I’ve been meaning to write up Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry’s very interesting discussion of SÈgolËne Royale’s online campaign from the PDF Unconference on Saturday, but I’ve not had time yet. Luckily Colin Delaney has done it for me at e.politics, even citing my comment that it sounded as though SÈgo was trying to run as a “wikipedia president”, allowing her politics to be edited by the people in real time.
Gobry, who blogs at TechRepublican, and previously wrote that piece on the French elections at TechPresident, worked on Sarkozy’s campaign, so obviously wasn’t a SÈgolËne Royale fan, but he’s certainly very savvy about online politics, and he did a great job of pointing out how very thoroughly networked and user-centred her online campaign was. It was a really good session, and he made some really interesting points. I’m planning to grab screenshots of her and Sarkozy’s campaign websites before they go offline and maybe make a Slideshare presentation out of them for future use, because this stuff would make very good examples for teaching or talks.
jill/txt » campaigning by centralised emails or letting grassroot bloggers dominate?
[…] TechPresident has an interesting analysis of the fundraising campaign. It’s the first time that fundraising through blogs and distributed, supporter-run websites has raised more money than the more centralised strategy of sending out mass emails from the campaign headquarters. This may make a difference to campaign strategies. For instance, TechPresident continues, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama do not encourage supporters to blog independently as Ron Paul does. They prefer controlled emails. This is in part due to the perception that Howard Dean lost because of his immense internet support, as, it has been suggested, did SÈgolËne Royale in France this spring. Filed under:links and power, online democracy — Jill @ 12:40 [ ] […]
SpinDoc | Perch?® S?©gol?®ne ha vinto la campagna online e perso le elezioni
[…] Certo, non ?® stata solo la percezione di una figura meno forte (di cui i francesi sentivano comunque il bisogno) a causarne la sconfitta. Ma queste considerazioni mettono in evidenza un pregio e un limite degli User Generated Content (UGC): essere un “wikipedia politician“, felice espressione coniata da Jill Walker mentre assistevamo alla presentazione, ?® una scelta complicata da sostenere davanti ad elettori che a un politico chiedono anche risposte. […]