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The publication of the Labour party manifesto yesterday takes political
persuasion to an entirely new level of sophistication and one that might, in
the long run, transform the role of online channels in political campaigning.
In this post we illustrate and test out the
personalisation on offer. We then explore its potential in the short term to be
a highly persuasive influence on voters and in the longer term to form the main
battleground for electoral politics.
Politicians have a lot to persuade us of and putting information online should
be ideally suited to voter persuasion. Here, we give an overview
of the ways in which the main party political sites should be being persuasive.
Just how persuasive are the online party political web sites? From the
considerable amount we currently know about the art and science of online
persuasion, there are certain features that must be considered basics
requirements of a persuasive web site. We present our analysis
of how well the main political web sites meet these basic requirements.
All of the major parties are overwhelmingly negative in their campaigning. Our
analysis of 123 press releases from the web sites of the Labour, Conservative
and Liberal Democrat parties (21st March to 1st April 2005) revealed that over
50% more press releases contain something that attacks the opposing parties
than positive campaigning messages. Research from previous
elections suggests that this may depress voter turnout.
Political web sites need to get their message across to readers quickly and
effortlessly. It is well established that people scan rather than read web
content but our analysis suggests that much of the page
content on all the major party political websites is neither written nor
presented to facilitate scan reading.
All three of the major UK party political sites suffer basic usability problems
that are likely to frustrate and annoy readers. See our analysis
of how poor navigation controls make it difficult for readers to see where they
are in the site and to navigate back to where they have just been.
27% of Americans said that political information they got online made them
decide to vote for or against a particular candidate in the 2004 Campaign. So,
online channels could play a critical role in determining the outcome of the
2005 General Election in the UK. See the evidence and the
arguement for the importance of online politics in the UK General Election.