Up Front 05/05

It started with radio, then it was television, and now the Internet and mobile phones have joined the arsenal of weapons used by politicians to reach out for our votes. Although we still see them turning up on our doorsteps or doing a ‘walkabout’ down our high streets, we’ve grown to accept that technology is playing an increasingly important role in helping them get their message across. There are already half a dozen websites with interactive questionnaires available to anyone unsure about what party to vote for. Not surprisingly most of them have a statement saying they are neither funded by, nor support any political party – not all of them are being completely honest here, but that’s no surprise either. Since a Mori poll suggests that up to 14% of voters don’t actually make up their minds on which way to vote until the last week of an election campaign – indeed 7% don’t decide until 24 hours before voting – the day to day results from questionnaires like these make interesting reading. Two of the popular voter websites are whatdoivotefor.co.uk and how2vote.co.uk. However the latest method of communicating political messages – by mobile phone text message – took an interesting turn last week. A report from a University of London psychologist suggested that too much texting could lower a user’s IQ by up to 10%. Perhaps this means that Party text alerts become even more popular because the recipients will be dumb enough to believe everything they promise.