Rigging the Irish Election – Profile your candidates and the opposition – Tracker
Software solutions exist which allow you to monitor the web for people. Sites like PoliticsInIreland.com track TDs and candidates and monitor the web for what is being said about them. The engine behind PoliticsInIreland can be used as a white label Web monitor for existing TDs as well as candidates. The Tracker Module of E.A.B. does something along the same lines as PoliticsInIreland but also has a manual input for non-Internet tracking which still comprises the majority of coverage, especially in local papers and local radio. The Tracker system builds a profile of a candidate which includes a timeline. Auto and manual tagging also allows you to read their views on all the policies of a party and issues the public care about. Some manual intervention is needed to point out the inconsistencies from a candidate and how their views change over time.
Radio and TV: The Tracker system records all news current affairs radio programmes on national and local radio. It does the same for news and current affairs TV shows. These are all kept for 3 months before being archived out of the system. All of these shows can be tagged manually and the timelines also can have notes attached to them. If they are tagged, they are kept in the main system and linked to the party and candidate profiles.
Papers and pamphlets: Local papers, freesheets and even pamphlets will not be in electronic form. Here volunteers will either scan in articles from or by candidates as well as their pamphlets or else they can post them off to someone else with a scanner. When scanned in using a local version of E.A.B. Tracker, the images are uploaded to a central E.A.B. server which runs character recognition software and creates an electronic text version of the articles. Again, all of these can be auto and manually tagged and are linked to the profiles.
The Tracker module and the profiles it creates is linked to the Reach module and so it will automatically send updates on candidates to each cell member. When policy inconsistencies and gaffs are spotted a special alert is sent out. The Tracker database can also be used to supply sympathetic media outlets and bloggers with “attack” information on opposition candidates.
Part 1 of the Rigging the Irish Election series is here.
Just repeating a comment I made on IrishElection.
To the first module of the system check out the research area of social network analysis, every major telecom is doing it to their data. So are half the social informatics researchers in the states who’re aiming to figure cell structure of terrorist cells.
To the second module of the system, checkout Excaliber I posted something on it around 2004 which Labour has been using in the UK since around 1995.
A more scholarly type person may be interested in “Think global, talk local: Getting the party political message across in the age of the Internet†or “Election Campaigning Online- German Party Websites in the 2002 National Elections†or “Voters in a Changing Media Environment- A Data-Based Retrospective on Consequences of Media Change in Germanyâ€.
For bloggers there is a nice article on the German elections, “Weblog Campaigning in the German Bundestag Election 2005â€.
These ideas aren’t new I know that FF and FG have been kicking them around for several years but of course if I said any more I’d have to kill you or charge you enough of a fee that it’d probably have the same effect.
Damien, how exactly is any of this rigging the election? It sounds more like campaigning.
[…] call-in shows, letters to editors and blog comments. True Voice is of course connected to the Tracker system and the Reach system. The True Voice module itself is split into various submodules which allow the […]