Euro Election candidates and the internet
So, how are the European election candidates presenting themselves online? Lets have a peek.
Dr. Alaxander Stafford, while claiming to be an independent, is clearly of Fine Gael persuasion. His links page links to both Fine Gael and Young Fine Gael, but to no other political party. There is also a link to the EPP European Party, which Fine Gael is a member of. The only local radio station in his links page is Cork’s 96FM, which is bad form when you remember that he is from Limerick. No mention of the Limerick Leader, Limerick Post, Limerick Independent, or Live 95FM.
His campaign page is blank, and his website hasn’t been updated since April 24th.
Stafford has coughed up his hard earned cash for a MiCandidate profile, and has uploaded four photographs, which is quite wasteful considering he has the same photographs on his own website. There is no evidence as yet of a twitter account and the “blog” on MiCandidate has not been used
There was also no evidence of a social networking page, such as Bebo or MySpace.
Ned O’Keeffe does not appear to have made any effort to develop an online presence. Apart from his profile on the Fianna Fail website, there does not appear to be any effort on his part to engage with the public online.
Dan Boyle of the Green Party has his own website, complete with blog. However, it does not appear one can submit comments to the blog. He does have a twitter account however, and does engage with members of the public through this as well as the usual e-mail. The Green Party have an arrangement with MiCandidate.eu which means that all Green candidates have MiCandidate Pro accounts.
Sean Kelly of Fine Gael seems to have settled in well to the online world. His website includes a blog, which members of the public can indeed comment. Whilst he is following 232 people on Twitter, he does not seem to reply to anyone, there are no @username comments that I can find on the first few pages of his tweets. Kelly can also be found on Facebook.
Alan Kelly of the labour party is also fairly adept with the internet. It was alleged that he even “rented” certain Google adwords in order to capitalise on the hype surrounding the AMAS funded IdeasCampaign in March. Senator Kelly’s website has a blog, however, there is no facility for comments. He lets the side down when it comes to user interactivity online. There does not appear to be a link to a twitter or social networking profile on his website.
Colm Burke, Fine Gael MEP seems to be “down with it” with profiles all over the net. While there does not appear to be a blog linked from his website, he does have prominent links to his Facebook, Twitter, Bebo and YouTube profiles. With one video since September,the ol’ YouTube Channel doesn’t look promising.
Brian Crowley: The first thing that caught my eye was the lousy colours on the navigation bar of his website. White text on a light background doesn’t make things easy for someone with a visual impairment. As websites go, it’s pretty boring. I found no references to user interaction via blog, twitter or social networking sites.
Kathy Synnott has a website, which, unfortunately does not include a blog. If she has one, she should link to it from her website.
Toireasa Ferris has a snazzy new website. There are however, certain accessibility issues I would have. Most notably, like Fine Gael’s Sean Kelly, the first thing you are hit with is a macromedia flash file (the animated bit) which can play havoc with screen magnification software, and the press archive at the bottom are text in the form of PNG images, which screen readers cannot read without alt text included in the HTML code, which, in this case it is not. She does have a blog however. Unfortunately, as in a number of others, visitor comments are not permitted on the blog.