BushHarper.ca exploits Canadian animosity towards the US president

By Erin Empey
Canada’s political parties have embraced the digital age in the upcoming election through slick flash animated websites and social networking sites, yet the new technology has done little to update time-tested political strategies.

While ridiculing opponents, taking images and quotes out of context and using suggestive imagery are nothing new to election campaigns, web technology offers new avenues to implement these techniques.

Not content to let their platforms stand on their own merits, both the Liberal and Conservative parties have invested in websites caricaturing each other’s leadership.

“Welcome to our website. My pal Steve and I have the same economic plan, if you can call it that,” begins the southern drawl of a George W. Bush impersonator on the Liberal Party’s website BushHarper.ca.  “Heck, he would have joined me in Iraq, and you’d still be there!  I’m going back to Texas, but if you vote for Steve, it’d be just like I’d moved up there with y’all!”

Embedded YouTube videos attempt to exploit the Canadian electorate’s animosity towards Bush, displaying images of the two leaders shaking hands.  An ominous sounding narrator describes Harper’s economic policies as “Harpernomics”.  Smiling families then break the tension under a promise that the Liberals will “put people first.”

The Conservative Party’s effort to reach out to a younger audience via NotaLeader.ca caused controversy last month for featuring an animated puffin pooping on a picture of Stéphane Dion.  Stephen Harper apologized and had the poop removed, however the site continues the innuendo with the theme “can we afford to gamble on Stéphane Dion?”  Criticisms of Dion are displayed on animated rolling dice while an ominous narrator says “Stéphane Dion; Not Worth the Risk.”

The Liberal Party has three websites dedicated to skewering Harper and attaching the invented catchphrase “Harpernomics” to his economic policies.  The main Conservative site features a prominent photo of Dion shrugging.  Their external site’s links offer a Dion excuse generator, the option to make your own ad and a blog “written” by Dion’s dog Kyoto, however none of these links were working at the time of writing.  The Conservatives offer up a catchphrase of their own, the “Dion Tax Trick”.

NotaLeader.ca has attracted controversy

The NDP and the Green Party have been less adept at demonizing their opponents on the web. The NDP’s introductory splash page features a picture of Jack Layton with the quote “Unlike Stephen Harper, I’ll act on the priorities of the kitchen table, not the boardroom table.”  However, neither party’s websites feature unflattering images of their adversaries on their sites or have developed external sites satirizing their opposition.

The Green Party’s website does not even mention any of the opposition parties or leaders on its homepage.

The impact of an attack website is enhanced if the mainstream media draws attention to it.  “From what I’ve seen so far, the effect of Internet campaigns is bigger when the mainstream media takes a story and runs with it,” says Mario Canseco of the polling firm Angus Reid.

“The ‘puffin’ story, for instance, would not have generated so much coverage if reporters from newspapers and TV stations had not discussed it prominently.  It started in cyberspace and blogs, but it would have stayed there had it not been for the mainstream media.”

Canseco believes that attack websites are more likely to motivate a party’s supporters than to actually change the minds of undecided voters. Angus Reid conducted two surveys last year where voters were shown negative ads. “Very few respondents saw their perceptions about the person who was being attacked change,” says Canseco, “and respondents were more likely to question the motives of the party that was attacking.”

An Angus Reid poll released on Oct. 5 showed support for the Conservatives at 40%, with the Liberals trailing at 25%.  The NDP were at 19% and the Green party were at 6%.

Some of Canada’s smaller political parties are not taking full advantage of social networking strategies to get their message out to voters this federal election due to a lack of resources – despite the fact that the net is a cheap way to reach voters.

TheThunderbird.ca carried out a survey of websites of Canada’s smaller political parties and found that only one of them featured prominent links to social networking sites.

The survey also took an in-depth look at four smaller parties, the Libertarian Party, the Christian Heritage Party, the Marxist-Leninist Party, and the Newfoundland Labrador First Party, by searching social networking sites for media they have produced. The survey showed that they are not taking advantage of the technology, particularly in comparison to the larger parties.

By contrast, the major parties are more active in their use of social media, according to The Toronto Star. Their comparison found that the large parties are beginning to offer content using social networking technologies, such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and Twitter.

The only smaller party offering easily accessible social media links on their website was the Newfoundland Labrador First Party.

Time and money

UBC political science professor Allan Tupper said the Internet’s potential as a political conduit is yet to be fully realized. “It’s not the revolution yet.”

Despite the fact that anyone can publish information on the Internet, Green Party spokesman Mike Gosselin said new technologies cost time and money. “To use these technologies you still need to have people to do the work. Not everyone has that amount of money to be able to spend on that… You can’t really harness bloggers to write for you, to work for you. You need to have paid staff people who are dedicated to using these new medias.”

Canada’s political system is made up of more than the four or five parties that get most of the media’s attention. Elections Canada recognizes 19 registered federal parties.

“Certainly there’s considerable movement toward using Internet-based communications, fund raising, and so on in Canadian politics,” says Tupper.

All of the parties have websites that offer their party platforms and other information that may be important to potential voters.

“It’s an easy way to get people to be able to access a lot of information without having to publish many newsletters or multiple-page pamphlets,” says Jason McNeil, Libertarian Party candidate in Calgary Centre-North.

American politicians, such as Howard Dean and Barack Obama, have been fairly successful in using the Internet to build grass-roots support for their platforms.

Canada’s political parties, however, have generally lagged behind their American counterparts in exploiting the Internet, including the use of social networking tools. Information in social networks tends to spread in an almost viral-like manner, as people share information with their circle of friends.

The challenge for parties is to reach out to people who may not already know about them or are not already involved in the political process.

“Instead of expanding participation, it’s simply providing more tools and diverse tools to those who are already in,” said Tupper.

Connecting with voters that are not already familiar with the party’s candidates or its platform can be a challenge for smaller parties.

“The Internet is great in that we can get our message out there but unless they have some way to know to look for us, it’s difficult,” said McNeil.

A recent poll commissioned by the Dominion Institute found that only nine per cent of young voters have been contacted by a political party using new media technologies, such as the Internet. It found that 35 per cent use the Internet to gather political information, suggesting that even the major parties have some way to go when it comes to their use of new media.

And as The Thunderbird found, Canada’s smaller political parties have so far done even less to use social media to connect with voters.

The Conservative website NotaLeader.ca, which received a lot of attention for pooping puffins, and the Liberal site Scandalpedia.ca are using Web 2.0 tools to attract younger generations. Yet neither site offers the kind of user participation that is featured on other sites, such as Facebook, which has over ten million Canadians.

Rebecca Bollwitt, a Vancouver social media consultant and blogger, says that “politicians are grasping the concept that new media is the way to go…but they just need a bit of help.”

New media tools can offer politicians a fresh battleground, but, as of yet, no party seems to have the upper hand. With respect to Scandalpedia and NotaLeader, the Liberals and Conservatives “are both trying to use something that is cool, something that is a buzz word of the day, but they are not using it the way it should be used,” says Bollwitt.

Failure to link

The Conservative site attempts to engage its audience by using software tools like Flash. The homepage, which shows Dion standing with arms outstretched in front of a blackboard, offers readers a chance to “Create [Their] Own Ad,” or click on categories, such as the “Excuse Generator” or the “Policy Slot Machine.”

Bollwitt estimates that “the Conservatives probably put a lot of money into th[eir] site…at least five or six figures,” but someone hoping to use some of these links may be disappointed as many do not work.

The only active parts of the site include previously televised Conservative attack ads and the link “Learn About Stéphane,” which connects readers to another attack site, WillYouBeTricked.ca. Here, readers can take the quiz, “Will You Be Taxed?” and by checking ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to questions like “Do you use electricity?” determine whether they will be taxed under Dion’s Green Shift plan.

While Bollwitt calls NotaLeader “more entertaining” than its Liberal counterpart, the site fails to truly capture her imagination. “As soon as something doesn’t work, I go away from it,” Bollwitt says. To her, NotaLeader is “really annoying and disappointing.”

‘Static’ sites

Scandalpedia targets younger, internet-savvy generations by mimicking the presentation of the popular online encyclopaedia Wikipedia. Available in French and English, this site allows visitors to read biographies of Tory MPs and link to other wiki pages that feature alleged scandals that each have been associated with.

References are included at the bottom of most Scandalpedia articles, but, unlike other wikis, there is no opportunity for users to collaborate and edit its material. “It looks like a wiki, feels like a wiki, but it’s not a wiki,” says Alfred Hermida, a UBC professor of journalism who was recently honoured as one of Vancouver’s top 20 web influencers by NowPublic.com.

Although outsiders are free to make suggestions or send in their own articles to Scandalpedia, “it’s really just at static website,” says Bollwitt. Participatory sites like Wikipedia are open to abuse and can become sources of false information if they are not carefully monitored.

New delivery, old tactics

Many working in the new media industry say that Canadian political parties have not effectively taken advantage of the tools that online platforms offer.

“I think all the Canadian parties are stumbling,” says Monte Paulsen, an investigative reporter with The Tyee and editor of the site’s blog, The Hook. “While the delivery systems are new, the basic election tactic has remained unchanged for more than a century.”

And, unlike televised attack ads that have a wide audience, online ads are at a particular disadvantage. Sites like NotaLeader and Scandalpedia “don’t generally change people’s minds,” says Paulsen, but simply “solidify a party base”.

In order to have a ‘viral’ effect on the internet and influence voters, “you need to be clever and funny,” he says. For Paulsen, The Sweater Vest Bonfire, a video by comedian Mary Walsh, is an example of an effective online attack. The fictitious character Princess Warrior Marg Delahunty verbally assaults Harper before throwing sweater vests on a fire – a scene so absurd that its message is sure to spread across partisan lines.

Online activism

The political parties may not have adjusted to the new media platform yet, but the 2008 election has seen an explosive political movement among internet users. The NDP’s Jack Layton has over 20,000 Facebook friends and, while Paulsen acknowledges that this does not translate into direct votes, it is a useful way of monitoring the growth of online political activism.

With the advent of Facebook, political blogging, twittering, and amateur attack ads on YouTube, Paulsen says that “it may become clear to Canadians that our electoral riding system is out of date with our highly connected internet driven population.”

For Canada’s political parties vying to form government, making advances at the ballot box will require them to work out how to use these new internet tactics effectively.

“I think they’re trying but I don’t think it’s terribly effective or at least not yet,” said Capilano University Communications Department professor Kathleen Cross. “As a branding tool, it is effective, in the sense that he is coming across as less stiff and more personal.”

Reaching young voters is important for the Conservatives, which has the lowest turnout in that age demographic compared to the other major national parties, said Cross.

Facebook has emerged as one way of doing this. Nearly eight million Canadians – more than one in four – have a Facebook profile page, according to study by Toronto-based Solutions Research Group. Zinc research also shows 74% of the Canadian Facebook users are between the age of 18 to 34.

Harper’s Facebook profile includes personal information such as his birthday, favourite music, movies, and books. Facebook users are also able to access his other websites, including YouTube, MySpace, Flickr. His profile picture is a family portrait. No policy information is included.

“As a political strategist, you absolutely have to use that opportunity to get any kind of a profile out even if it’s not necessarily including any kind of policy,” said Cross.

Tapping into the swing vote

Simon Fraser University School of Communication professor Catherine Murray said Facebook is an opportunity to soften Harper’s image, “A lot of people believe he can lead, but people don’t know if they can lead with care, in other words, caring about them.”

Other party leaders are also trying to reach out youth voters via Facebook. Jack Layton, Elizabeth May, and Stephane Dion all have personal profiles and fan pages on the site.

These youth voters are considered part of the swing vote, said Cross, which makes them even more valuable.

“Almost all elections are geared towards swing voters. You’ve got people who will always vote Conservative, people who will always vote Liberal, people who will always vote NDP. And then you’ve got the people who kinda move between parties,” Cross said. “And those are the ones that decide in fact who’s the next government.”

On Facebook, Harper has over 16,000 supporters and over 500 fans, but analysis says they seem to be existing offline supporters that are expressing their views online.

“Electronic politics are working very well for those who are educated, who already have an interests in politics,” says Murray. “In other words, it works to reinforce political interests that are already there.”

For Simon Fraser University Health Science student Benjamin Lee it doesn’t matter that Harper has a Facebook site because he would not base his voting decision on a social networking site.

“It has to be something much more substantial and in-depth,” he says.

A record number of female candidates will be on the ballot this October 14, which has at least one woman expecting “a breakthrough” and a critical change in the makeup of Parliament.
Across all federal parties, 29 per cent of the candidates are women running in 307 ridings. In total, a record 387 women are running for election.

“We have the largest number of women running in Canadian history,” said Raylene Lang-Dion, the national chairperson with Equal Voice, a federal advocacy group lobbying for more women in government.

“The door has been opened and there’s a breakthrough about to occur.”

Since 1993, and through five elections, no more than 21.1 per cent of the country’s 308 ridings have voted for a female representative, according to an Equal Voice analysis. After the last election in 2006, 64 women – or 20.6 per cent of MPs – filled a seat in Parliament.

The number of women nominated this election is at an all-time high, and Lang-Dion is excited at the prospect of more women of varying ideological backgrounds being elected.

“We don’t say that all women think alike and we clearly know that,” said Lang-Dion. “You can debate back and forth on micro-issues like that forever. But to make the issue of women in politics work in Canada, I think it’s really important and prudent to focus on getting the numbers there.”

Politicians – regardless of gender – are often polarizing figures. Past Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell had strong supporters and dedicated detractors. However they didn’t break down along gender lines nor was her political support based solely on the fact she was a woman breaking new ground.

And when she lost in 1993, it was to a female candidate, who said gender had nothing to do with her defeat.

“Kim Campbell – I don’t think of her really because I don’t see my defeat of her as defeating a woman,” said Liberal Hedy Fry, who has held the seat of Vancouver Centre since 1993 and is running for re-election. “I saw my defeat of her as a defeat for the Brian Mulroney government.”

The Palin question

Perhaps the most polarizing figure in politics today is the Republican Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, a woman who is both adored and ridiculed and facing accusations that she isn’t qualified.

At a forum for female candidates on October 6 in Vancouver, the issue of women in politics wasn’t discussed once. A question about Ms. Palin was rebuffed and met with immediate and out-spoken scorn from both the politicians and the audience.

Moderator Suzanne Anton said the question was “a bit distracting” and the forum instead centered on Canadian election issues.

“Sarah Palin is really getting beaten up,” said Ms. Anton afterwards. “Is she being treated harder because she’s a woman? That I don’t know. That’s an interesting question.”

After the forum, NDP incumbent in Vancouver East, Libby Davies said in an interview that Ms. Palin is not an example of biased treatment against woman.

“She has to be accountable for what she says and for what positions she articulates,” said Ms. Davies. “She clearly doesn’t know a lot about American policy and foreign policy, and I think that is now showing and she’s got to face those tough questions like everybody else.”

Whatever the views of her, the American candidate for vice-president contributes to what the United Nations describes as a critical mass of elected female representatives. Thirty-three per cent is the amount of women needed across public, private and political bodies to garner a decisive and collective amount of sway, the UN believes.

In Vancouver’s five electoral districts, female candidates make up 40 per cent of the ballot – 11 women are running compared to 18 men. All ridings save one are defined as winnable by a female candidate and three are held be female incumbents.

While a record number of women may be running for public office, a crucial question is how many are nominated in a riding they are considered capable of winning. A winnable riding is easily defined: one where the seat is currently held by an incumbent, where a party came in second by a margin of 10 per cent in the 2006 election or where parties finishing second and third were separated by a margin of less than 15 per cent in the last election.

In terms of female candidates, the Liberals lead the way with 39 per cent – or 113 women candidates – nominated for election. Twenty-eight per cent of those women are in winnable ridings.

The NDP have nominated fewer women than the Liberals with 104 female candidates, but 39 per cent are running in a winnable riding.

Of the 60 women running for office with the Conservatives, 15 per cent are in a winnable riding. The Greens have named 89 female candidates but are not considered to have any winnable ridings.