Spoilt for Choice

A quick look at voter turnout statistics available on http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/ge05/turnout05.htm soon revealed that I'm not going to have too much trouble finding a constituency in London with low participation in elections. In 2005, of the 38 constituencies throughout the country that had a turnout of less than 50 per cent, 8 were in London.

Also, all bar 1 of them were located in close proximity to each other. The constituencies (with their respective turnouts) were Poplar & Canning Town (45.82%), Tottenham (47.8%), Vauxhall (46.9%), Southwark North & Bermondsey (49.34%), Hackney North & Stoke Newington (49.57%), Hackney South & Shoreditch (49.73%) and West Ham (49.79%). Turnout overall in the eclection stood at 61.3%.

It would seem clear, therefore, that there is a specific problem with engagement in a definable area of London. The first task will be to establish why this is so, something on which I know there has already been a lot of reserach over the years. I will however be looking to give an overview of the conclusions of that research here in order to help set the context from which to go on and investigate whether new media technologies could be a viable tool for political communications to address this problem.

New Research Project

I've decided to try and focus in on the use of new media by political communications and whether it offers a viable tool with which to re-engage those who are apathetic about voting. The first part of this new project will be to identify an area, preferably a specific constituency, where voter turnout has been particularly low. It will have to be somewhere in the London area as I don't fancy spending a fotune on train tickets going to and from other towns or cities. Once i've decided on the location i'll create a database of contacts including the MP, local councillors, journalists, youth & religious groups, schools etc. Hopefully I should be able to get a reasonable cross section of people in the community who will be willing to be interviewed on the issue and to see whether new media, in their context, could provide a viable tool to engage the public. It would be great if i could also get some data from the public too about how they feel about politics using new media to communicate with them and whether this could make it more relevant or credible for them. Whether this is possible because of the lack of resources remains to be seen but I might give it a go anyway. Still, if I do manage to get a broad range of opinions it shoud still provide me with a good snapshot of whether new media can have an affect on participation in politics.