Yesterday evening we had a guest lecturer, Nick DeLuca, at our lobbying and public affairs module. The general disuccion focused on lobbying with regards to global issues and international decision making bodies like the EU.
Inevitably though we also spoke about wider issues of politics and democracy. The interesting point regarding the use of new media to engage with people was a reference to the 2004 US Presidential elections in which both candidates were sending daily emails to between 2 and 3 million people.
The problem with this was that the emails tended to be quite general in content, a catch all attempt if you like. Of course three years down the line the technology to specifically target smaller segmented audiences is already much more sophisticated but it's also very expensive.
So are politicians going to be tempted in to finding ways to raise even more money to use these technologies? It's hard to believe they won't.
Anyway, it just seemed to tie in neatly with what I was talking to Karen about yesterday. There are lots of new technologies out there, lots of ways to track what people are interested in. They seem to offer all sorts of great potential to politics.
But will political communicators learn how best to use this potential? Or, at an even basic level, are they a realistic tool with which to try and target those who don't vote?
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