the changing face of election campaigns

At almost every restaurant/dinner party/shebeen etc the thing that most people are talking about these days is the upcoming elections and the interesting (and sometimes hilarious) rhetoric (mudslinging) of the different political parties. I've been keeping up to date, and I must admit this is the first time I pay so much attention to it. But while I'm tempted to engage in the above, what I'd like to talk about is how the election campaigns have moved onto the online world. This is great, especially for those of us who spend hours in front of the computer.

If we think about the recent US elections, it's been said that Obama's engagement with Web 2.0 platforms played a huge role in the success of his campaign. Social networking sites such as twitter,facebook, youtube represent a huge market, and Obama wisely took advantage of these platforms that directly access a large number of voters.



In terms of our own country, South African political parties have already jumped on the bandwagon, either by rebranding their websites, setting up blogs, twitter, facebook etc. What this does, is encompass all channels with which to reach voters. It also says that South African political parties are becoming more sophisticated with their political marketing.
On the other hand, one has to think about how this relates to the majority of voters. According to SA stats, people who have access to internet only make up 10.5% of the entire population.

So essentially, these online campaigns can only target a small (and wealthier) percentage of the population. This small percentage has access to various sources of information about the various political parties. Whether this has any effect on making informed decisions, or having more choices, is definitely disputable, but it does engage certain sections of the population that wouldn't normally be directly marketed to.

So, if seacom ever gets here, and if those rumours are true about cheaper broadband, it'll be interesting to see how wider internet access changes not only how election campaigns are managed online, but maybe even how people vote.