The digital vote
The use of digital marketing and social media could be the difference between Liberal or Labor come September 14. Nic Christensen speaks to the politicians and digital experts embracing online and swinging votes.
It was early June last year when the Prime Minister’s office first reached out to the bloggosphere. Julia Gillard’s office extended the invitation to a group of around 30 prominent female bloggers and high-profile online commentators to join the Prime Minister for afternoon tea at Kirribilli House.
Not sure if the bloggers would like to be seen as a comms channel.
“We have a message we want to get across and we see them as an important channel for communication – just like we do with television.”
I’d think that majority of these bloggers would value their ability to voice an independent opinion and can’t be bought out as a comms channel like you would on television.
Senator Ronalson pointed out (in Hansard from 7 Feb) that “An internet user or users from Parliament House Canberra’s computer network has pretended to be at least nine different people while making pro-Labor comments online. The comments, posted online under Colac Herald stories about Colac … Health cuts, all come from the same internet protocol address, a specific computer server’s code.”
This is the reality of online communications from the ALP despite the warm and fuzzy nature of this article.
you can’t believe everything you read….especially on the internet. but most bloggers can’t be bought.
Nigel,
That is actually incorrect (the Senator got it wrong).
Many organisations, including Parliament House, have a single internet gateway and IP address used across all of their computers. Computers within their network are assigned a temporary address which is not visible outside the network – partly for security reasons, partly privacy reasons, partly because it is technically more efficient and partly because if every computer was assigned its own IP address we’d have run out many years ago (as it is we’re moving to IPv6 because there’s too many devices on their own networks (outside of organisations) connecting to the internet for the numerical system to cope).
Therefore the fact that a single IP address was used for all the comments is no indication of how many different computers or people posted the messages.
BTW ALL pro-Labor AND pro-Liberal comments from Parliament House appear to come from the same IP address. Perhaps someone should tell the Senator.
Nigel – BTW, I just went into OpenAustralia to find that quote by Senator Ronaldson in Hansard for 7 Feb.
It’s not there (see: http://www.openaustralia.org/s.....n/victoria).
Now it could be that OpenAustralia has not imported Hansard correctly, or another Senator made the comment, but are you able to provide a link to the comments by the Senator?