Australian politicians not really online yet

ZDNet News reports on a recent UTS study that many Australian politicians still failed to use the internet in the election campaign last year:

Some dubbed last year's Federal poll "the Internet election", but research shows the net still has far to go in shaping the fortunes of our parliament.

A study by the Australian Centre for Public Communication of the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has found that a significant number of politicians didn't use the Iternet during last year's federal election campaign.

Only two out of three sitting federal members and senators had a personal Web site leading into the election campaign and only one in 10 had a MySpace page.

The study also revealed only 6.6 percent had a blog, 5.75 percent had posted one or more videos on YouTube, 3.5 percent had a Facebook site and only 3.1 percent had a podcast, as at 20 November 2007.

But of those that did find their way online a large percentage failed to go beyond traditional one-way communication.

The study highlighted the Labor Party's Kevin07 Web presence, which it said was a watershed in election campaigning.

But the study went on to say that close analysis revealed much of the ALP's online communication remained controlled and packaged.

Read more here.

Comments

[Kevin Rennie]

The ALP were definitely into control when it came to any kind of online electioneering. There weren't even any email trees which members could access.

Apart from the Labor Herald no mention or link to unofficial labor sites like mine was encouraged or in most cases even allowed.
There were a few good websites like Peny Wong's.
Getup was a powerful presence and attracted a much older group than many expected.

It will take a long time for the political parties to come to terms with the web. Most ALP party officials and shadow ministers had no way of processing email much less responding to it. Ironically my attempts to volunteer with internet related stuff seem to have gone unheard because of this. Mind, so did my phone conversations with party officials.

Long way to go!