Campaigns

In Australia, as in most other countries, the most effective use of the internet in political campaigns has been made by advocacy groups and individual politicians rather than than by major parties. The 2001 Australian federal election suggests that the parties essentially haven't moved beyond static brochure-ware, ie they are using sites as an opportunity to publish policy statements rather than to engage with supporters and the wider community.

We'll be offering pointers about online campaign issues and developments in the near future.

     writing

Most of the best writing about use of the net is offline, and indeed in journals rather than monographs or collections of papers.

We've highlighted some of that literature on preceding pages of this guide. Vote.com: How Big-Money Lobbyists & the Media are Losing Their Influence, and the Internet is Giving Power to the People (New York, Renaissance 99) by Dick Morris has gained considerable attention but for us is a rather silly, often cynical exercise. It's from the author of The New Machiavelli (and disgraced former Clinton advisor); the old Machiavelli's more subtle and perceptive.

We recommend instead Dennis Johnson's intelligent No Place For Amateurs (London, Routledge 01), which draws together recent thinking about principle and practice in campaigns. It's written for a US audience but many of Johnson's insights about polling, targeted contact and web sites are applicable to Australian politics.

Elections in the Age of the Internet: Lessons from the United States, a report (PDF) Professor Steven Coleman of the UK Hansard Society's e-democracy programme, asks 'why go online?'. The answer in the US was provided by the web consultant for Hillary Clinton's senate campaign: "If you don't put your campaign online, someone else will."




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