In many western countries, politics increasing suffers from a decline of interest and participation in the political process. (Flickinger and Studlar, 2007). This is true not only to national politics but also to European politics as well. A steady decline in voter turnout (43 % for the entire EU in 2009) echoes this fact. Although Netherland being a small population supports the European Union membership pretty strongly (78%) shows a voter turnout of only 37%. In Canada, thousands of kilometers away from Europe, also suffering from the same symptoms, “low voter turn out during elections”. It is shocking though that in Canada the voter turn out percentage is decreasing quite significantly, in the last parliamentary election 2008 the voter turnout happened to be all time low of 58.8%. The last four elections voter turnout percentage is really disappointing —- 2006 — 64.7%, 2004 — 60.9%, 2000 — 61.2%. Is this low voter turn out means that politics no longer interests the young techno and internet savvy young generations? Politics to them is old people with pen and paper debating amongst themselves with no apparent agenda.
Internet as Campaigning Tool: Using the social media (Web 2) to reach out to the masses and specially to the young internet generations. This trend was first set up in EU election of 2009 where they use social media specially micro-blogging with “Twitter” as the main campaigning tool. They put forward a bold face that this is the new age politics which is techno and internet based, no matter what ever your realm is we will deliver you the national and local political news (blog- sphere). Many politician have their own websites and do a quite bit of blogging. Many of our Canadian counterparts like our honorary Prime Minister Mr. Stephen Harper, Michael Ignatieff, Jack Layton all use the same strategy —- the new mantra “Go Social”. With the economic melting down and we are in the verge of another recession both in States and in Europe, there is a scarcity of funds in doing a lavish electoral campaign and moreover election now-a-days is like festival comes every year. Using Web2 is very easy to use and can target a variety of gadgets like smartphone, tablets and computers and also can target voters from different ages and demography. For example, Conservative Party, Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party all exploits the new technology extensively. Chen and Smith (2010) also found out that the innovation hypothesis, the normalization hypothesis states that the power distribution online is merely a replication of the offline power distribution. So the candidates from different parties will adopt to:
(1) Micro-bogging more
(2) Micro-blogging more frequently
(3) Perform more Social Networking
In the light of the modern context Dutch Election of 2009, is very significant, specially the use of Micro-Blogging using “Twitter” by the candidates in order to communicate with their vote bank.
Conservative Party – Stephen Harper On Facebook And Twitter: Looks like Stephen Harper team is active on top social networking site Facebook and also on Twitter. I haven’t came across any video ads on YouTube or CTV. Honorable Prime minister has 50,000 fans on Facebook and 128,000 followers on Twitter.
Liberal Party – Michael Ignatieff On Facebook And Twitter: Liberal party leader Michael Ignatieff has more fans on Facebook and using more Facebook applications than any other top politician. He has 91,522 followers on Twitter and 57,280 fans on Facebook.
New Democrats Party – Jack Layton Using Facebook And Twitter: Most of the ads I have seen on CTV video or YouTube are from NDP party. With nearly 82,000 followers on Twitter and more tweets to followers than any other politician look like NDP party is engaging more with the voters.
