can make fun of the Labour Party with much more immediacy.”
Just more than 17 000 people have watched Blair’s message — 87 000 fewer than viewed a film of his presumed successor, Chancellor Gordon Brown, picking his nose during a Blair speech in Parliament.
Despite teething troubles, advances in digital television, cellphones and the internet will ”pump the lifeblood” of politics, according to Ross Ferguson, director of e-Democracy at the Hansard Society, a charity that promotes democracy.
”There is no reason why politicians, parliaments and governments should resist technology,” he says. ”It will make them better connected, it will make them more accountable, it will make the process more transparent. Perhaps you might begin to see turnouts at elections rise.”
Internet activists agree. They talk of a new era of citizen power that has given a once-apathetic electorate the means and the will to take on their elected representatives. They point to the unprecedented 1,8-million signatures on a petition on Blair’s site seeking an end to planned road charges.
”The internet has woken people up,” says Peter Roberts, from central England, whose road-tax petition sparked intense debate. ”There’s going to be a big, big sea-change in politics over the next 10 to 15 years.”
Sceptics unsure
Other petitions on Blair’s site suggest not everyone takes the experiment seriously. One calls for Blair to ”stand on his head and juggle ice cream”. About 4 000 have signed it.
”If he’s not going to resign, the least he can do is provide us with some entertainment,” wrote petitioner Tim Ireland.
Critics dismiss talk of a new political age as rhetoric. Online lobbying could even dilute democracy by giving a louder voice to fickle, self-selected pressure groups.
True democracy requires debate, compromise and trust in the people elected to make tough decisions, says lawmaker Dr Tony Wright, who chairs Britain’s public administration committee.
”Just pressing a button to say that you’re against something doesn’t seem to me to be a great expression of democratic engagement,” he said. ”It should be seen as extending the normal methods of representative democracy, not supplanting them.”
Others say ”real world” activism will always be needed to bring about change.
”User-generated content is driving the rhetoric of a new empowered citizenry but, in reality, you are left with the same choices you always had,” Australian academic Allison Orr wrote earlier this year.
And all those who sign up to petitions on Blair’s website, hoping to give the prime minister a bloody nose, could find that they have provided his Downing Street office with an invaluable email list to be used in the run-up to the next election.
”This is not a disaster for the government at all,” political website operator Tim Montgomerie told the Guardian. ”I definitely think Downing Street could end up having the last laugh.” — Reuters