|
Netpolitique : In your research paper, you insisted
on the importance the new media suddenly took between
the two rounds of the election. What happened exactly?
Endre Danyi : ABefore the first round of the
Hungarian elections (April 7, 2002) political jokes
were spread in SMS format on mobile phones, a couple
of parties mobilized supporters to a few demonstrations
in SMS messages, and some political messages and poems
were circulating. However, it was the close result of
the first election round that led to the very visible
use of personal electronic communication as political
campaign weapons.
In the first election round the two biggest parties
received almost the same amount of vote. The opposition
Hungarian Socialist Party and their allies the liberals
got 51%, and the governing right wing party (Fidesz
- Alliance of Young Democrats) received 49% of the vote.
In this situation the governing party changed strategy
and started an extremely intense negative campaign.
Millions of anonymous flyers and posters spread factoids
and outright lies about the socialists. New communication
technologies suddenly became part of the black propaganda
repertoire. In the online environment, the same black
PR messages were spread in SMS and e-mail format by
right wing supporters. Socialists sympathisers responded
with millions of counter-SMS and e-mails.
In our paper, we named this political spamming "viral
political marketing" as party enthusiasts distributed
political SMS and e-mail in a viral pattern. We coined
the term to indicate that the concept of "viral
marketing," which is used in business marketing,
can also be applied in the discussion of political campaigns.
Netpolitique.net : In your analysis of interactive
tools, you focused primarily on the role of email and
SMS, and particularly on what you call "Action
SMS". What are they? Were they effective in the
campaign?
Endre Danyi : We have differetiated three major
types of electronic campaign messages: propaganda messages,
jokes and action messages.
All of these were sent out in a really high volume.
SMS traffic rose by ca. 20% between the two rounds of
the election (April 7-21).
Action messages served as a mobilization tool for public
events, demonstrations, party rallies. And they had
an impact. Few hours
were enough to create a mass of 4-5000 in a square.
Action SMS also
contibuted to the mobilization to really huge gatherings
of several hundred thousand people. Between the elction
rounds, all major parties used action SMS for political
mobilization.
Netpolitique.net : You wrote that the development
of interactive communication applications
is "bad news for political parties". Why is
that?
Endre Danyi : BLong before the first round of
the elections there were several signs saying that new
information and communication technologies will become
interesting parts of the traditional campaign repertoire.
Out of the 6-7 biggest parties 4 had completely updated,
re-designed its website, created new content, flashy-shiny
applications, etc. It seems they had spent serious amount
of money on that.
During the campaign, however, the party websites and
online content providing were only the substitutes of
well-known offline, printed
leaflets, or party newsletters. They represented nothing
really new, the wegiht on the interaction wasn't too
significant.
Then, suddenly, the point-to-point communication applications
just boomed into the spotlight. Obviously, these SMS
and e-mail messages represented some kind of bottom-up
information flow. These electronic messages were (and
are) out of control, the experts in party headquarters
don't really know how to surf on this wave. However,
they still try.
We also have evidence that party campaign communication
specialists create messages that are then distributed
by party supporters. In other words, viral political
marketing is partially designed by party campaign headquarters,
but then political sympathisers play a major role in
creating variations and distributing the messages. Parties
cannot fully control the realm of viral politics, which
presents a high degree of uncertainty.
.
Netpolitique.net : ...and last but not least,
our traditional interview question, could you share
with us 3 of your favorite web sites?
Endre Danyi:
http://www.osa.ceu.hu/kampanyarchiv/english.html
http://logosonline.home.igc.org/
http://firstmonday.org/index.html
a funny site:
http://members.surfeu.fi/kklaine/primebear.html.
L’étude « Viral Political Marketing
: M-Politics in the Making » est disponible en
ligne : http://web.axelero.hu/aja/SukosdDanyi.PDF
|
