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Australian Politicians on MySpace this week…

The Australian ran a couple of stories today about Australian politics finding another outlet in MySpace’s ‘Impact’ website (the Australian version).

In Nicola Berkovic’s ‘Kevin has more ‘friends’ than John’, she points out that Labor is doing much better in MySpace than the Liberal Party. As Berkovic notes:

Yesterday afternoon, the Opposition Leader had more than 800 friends, while the Prime Minister had a measly seven. And most of them were fellow Liberal MPs. However, it is also a risky strategy for politicians, who are used to their minders having some degree of control over their image and political message. […]

Many of Mr Rudd’s MySpace friends are preoccupied with the issues that interest many young people: drinking, smoking and sex. […] However, Mr Rudd said, provided that people did not post defamatory or profane comments on his site, he was relaxed about losing control over his image on the internet. “It’s just life in the fast lane,” the Opposition Leader said.

I’d say Kevin Rudd’s attitude is probably a sensible one (and its not like any of the politician on MySpace are actually likely to see their own profiles). That said, in ‘MPs cast cyber net in hunt for votes’, Cath Hart points out that:

The emergence of e-campaigning in Australia is set to mirror the trend in the US, where presidential candidates have embraced the internet – for fundraising and profile building – as the 2008 race moves into full swing. Speaking at the launch of MySpace’s new political channel, Impact, yesterday, Mr Rudd described the site as the “public meeting place for the 21st century”, where his goal is “to get 50per cent … plus one more friend than Mr Howard”. “It’s a good shot in the arm for Australian democracy to keep it alive into the next century.” […]

But media and internet experts have warned Mr Rudd and the swag of other “e-MPs”, or online politicians, that social networking sites can be a double-edged sword. Internet networking expert Joanne Jacobs said the sites offered access to the “student market” of people under 24. “The trouble with these networking sites is that … they open the writer up to criticism. It also means you don’t have a moderating path to vet out unpopular comment,” she said.

Following Joanne Jacobs’ comments, I suspect the real test of Rudd’s take on social networking websites will come when he does something massively unpopular and has to deal with the backlash!

For today, thought, lets look at MySpace friends:

Rudd_MySpace_13Jun07_3Labor leader Kevin Rudd, has 3382 friends;

Gillard_MySpace_13Jul07_3Julia Gillard (Deputy Leader for Labor) has 687 friends.

In the middle, Bob Brown (leader of the Greens) has 173 friends, while Democrat Senator Andrew Bartlett has 163 friends (although, already being Australia’s most web2.0-savvy politician, Bartlett already blogs extensively and has clearly stated that he only has time to treat MySpace as a re-posting space for his blog);

Howard_MySpace_13Jul07_3Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister John Howard only has 8 friends (and Peter Costello, oddly enough, isn’t one of them!). While the generation gap is clearly one factor, I strongly suspect that Howard’s camp simply aren’t checking friend requests (and thus Howard will probably never have more than 8 friends!). This is similar to what Jill mentions about politics in Norway, in that candidates are using online networks like MySpace or YouTube without having teams literate in how these websites actually work. (Another argument for the importance of digital literacies right there!)

Incidentally, the popularity of certain politicians doesn’t seem to be rubbing off on the youth arms of either major party: on MySpace the Young Liberals currently have 50 friends while Young Labor isn’t doing much better with 110 friends.

Returning to Australian Politics on Facebook discussed last week, Kevin Rudd is up to 1296 friends, while there still doesn’t appear to be a real John Howard. I’ll leave you to draw your on conclusions on that front!

(All friend counts and screenshots were taken between 3pm and 3.40pm Perth Time on 13 July 2007.)

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Facebook and Australian Politics?

Over the past month I’ve suddenly seen Facebook grow from an oddity to something on which the majority of my university-based friends appear.  Since I spent some of yesterday pondering the oddities of US politics and digital culture, I thought I’d spend a little of today looking at Australian politics.  For those of you not in the know, Australia has what amounts to a two-party political system, divided between Liberal (close to Republican/Tory parties) and Labor (close to the Democrat/UK Labor parties); the Liberal party is led by John Howard, who is our current Prime Minister, while the Labor party, after many years of leadership ambiguity, is led by Kevin Rudd. 

Unlike the US (and a lesser extent the UK), mainstream press and politics in Australia really hasn’t embraced either the blogosphere or social networking as a means of promotion or gaining support (and Australian politicians can’t and don’t fund-raise in the explicit way US politicians do).  That said, younger voters are clearly looking for some sort of connection with the political sphere, even if its not done through the same rhetoric of civil participation that comes through the US education and advocacy systems.  So, that said, is either Australia’s Prime Minster or his Labor rival on Facebook?  The answer, initially, appears yes to both, although after some scrutiny, the answer changes to yes for Rudd and no for John Howard – there are, in fact, three Howards, but all are fake.

Of the three Howards, two are obvious fakes, while one is more subtle, but still not authentic.  Since this is a fun moment to think about digital literacy, I’ve taken screenshots of the three Howard profiles and circled in red the most obvious indicators that these aren’t authentic pages. 

John Howard #1

H1-Facebook - John Howard_1183611664177

John Howard #2

H2-Facebook - John Winston Howard_1183611723489

and John Howard #3

H3-Facebook - John Howard_1183611811723

In contrast, Kevin Rudd’s Facebook page is rather dull, but clearly authentic.  (I’ve just made a friend request, so if there’s anything exciting in friends-only land, I’ll write a little more.)  It is worth noting that comments which cast John Howard as a sexual or ‘hot’ figure are unambiguously meant to be satirical, in contrast to the clips from the US mentioned yesterday which, while playful, aren’t necessarily ironic (although they might be, especially Hott4Hill).

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Putting the Sex (back) into American Politics?

The process by which different US Democrats and Republicans vie for the right to be their party’s candidate for presidency has always fascinated me (admittedly, from afar, safe in the knowledge I don’t need to vote for any of these people). The race for 2004 bought out some impressive efforts in participatory culture (remember Jib Jab’s ‘This Land’?), and this years’ Hillary 1984 video promised more in the race for 2008. While the creativity is definitely out there, one trend which has been a little unexpected is the “I’ve got a crush on…” videos attached to the Democrat candidates.

First there was the self-styled ‘Obama Girl’ with her “I’ve Got a Crush on Obama” video:

The clip and the Obama Girl herself have gained a fair amount of attention in US media, most of which is linked to from Obama Girl’s website. The girl in the clip – Amber Lee Ettinger – didn’t create the concept (or sing the song; she’s lip-synching) but has become one of the key faces in Obama’s campaign. The story behind Obama Girl is found at the Barely Political website. Now, along similar lines but a little more disturbingly, Chuck Tryon has drawn my attention to the “Hott4Hill featuring Taryn Southern” clip, which runs a fine line between representing Hillary Clinton as a politician or a sexual icon(!):

And, of course, there’s a Hott4Hill blog to emphasise Taryn Southern’s efforts.While I’m still thinking about how all of this works (and wonder if these clips have the potential to damage campaigns as much as make them appealing for younger proto-voters) you might want to have a read of ‘The Power and Playfulness of Parody: Obama, Hip Hop and Misunderstanding’ by Bernie Heidkamp in Pop Politics which gives some context and perspective to the Obama Girl clip.

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The 4400 Goes Viral (Marketing)

The 4400 has taken to viral marketing dramatically in order to build the word before the upcoming fourth season of the TV show.  According to AdWeek:

To promote the new season of The 4400 on USA Network, Campfire has created a wide-ranging interactive world consisting of 80 videos that run from 30 seconds to five minutes and six Web sites. […] The 4400 follows 4,400 people who are abducted, taken away and then returned to planet Earth. After their return, many of them discover they have superpowers. As the fourth season begins on June 17, the plot follows the development of a drug called Promicin: it gives the users superpowers, if it doesn’t kill them. Three different factions emerge around the drug: pro, anti- and neutral.

On YouTube, for example, one of the show’s stars, Billy Campbell, appears in character as Jordan Collier, advocating Promicin and the decrying the government’s attempts to ban the drug.  Here’s Jordan Collier dispatch #3:

Elsewhere on the net, we can find the Promicin Power website, which argues that Promicin is the key to world peace and a sustainable relationship with nature.  Here’s one example that looks like it could be have been a United Colours of Bennetton advertisement in a past life:

At the other extreme, there’s also Promicin Terror which sees the drug as the biggest threat to the US since Al Qaeda.  Clearly building on the famous ‘Daisy‘ political ad of the 60s (which was recycled in the US debates about the War with Iraq), this is an example  of a clip campaigning to ban the drug:

I quite enjoyed the last season of The 4400 and am heartened to see the show’s producers so actively embracing the potential of video-sharing and online word-of-mouth.  The clips are a little over-produced, but given the state of a lot of TV advertising today, I’m sure they could easily be mistaken for the ‘real thing’.

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Visualising the User-Driven Web

I was just pointed to Flickrvision, and I’m impressed.  Flickrvision, and its older sibling, Twittervision, are program mashups by David Troy which combine the visualisation of Google Maps with the user-created data flowing out of Flickr and Twitter.  There’s a ‘standard view’ in which individual Tweets or Flickr images are posted on a flat world map, but even more impressive for those visually-minded is the 3D version which inserts Tweets and Flickr photos continually onto a global map (which spins as needs be to show the origin of each post). 

An example of Twittervision:

An example of Flickrvision:

Watching these globes spin, each showing a fragment of life around the world, is incredibly engaging.  This is the user-driven web at its most visually enticing.  I have to say, were I in charge of a Communications Studies or Media Studies department (which I’m not) and I could find a couple of spare monitors and computers (which, in all fairness, departments probably couldn’t), then I’d leave these running 24/7 in the front foyer; the best advertisement for the studying the user-driven web is watching it happen in all its visual glory, right in front of you!

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300: An Online Marketing Hit

There’s been a lot of talk about 300, which is now, financially at least, the first big blockbuster of 2007. Leaving aside Iran’s outrage at the film’s depiction of their history, one of the most interesting elements of the film was the clever and canny marketing strategies which found success in online arenas where many others have tried, but failed. Deborah Netburn’s article in the LA Times points out that 300 succeeded where others (most notably Snakes on a Plane) only appeared to work until the people voted with their feet at the box office:

Fanboy buzz is not enough to sell a film — “Snakes on a Plane,” anyone? — but Garabedian points out that while the online community was obsessively talking about “Snakes” they were ultimately making fun of it. The people who were driving the chatter around “300” were genuinely excited about the film, especially the way it looked. And after Comic-Con, Warner Bros. marketing department made sure that the fanboys got the usual dribs and drabs of movie art and trailers just to keep their excitement up.

The marketing folks also took full advantage of MySpace. There was of course the requisite MySpace page for the film (now standard for all movies) — featuring a ferocious looking muscle man in a metal helmet plus tons of video clips, wallpapers and links to the film’s official website. But the stroke of genius came when the studio sponsored a feature upgrade to the site that told users they could store 300 photos on their profile thanks to the movie “300.” (Previously the limit had been 12). That started Jan. 2 and was incredibly popular with teens. The result was billions of ad impressions and 8 million viewings of the trailer. Is it any wonder that the 52% of the people who saw “300” were under 25?

There are also mundane reasons “300” might have done well. A generally warm weekend across the country encouraged people to get out of the house and brave long lines, and no other major film was released against “300,” so it didn’t have much competition. And while the critics have been lukewarm on the film — faulting it for poor dialogue and a thin story — nobody has said anything negative about the visuals. And to a generation of kids who have grown up with the lush worlds of video games, “300” was a familiar visual masterpiece.

The ‘300 images’ idea is definitely a clever one, and shows that marketing online really has to think outside the box of traditional hype-building.

On a differrent note, 300 is also interesting in that it was entirely edited on Apple Macs. For the tech details, visit the Raw Feed.

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