Among the people keeping an eye on how the Ontario election unfolds online are Greg Elmer and his team at Ryerson's Infoscape Research Lab. Greg is an expert on media and cultural theory who is tracking how the Web and other "new media" are influencing the election campaign. Here are some of the Lab's recent updates:
-- one of the places to find no-holds-barred political discussion, even if it is somewhat profane at times, is the political discussion group on the Toronto branch of craigslist.org, the popular U.S.-based online classified site.
-- the Lab's research tracking shows that videos from the Green Party are drawing dramatically more viewers on YouTube than videos from the other parties; viewership is as much as 10 times higher, perhaps because the party was excluded from the official TV debates.
-- in a recent sample of blog posts from 100 top political blogs in Canada, the most talked-about issues were the exclusion of Green Party leader Frank de Jong from the all-party debate, and the referendum on the "mixed-member proportional" election proposal that is part of the campaign.
-- a survey of the "blogosphere" shows that as far as bloggers are concerned, Dalton McGuinty lost the election debate.
-- the Facebook groups with the largest number of members include groups devoted to MMP (2,461 members), the idea of a student strike (1,550), and raising the minimum wage (1,254)
-- the Infoscape Research Lab also notes "the emergence of increasing numbers of video-bloggers, non campaign-related individuals who are posting cynical and humorous videos about the provincial election."
