Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

It seems a few people were thinking along the same lines as there are two articles in the Irish Times today about politics and blogs, one written by Adam Maguire. I also happened to be thinking along the same lines and here’s my two cents on the subject.

Despite voter turnouts dropping across the globe and increasing disenchantment in the political process by the public, there are those who have highlighted the rise of social media as a turning point for politics. The Internet has opened up politics to a new level of accountability, but politicians are now starting to use the web to reach out to voters.

A recent article in the Irish Times about podcasting suggested that Irish political parties were investigating offering video and audio content via the Internet. In the wake of the Dublin riots, Irish bloggers have highlighted the next general election as a crucial point in the evolution of the Irish blogosphere. A new website, the Irish Election blog, has been set up as a collective effort by Irish Bloggers to blog the Irish Election.

A number of Irish politicians have already dipped their toe into blogging. Some of the most notable blogs are penned by Liz McManus (Labour TD), Damien Blake (Fianna Fail councillor and Mayor of letterkenny) and Michael Turley (Fianna Fail candidate Pembroke Ward Dublin South East). Fianna Fail, Ireland’s main political party, seems to be the political party dipping its toe into blogging the most. Michael Turley maintains that the reason for this is “Fianna Fáil have always focussed on getting the message out and being accessible. I suppose younger, progressive members of the party are just trying to extend that principle.”

Damien Blake adds, “I think we’re going to see more and more Irish politicians coming to the Internet, and blogging, in coming years. This should reach its peak in the run up to the next General Election. When you consider how close the election is expected to be, politicians will take any opportunity to get their word out. I hope politicians will do things properly when they move to the Net. There are a few Irish politicians with websites at the minute, but most of them are either not updating them or just throwing up press releases. Politicians should be updating their websites themselves, with their own opinions, and allowing debate to develop from those opinions. I was slow to get comments enabled on my site, but now they are there I think they add quite a bit to the site and it’s effectiveness.”

The general public has a lack of awareness of what politicians do day-to-day. Voxpops are often full of complaints that TDs are neglecting their duties, have too many holidays and are corrupt. While the Internet has put politicians under the magnifying glass of the public, it has also opened up the political process to give the public a better insight into how it works. For example, Fingal County Council has started to offer webcasts of meetings, giving the public a birdseye view of what their local representative is doing. Constituents are now able to see if councillors stayed true to their election promises. Despite the optimism among Irish bloggers about the impact of the Internet on politics, Turley questions whether “RTE’s Oireactas Report changed or informed our voting patterns?”

Despite criticism of the Irish government for its lack of action on the broadband issue, it has been surprisingly proactive on e-government. Resources such as the OASIS website are very useful and have even adopted RSS. Turley points out that e-government works well when it has a focus and offers the Revenue Online Service as an example of this, indicating that it has good levels of usage. On the other hand, Turley points out the Dublin City Council website as a wasted online resource. “It actually contains a lot of useful information but you would never know as the sites usefulness is impaired by a variety of formats (PDFs are liberally used whether appropriate or not), poor organisation of data, awkward navigation and a next to useless search facility.” There are numerous applications that could be developed, Turley offers the following example “Considering the importance of planning and potential benefits of a useful online planning search tool, the least impressive public service site has to be Pleanala.ie which has no search mechanism and has one of the slowest response times of any government website.”

Despite creating numerous resources, promoting them is proving to be a problem as there is a distinct lack of awareness about them. One tactic to change this could be to force people online like in Denmark. The alternative emerging trend is the focussed public support for collaborative projects to improve the political process such as John Handelar’s plan to replicate the WriteToThem project in Ireland. FaxYourTD will help Irish voters to contact politicians for free. Awareness about the project was raised by word-of-mouth in the Irish blogging community.

While members of the Irish blogging community hope that more senior members of the government would start a blog like David Miliband, Minister of Communities and Local Government in the United Kingdom, the reality is that penning a blog takes a lot of time and patience, something which some politicians might not be able to afford. For example, it could be argued that Michael McDowell would gain very little from running a blog. He would probably get bogged down in debate due to his outspoken nature. Michael Turley thinks “A distinct and occasionally controversial voice in a political arena largely featuring cautious, colourless politicians, McDowell has more than enough exposure in the mainstream media. The letters page of The Irish Times acts as a bit of a moderated blog on his frequent pronouncements.”

Turley has first hand experience of the negative side of the Internet. “Impatient to make a quick impact I made the crucial mistake of posting occasional comments to a number of political forums (including Indymedia). My site soon lapsed into a sounding pad for severely disaffected individuals, obsessed crackpots and amateur humorists indulging in scurrilous anti-government diatribe as well as some vindictive personal abuse. In effect, my election blog had become a virulently anti- Fianna Fáil bulletin board. It was very amusing but not exactly in line with my original aim of providing a platform for intelligent open debate with particular focus on the local concerns of Pembroke residents.”

Regional media play a strong role in the communications strategy for any local politician. However, there is a limit to the amount of editorial coverage that any one local politician can receive. Blogs can help local politicians draw attention and discuss issues that might not otherwise be covered in the mainstream media. Blogs will allow politicians to focus on local issues in a way never before possible. For example, by using tools like YouTube or Flickr, politicians could report on vandalism in their area. Local blogs have begun to emerge also, the Limerick Blogger and the Kilcullen Diary are two examples of this.

Irish bloggers were commended for their coverage of the Dublin Riots. Politicians can use the same formula and repeat it on a local basis. Michael Turley commented, “The ‘citizen reporting’ of the Dublin Riots was useful. It complemented and in places surpassed the rather sparse RTE footage. There is no reason why that approach could not be incorporated into politician websites. I’ll try and use that idea myself over the next few weeks.” However, it is worth noting that blog posts that typically draw the greatest response on politician’s blogs are those about national issues.

There is no doubt that the future of blogging in Ireland is bright. The is huge awareness around it and other social media tools at the moment, with numerous organisations wondering how they can take advantage of it. It is only natural that politicians are looking to leverage it also. Michael Turley is perfectly placed to comment, “Politically speaking, the return on investment for integrating a blog into a vote winning strategy is hard to quantify. I think as a short term vote winning tool a blog is next to useless. As part of a longer term strategy of enabling communication with constituents a blog could be a very useful tool.”

It is only a matter of time before Irish political parties embrace the Internet. There is bound to be high profile teething problems as politicians come to grips with the new medium and incorporate it into their communications strategy, especially if discussions on political blogs and forums today are anything to go by.

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