Did “new media” help or hurt local elections?
Posted on November 9, 2007 in Politics by DM
Sean over at The Garden City (Newton, MA community blog) posted a quick note about whether “new media” (meaning blogs, websites, etc.) played a part in their local alderman elections this year. He notes that their oldest candidate, an incumbent, won without a website or even an email address, while community leader Jeff Siedeman had a good website but did not win his race.
Here in Des Moines, I would have to concur: after a cursory search for websites and social networking pages, the use (or not) of “new media” had very little impact on results.
Mayor Frank Cownie won re-election against Diana Newberry. Neither has a website or MySpace/Facebook/LinkedIn page that I could find. (Brian of DesMoinesIst notes that Cownie let his candidate website expire.)
At-Large Councilman Chris Coleman won re-election against challenger Josh Daines. Coleman has no website and no social networking pages that I could find. Daines has a minimal MySpace page.
Ward 2 Councilman Bob Mahaffey has no website or social networking pages that I could find. He was unopposed.
Ward 4 Councilman Brian Meyer has a website shell (but very little actual content) and a minimal MySpace page, but no Facebook or LinkedIn pages that I could find.
For all of these races, the candidates may well have used email as a promotional tool but I am not on their lists so cannot confirm that bit of speculation.
As I mentioned in my comment on Sean’s Garden City post, local elections run on tight budgets. And, I suspect they focus their efforts on getting out the vote among likely supporters rather than on trying to convince non-voters or likely non-supporters. So it’s entirely likely that new media are simply not the best communication tools for their targeted voter blocs just yet.
The value of these tools in the national races remains to be seen; certainly candidate websites are a good resource for beginning one’s research, but I don’t know what value exists in being their “Friend” on the social networking sites.
subscribe to my RSS feed!
Comments
2 comments to “Did “new media” help or hurt local elections?”
Leave a Comment
-
Get Updates!
-- OR --
Lots of people don’t have computers of their own–even in the internet era. Or they don’t have the time to get over to the public library, a coffeehouse or FedEx-Kinkos in order to make use of the internet terminals there. Moreover, there are many people who are intimidated by the internet itself–is it any wonder that the relevant volumes in such series as “Complete Idiot’s Guides” ” and “for Dummies” books are big sellers? As for the websites and MySpace pages, the links to the main search engines aren’t always effective–someone who might check through Google or Yahoo! might end up visiting a MySpace page or website run by a Brian Meyer or a Mahaffey in a different part of the country or the world. (And we often have to take note of website addresses and e-mail addresses the old-fashioned way–with pen and paper.)
Those who think the personal computer and the internet have impacted everyone in our society (such as myself) should remember those who have little or no access to the internet.
Points well taken, Joel - the Internet may be ‘everywhere,’ but it’s not really EVERYWHERE just yet! ~ J.