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.
