Technology transformed the battlefield in the 1991 B.C. election campaign. Organizers at the Social Credit headquarters proudly displayed a dozen new fax machines devoted to sending and receiving written information. “It's made such a difference,” campaign manager Jess Ketchum marvelled at the time. “We held a special meeting just to figure out how best to make use of it.”
Some reporters, too, were armed with new devices that helped us find out what was happening outside the cocoon of the campaign buses. Those brick-shaped cellphones meant we could gather reaction to events the same day – this campaign was moving at warp speed!
On Thursday, the B.C. New Democratic Party unveiled its first campaign ad designed exclusively for the Internet. It's a slick production, with a male announcer voicing over video images showing NDP Leader Carole James meeting with a young family in their living room, or nodding and listening to a diverse range of “ordinary people.”
Both the NDP and the B.C. Liberals are mapping out plans for this spring's election campaign that aim to harness the new media. The leaders' tours will still be a major focus, sure, but a great deal of energy is going into the ether.
Premier Gordon Campbell was first out of the gate last fall, with Canada's first “open platform.” He is asking the public via the party's website to help shape the policies that his Liberal Party will use as its election platform. “You will design your future,” Mr. Campbell promises. The party is also offering digital town-hall meetings. Ambitiously, it also will have Web panels on which citizens can “pose a question to a candidate, minister or the Premier and provide interactive real-time feedback.”
Both parties have embraced the host of social networks on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. There are opportunities to blog and to txt msg and to share campaign photos on Flickr.
Mr. Campbell has a Twitter profile that allowed his followers to discover, as it was happening, that he was “thrilled to be at the Richmond Oval opening” or that he was enjoying spending time with his grandson before Christmas.
Ms. James is using Facebook to reveal her favourite movies (which include The Wizard of Oz) and that she is reading former Czech president Vaclav Havel's memoir, To the Castle and Back. Her site hosts discussion boards and a place to sign up as a supporter.
But these Web enterprises have pitfalls too. It takes a substantial effort to keep information current and translate browsing into votes. One woman complained repeatedly on the Premier's Facebook page that he wouldn't respond to her comments. And his last Twitter entry was more than a week old. Ancient.
“It's a fallacy to think this is low cost. If you want to look at the Internet to energize people, it's labour-intensive,” noted Alfred Hermida, a journalism professor at the University of B.C. who specializes in new media. Used effectively, the Internet can mobilize voters, as U.S. president-elect Barack Obama's campaign demonstrated.
“What the parties are doing is usurping traditional media to get their message out – it's your own personal printing press,” Prof. Hermida said. Mr. Campbell will have to do a lot more Twittering to make it work, however.
“If you are going to send out a message every two weeks, what's the point?”
Liberal Party spokesman Chad Pederson said Mr. Campbell can be expected to do more, perhaps issuing dispatches to the Net from his cellphone as the campaign heats up. The plan is to give the public a “personal and instant connection” to the leader.
“Websites are the beginning of a conversation,” Mr. Pederson said. “We're approaching light speed in this campaign.”
However, he would not say who, exactly, handles all the traffic on the Premier's many Internet platforms. Nor would he provide any examples of the submissions to the open platform.
Gerry Scott, the NDP's senior campaign strategist, said his party will devote a platoon of tech-savvy staffers and consultants to ensuring it gets the most out of the Internet.
“There's this constant evolution of technology that relates to campaigns,” he said. One area it has transformed is fundraising. The NDP's online contributions more than tripled between 2007 and 2008.
But Mr. Scott acknowledged there are limits. “Our campaigns are still stressing a lot of face-to-face contact.” The lowly campaign leaflet, once supreme, is not entirely out of favour.
Ron Johnson, the president of NOW Communications, an NDP-connected marketing and ad agency, is still expecting the parties to part with millions of dollars in traditional advertising.
And he predicts that on May 12, the Internet efforts won't decide who will be B.C.'s next premier: “This is still going to be a TV campaign.”
