Election 2.0 – List of social media election sites to watch.

List of Social Media Election sites for Australian 2010 election. An early analysis of election 2010 sites. It’s particularly interesting to see which social media election sites are allowing the electorate to ask questions -versus who is providing answers.  And how useful is the site to online community members. I think CampaignIQ, Connect ALP or whatever it’s called is about putting in a minimum MyBarackObama, irrespective of the Australian Culture. On the other hand some of the grassroots, unsponsored stuff feels authentic and from a genuine need to connect and share cultural capital.

This election is going to be hotly contested – by social media sites – for relevancy. As politicians are scrambling for cultural relevancy and to be heard (the Debate on Sunday Night has been moved for Masterchef) so will websites that want to provide information on the coming election. If you are looking for a blow by blow comparison of Twitter followers vs YouTube views etc for each party, try the SBS website

1. ABC ELECTIONS broadcast site

The ABC has done a hybrid site – not really a community conversation build but aggregating information from multiple communities.

You can see the embedded tweet is from Lyndal Curtis Chief Political Correspondent. ABC is very much in sourcing content and then broadcasting it out – not engagement – mode. The Campaign Pulse is a social media dashboard monitoring sentiment on Twitter and Youtube and Flickr. None of it is embeddable, referrable or discussable.  Everything is official ABC journalist tweets and blogs, and ultimately unsatisfying.

2. Election Leaflets – Live Election Leaflet Monitoring

Enter your postcode and ElectionLeaflets.org.au will reveal to you all the brochures, posters and other paraphenalia littering your streets, shop fronts and stuck to stobie polls. Why is it important? Because theres some nasty stuff that goes on, under the radar, when it’s not been broadcast publicly on traditional media, but is adorning the front door of the local deli.

Note, they need to fix their iFrame widget to be one brochure and flickable rather than a toilet roll of leaflets. Anyway, see a dodgy leaflet? Take a photo and upload it, or email to ’em. If your camera takes a GPS position (and a lot do) a map will also be displayed for the location of the brochure. Shame we can’t comment or ask questions about the brochures. Creating a community around some of the photos of brochures would be cool – otherwise why not just embed them from Flickr, like the Greens did one year?

3. Connect ALP – Campaign IQ

And odd site. Like someone looked at the tools that MyObama used and then promptly dropped all the community elements. I can’t friend a profile, there are no many-to-many discussions (though I can write on anyone’s wall, even a non-friend!), creating a group requires approval, and lots of opportunity to promote the labor party’s broadcast material. I hope this site improves a lot. It looks pretty but lacks community functionality. Even the signup process is a huge barrier to entry and looks intimidating. If you don’t need it on signup – not mandatory – stick it in the profile! Where’s the welcome centre? Where’s the leaderboard? I could go on.

No, I don’t know what “submitted issues” or “ideas raised” are either

They are in desperate need of a Help section, if not a whole Newcomer Welcome Centre. BTW I found “issues” but it’s a tiny link hidden in a separate area called ThinkTank (which took me to the signup page again). This site may well improve, social media wise, after a good usability/sociability going over but at the moment it’s  steep learning curve for sophisticated social media users, let alone the average “I’m only on Facebook for the kids” Australian.  The online community real world activism is right out of MyObama songbook – election leaflets (above) may want to add the leaflets? 🙂

4. My Politician – Keeping Track of Your Politician For You.

Oh I like a good sense of humour – so many social media site creators lack the ability to storytell and play with their community in a meaningful way.

developed by ireckon

Not particularly social but useful – if you want to avoid having your baby kissed at the local shops by a pollie.

My Politician enables you to search the profiles of all the federal Australian politicians, (candidates for election too, when the elections are on) and in future State politicians…

You can quickly locate statistical and contextual information about politicians in your electorate and compare them with other politicians across the country.

A note from CARA – My Politician provides an important opportunity for everyone to learn more about Australian politicians, and for Australian politicians to learn more from each other.

The My Politician website has been developed by the Cynical Assessment and Reporting Association (CARA – we made that up), an independent association (well, bunch of people) that is responsible, among other things, for making sure you can see nationally comparable data on Australian politicians. CARA has worked closely with no one across the country to develop this website.

The My Politician website provides detailed information about the 226 federal politicians in Australia. It uses a new index of online data publishing characteristics, developed specifically for the purpose of identifying politicians that are trying to communicate with their electorate in a modern and meaningful way. This enables their performance on real things that matter to their electorate to be understood in a fair and meaningful way.

By providing information on Australian politicians, the My Politician website introduces a new level of transparency and accountability to the Australian electoral system.

It’s actually much easier to accept than ABC Election broadcast site – probably because we feel traditional media have had their turn at the megaphone?

5. 2010 Federal Election from University of Melbourne

Blogs are very top down – One Voice To Rule Them All and all that. Even group blogs are not many-to-many discussion channels. In the case of Uni of Melbourne, their blogs are written by “Experts” – University Professors. Being a naughty academic atheist, I’m of the opinion that Professors giving advice on real world election issues is like Priests giving advice on marital sex but hey! what do I know? 😛

Climate change and carbon tax,
Alternative energy sources and zero emissions,Professor Mike Sandiford, School of Earth Sciences
Climate change policy Professor David Karoly, School of Earth Sciences
Climate change policy and the environment Dr Peter Christoff, Department of Resource Management and Geography
Population, immigration and refugees
Indonesian society and law reform Professor Tim Lindsey, Asian Law Centre
Multiculturalism in Australia Professor Shahram Akbarzadeh, National Centre for Excellence in Islamic Studies
Muslim communities in Australia, freedom of religion, Islam and human rights Professor Abdullah Saeed, Asia Institute
Rights and responsibilities of asylum seekers and granters Professor Sharon Bell, LH Martin Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Management
Social Justice, carbon trading/tax, climate, the underprivileged and disabled Professor Jeremy Moss, Social Justice Initiative
Economy, Industrial Relations and Tax Reform
Financial markets, financial regulation and manufacturing Professor Kevin Davis, Department of Finance
Industrial relations & the return of workchoices Professor Bill Harley Associate Professor John Howe Director, Centre for Employment & Labour Relations Law
Labour market and employment trends, industrial relations Professor Mark Wooden, Institute for Applied Economic and Social Research
Health reforms and hospitals
Economics and funding of health Professor Tony Scott, Institute for Applied Economic and Social Research
Mental health Professor Patrick McGorry, Orygen Youth Mental Health Research Centre
Paid maternity leave Amanda Cooklin,  Centre for Women’s Health, Gender and Society / Parenting Research Centre
Population health and epidemiology Professor Terry Nolan, School of Population Health
Primary care and super-clinics Professor Jane Gunn, Department of General Practice
Education
Higher education policy and governance Professor Lynn Meek, LH Martin Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Management
Schools performance analysis Professor Stephen Lamb, Graduate School of Education
Schools performance analysis Professor Jack Keating, Graduate School of Education
Women and leadership
Dr Lauren Rosewarne, School of Politics and Social Sciences
Environment
Resource management Andrew Hamilton, Department of Resource Management and Geography
Agriculture
Climate change impact on agriculture Professor Snow Barlow, School of Land & Environment
Agriculture and food security Professor Rick Roush, School of Land & Environment
Australian politics
Dr Scott Brenton, School of Politics and Social Sciences
Professor Brian Galligan, School of Politics and Social Sciences
Urban planning
Housing density & urban sprawl Dr David Nichols
Planning theory, planning practice, planning risk Dr Alan March
Urban growth boundary extension & sprawl, funding for urban issues, liveability and
access to public space, crime and violence prevention policy Associate Professor Carolyn Whitzman
Money and politics
Joo-Cheong Tham, Law
Student Voices
Penny Rush is a Masters student in Public Policy and Management at the University of Melbourne.
Martin Bortz is a Masters student in Public Policy and Management at the University of Melbourne.
Jason Ball is completing a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Political Science at the University of Melbourne and is the Greens precinct Captain for University clubs at Melbourne, RMIT, La Trobe and Swinburne Universities.

Still, it’s nice to have these types of influencers talking directly to the public. Why? Because it puts paid to that “Come to Newspapers for Original Source Content – Ignore Loser Generated Content on Blogs” crap – here are the very original sources that traditional media usually has access to, talking to us directly. Be interesting to see if they get any comments…

6. 2020 Women

Bog standard survey

Or feedback form.  There is a blog with comments and a storycatcher (one way – you submit it to them for decision).

7. Your Rights At Work

I don’t know what it is with Community Engine but it breaks a lot of sociability rules. Basic ones. Like if you end up on the “Log in” page there is no “Join Now” yet join now is plastered over other parts of the site. Weird. Like a bespoke package half finished… Needs a Sociability overhaul. Might be a new beta version for the election sites?  Looks pretty but doesn’t function well. Still, signup is better than on the ALP site (meaning, it’s probably the Labor Party fault it’s such a clunky barrier to entry to sign up). The welcome email (for verification) is missing as is the welcome centre. blah blah you guys know the drill now – a social tool that is missing the “soft skills”. It feels very much like ACTU put up the “ideas” and you get to follow their ideas.

I also looked at a bunch of other sites on this list but they were very much:

• Join our newsletter
• For Media Enquiries contact:…
• or in more than one memorable case, a PDF. Kid you not.

Sites 8 Election Blackout

Group blog by Peter Black

He’s locked his page down so I can’t copy and paste but basically, Peter is a Snr Lecturer in Law in Queensland.

Got another one or two going up this week. Remind me!

How about you? Spotted any memorable election social media sites out there? Particularly looking for a user generated site, rather than a pollies Facebook/Twitter account. got any?