*** Democracies Online Newswire - http://www.e-democracy.org/do *** Get your printers ready. The "VoxPolitics Primer - How to use the Internet effectively, securely, and legally in election campaigns" knocks the socks off (is better than) any other online campaigning guide to date. Most of it is useful for campaigns in any country. I encourage you to download this in PDF or Word, print it out, and pass it on. Their report is available in multiple formats including HTML from: http://www.voxpolitics.com/primer.shtml Below is their press release. Steven Clift Democracies Online http://www.e-democracy.org/do From: "VoxPolitics" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date sent: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 14:08:20 +0100 Subject: VoxPolitics is live! Priority: normal VoxPolitics is live... The VoxPolitics site which focuses on the use of the Internet in political campaigning is now live at: http://www.voxpolitics.com Thanks to everyone who came to our launch event at the Stationery Office bookshop yesterday. For those who couldn't make it, we attach a copy of our launch press release. Please visit the site for news, features, debate, and to access the VoxPolitics primer, the first ever practical handbook for Parliamentary candidates on how to use the net efficiently, effectively, securely and legally in their campaigns. The primer has a foreword by Sir Paddy Ashdown. For ongoing news on how politicians use the Internet in the forthcoming general election campaign, please sign up to our email newswire by entering your email address on our home page or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] You will not be placed on this list automatically, so please sign up! Best regards, Dan Jellinek Director VoxPolitics NEWS RELEASE Date: Thursday 26th April 2001 Embargo: Thursday 26th April 2001, 00.01 Contact: Susie Winter/Ben Rich (Luther Pendragon) 020 7618 9100 or mobile 07720 814 208 "EMAIL, NOT WEB, IS KEY VOTE WINNER" - VOX POLITICS New on-line campaign says email jokes win votes. On-line campaign experts, VoxPolitics, today warned politicians and the political community that e-mail, not web-sites, would be the main Internet vote-winner in the forthcoming election, and could make the key difference in some marginals. "We estimate that the three main parties have already spent in excess of £300k on developing state-of-the-art web sites," says Dan Jellinek, VoxPolitics Director. "However, evidence from both the US and here in Britain strongly suggests that the relatively cheap medium of e-mail will be the key on-line distributor of core messages and vote movements". The VoxPolitics Primer - the first ever practical handbook on Internet campaigning for UK Parliamentary candidates, published to mark the campaign's launch - describes email as "the killer application". It describes email as cheap, instant, flexible, storable and allowing more time for thought than telephone communication. VoxPolitics co-Director, James Crabtree of the Industrial Society, argues that email jokes are a particularly powerful tool in political campaigning. He says that the email-spread 'Sore Loserman' epithet severely damaged Gore's hopes of forcing a full recount in Florida. He points out that 54% of the US electorate recall receiving a politically-inspired joke during the recent elections, as compared with only 25% who recall receiving any other political communications. Continued overleaf… Crabtree - who worked as a 'webmaster' during the recent US elections - says: "email really worked in the USA. Both parties and individuals used it. In contrast, web sites were mostly visited by supporters and did not prove effective." Crabtree argues that the phenomenon is equally powerful in Britain, claiming that the success of last year's petrol price campaign can be put down to the use of the smartgroups email list. In a foreword to the Primer, Rt Hon Sir Paddy Ashdown MP (one of the first politicians to go on-line), warns politicians not to shy away from the potential of email: "Though far too few politicians realise it, we are a service industry. And increasingly people will want to use the Net to contact us, just as they do their Bank or building Society," he concludes. Along with the candidates' Primer, VoxPolitics is also launching its own manifesto, both of which will be posted to its new web site, http://www.voxpolitics.com. ENDS Notes VoxPolitics' launch is sponsored by The Stationery Office, a provider of official, professional and business information and the UK's largest publisher by volume, publishing over 11,000 books and CD-ROMs a year, plus a range of multiple-media products and services, the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR), the Social Market Foundation and the Industrial Society. VoxPolitics is a web, email and print publishing campaign on Internet Politics. The project is a partnership between four leading commentators on e-democracy in the UK: James Crabtree, Dan Jellinek, Phil Cain and Tom Steinberg. · James Crabtree is Project Director in the Futures Unit of the Industrial Society and former researcher at the Labour leaning think- tank, the IPPR. · Dan Jellinek is Director of Headstar (http://www.headstar.com), a new media publisher with a five-year track record pioneering virtual policy think-tanks and editor of E-Government Bulletin, the first email newsletter on e-government. · Phil Cain is Deputy Editor of E-Government Bulletin and previously he worked as a writer and researcher at The Economist and as a global media analyst at Saatchi & Saatchi. · Tom Steinberg is a Research Fellow at the right of centre Institute of Economic Affairs. He also writes for the Parliamentary IT briefing and The Register. ^ ^ ^ ^ Steven L. 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