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powers of persuasion: making a convincing case
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, here, of how
well the main political web sites meet these basic requirements. For more
background information see the posting on powers of
persuasion - overview.
We start with the Liberal Democrats but you can jump directly to analysis of
Conservative; Labour or our
Conclusions.
So what are the basics of online persuasion? Persuasion begins
with 'framing' (see
Wikipedia on framing within economics), and for political sites,
this means concise and meaningful overviews of what the party stands for
on all major issues. Links within these overviews can then lead
readers down information-scent-trails to convincing explanations and
justifications of party policies.
The page below is a great start from the Liberal Democrats
; it offers a simple and concise statement of their policy proposals,
contrasted with current Government policies that they oppose and followed up
with a short explanation.
So far so good, but it doesn't get any better! There are no links to further
information on any of these proposals, requiring the reader to return to the
home page and find their way from there. Some of the proposals are well argued
elsewhere in the site and could easily have been presented in a consistent
style. For a reader interested in Opposing ID cards, for example,
there are 10 reasons to oppose ID cards and further explanation of what the
Liberal Democrats would do instead. To gain the benefit of this, however, the
reader needs to click one of the main top-level navigation links (except the
home page!), then choose Justice & Crime from the 12
secondary-level navigation links and then click the Case against ID cards
on that page. Even for those lucky or tenacious enough to have found the page,
they still have 1,500 words to plough through to find out if they are
persuaded. For readers interested in the proposal for Free personal care for
the elderly, learning more about it is more challenging. Looking under
Communities and Health reveals nothing - it is only when you
look under Pensions & Benefits that you find more in-depth
information.
The Conservatives make a promising start too!
But why do they not continue as they started? None of the 5 claims specific to
lowering taxes has a link to enable the reader to dig deeper. The links at the
bottom of the panel offer fractionally more information but are not, by any
stretch of the imagination, either a systematic explanation or justification of
their 5 intentions that together, presumably, amount to lower taxes.
Labour performs worst on providing a concise and
meaningful overview of what the party stands for. It does contain a couple of
promising-looking links ...
... but the first is about Labour achievements within individual constituencies
and the second asks for financial donations from supporters - much more likely
to frustrate readers rather than persuade them! Under Our policies,
there is a list of 7 achievements since they came to power in 1997. Anyone
whose appetite is whetted by these can click a further link to Labour's top 50
achievements. The Your choice section of the site features three
criticisms of Michael Howard and one of the Liberal Democrats. None of these
pages, however, sets out what they would do if they won a further term in
office. Finding out about their future intentions requires the reader to click
the Our policies link from the home page, scroll down to the foot of
this 375 word document and then choose links to the following specific policy
issues.
15 out of these 25 policy pages has a section on What we're committed to: this
information, however, is conspicuously absent from the pages on health,
crime, education, trade and industry, employees, equalities, defence, foreign
affairs, modern government and families and children.
Conclusions Disappointingly, none of the main political web
sites meet the most basic requirements for online persuasion. The Liberal
Democrats and the Conservatives start well by offering a good overview of their
key policies. They, however, do little to help readers wanting to dig
deeper into their policies. And we are not talking here about abstract
intellectual analysis. For example, under their home-page header What we will
do, the first claim the Conservatives make is that they will lower
taxes. Great! But which taxes? How much lower(what does £4 billion by
2007/08 really mean to the individual voter?)? And at what cost to public
services? It's not difficult to provide information in ways that are concise
and meaningful - if a policy is not understood, it cannot be
persuasive. And if a policy, once explained clearly, loses its persuasive
edge, then it is surely a high-risk strategy for a party to promote it as
a key element of their election campaign.
External links: the
Conservative party website;
the Labour party website;
the Liberal Democrats website