Posted at Monday, December 05, 2005  EDT  

Parties not using Web to fullest in this campaign

Mathew Ingram,  Globe and Mail Update

A few years ago, a political party might have been able to get away with a fairly static presence on the Internet -- a boring website with some stale speeches, candidate bios, and so on -- but not any more.

Now, people want "Web 2.0," and that means blogs, podcasts, video, RSS feeds and all kinds of interactive hoo-ha.

So how do the parties stack up when it comes to Internet savvy?

The results are somewhat mixed. No one is really pushing the boundaries of what can be done with the Web -- in fact, none of the major parties has even taken the small step of allowing comments in some form, perhaps because they're afraid of getting deluged with vituperative messages and death threats (or worse -- no reaction at all). There are a few bright spots out there, but they are hard to find.

The Liberals:

Political observers might want to read something into the fact that when you go to the Liberal Party's website you see only a small party logo and two buttons to click -- one saying "English" and one saying "Francais" (the second time I went, a form popped up asking me to fill in my name, postal code and e-mail address). The Conservative Party, by contrast, simply loads its English home page without asking, and so does the New Democratic Party, although both opposition parties have an option to switch to a francophone version of their website, in fairly small type near the top of the page.

The Liberal website is fairly static, and is bathed in Liberal party red colours, with a picture of Paul Martin in the middle of a speech and some menu items (in lower case) across the top of the screen, saying "press room," "issues," "multimedia" and "party." There is also a small search window where you can enter your postal code and find your riding and candidate. At the bottom of the page are two large boxes with links to policy statements on various topics, and to the right of that are some small tabs: "get involved," "new" and "blogs."

If you click on the "blogs" tab, you get the only real spark of creativity or "Web 2.0"-ness on the Liberal site right now -- a link to "Scott Feschuk's Blackberry blog." As befits a comedy writer and former journalist, the blog is quite funny and makes sarcastic cracks about the other parties (which has already caused one flap with the Conservatives, due to a misunderstanding about a reference to Omni magazine). Although there is also a link that says "podcasting," all you get when you click on it is a page that says "coming soon."

In contrast to the Liberal leadership race in 2003, Paul Martin doesn't have a blog, or at least not yet (although there is a parody version). Mr. Martin's previous blog fell into disrepair after an initial flurry of postings, and often went weeks -- or in some cases months -- at a time without new posts. As with that earlier attempt, there are no comments allowed on Mr. Feschuk's blog, and there is no RSS feed that interested readers can subscribe to (are the Liberals that desperate to get a few more page views?).

The "multimedia" section on the Liberal site had 17 video clips on Dec. 4, seven of those from Nov. 30 and 10 from the day before that, in both Windows Media and QuickTime formats. The site said that users could check regularly for "candid interviews" and "to experience the excitement of the campaign trail for yourself." There were links to several TV ads, and to some audio clips -- most of which were Paul Martin's weekly radio addresses from before the election.

Mark: B Plus

Remarks: The Feschuk blog is the only thing that keeps this site from getting a B minus or even a C. No RSS feeds, pictures are stale, no comments. Paul and the gang need to try harder.

The Conservatives:

The Conservative website is very blue, not surprisingly, and has several photos of Stephen Harper at speeches and photo ops that fade from one to the next over time. There's also a logo-style photo of him at the top of the page, and there is a maple leaf graphic that moves from one side to the other, with a series of words that appear over top, including: "family," "community," "unity" and "accountability."

This is the first sign that the Conservatives hired a Web designer who knew what he was doing. The menu items down one side have coloured bars that fade into stronger hues when your mouse moves over them, and the menu items at the top have lists that drop down automatically when you mouse over them.

Instead of having to go to a separate page and click on links for multimedia content, on the right-hand side of the Conservative site is a large image of a video camera lens, and a list of several videos. When you click on one, it plays right in the browser using a Flash media player. Very slick. In the "video vault" however, there were only two links on Dec. 2 -- one from Nov. 28 and one from Nov. 23. The photo galleries provided are well done, but there were only four, and only one of the campaign as of Dec. 2 -- with half a dozen boring shots of Mr. Harper with various crowds.

One of the more unusual items on the Conservative site is a link to something called the "C-boutique," where you can buy T-shirts with Conservative logos and other merchandise. It is a full shopping site with checkout and credit-card payment, hosted by Brymark.com.

There is a blog, but it is nowhere near as much fun as Scott Feschuk's. It appears to be written by a staffer, but it's not clear who, and the writing is stiff and fairly boring -- a recent post was entitled "Five Reasons to Vote for Stephen Harper" -- although there are pictures. On the brighter side, the website offers a range of RSS feeds, for stories, speeches, and events (not the blog). There's also a podcasting feed and a video feed you can subscribe to, and links to sites that will help if you don't understand podcasting.

Mark: A Minus

Remarks: The Conservatives may get slammed for being the boring party, but at least they hired a real webmaster. The only thing that keeps this site from getting an A is the fact that their blog is lame. Not a bad effort, but needs work.

New Democratic Party:

The NDP site is largely taken up by a picture of Jack Layton in action on the campaign trail, a picture that changes every time you reload the page (earlier in the campaign it was pictures of wheat fields on the Prairies, the Expo dome in Montreal, the Calgary skyline, and so on). The colours are orange and green, and the site is sparsely laid out, with three boxes at the bottom, two of which say "The Issues" and "Rapid Response - the latest campaign counter-spin." The largest of the three boxes, oddly, promotes downloadable NDP wallpaper.

Beneath those boxes are a series of words in small print: Privacy policy, Jobs, RSS and Youth. Clicking RSS gets you the output of the feed from the press releases section, but that's not really clear until you click on it. Along the top of the site are three short lists of links -- Get Informed (which has links to Jack Layton, Our Record, Issues and Contacts); Get Active (which has Candidates, e-Newsletter, Donate and Join); and Get The Latest (which has Press Releases, Rapid Response, Downloads and Speeches). "Rapid Response" has short, punchy responses to the other parties that could almost be blog entries, but there are no real blogs, no comments, no video and no audio.

Mark: C
Remarks: Nice-looking on the surface, but not much there. No video or audio, a single RSS feed hidden away, and not even a boring blog to be found. Whatever the NDP's results are in the election, their site comes a distant third.

Conclusion:

For whatever reason, Canada's political parties have yet to really make the most of the interactivity that the Web offers. The major U.S. political parties, by contrast, are taking advantage of virtually everything, from RSS feeds and blogs to comments and podcasts. Both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, for example, have active blogs that are written by more than one person -- the posts aren't exactly what you would call thrilling, but they do have comments enabled for each post and a "trackback" feature as well (which tracks any website that creates a link to an item).

The Republican website also has plenty of interactive design, much like the Conservative Party website in Canada, and it has plenty of video and audio available as well -- including podcasts -- which can either be played in the browser or downloaded. There are also dozens of prominently displayed RSS feeds, for almost every item on the site or in the archive (reader Michael Watkins says that he and some others have noted many similarities between the U.S. and Canadian right-wing sites). The Democratic Party website, however, has some audio (radio addresses mostly) and no video, and the RSS feeds are rudimentary. Is there something about conservative or right-wing parties that makes them more receptive to the Internet?