The Web Was Crowded and the Outcome Crazy: The German Elections Online
In a surprise announcement, the German
Bundestag (parliament) was dissolved on July 21,
2005 and the elections originally scheduled for 2006
were pushed forward to September 18, 2005. Once
Germany’s political parties were given the green light
to begin campaigning for early elections, all rushed to
launch whirlwind campaigns.
The Internet reacted to the election announcement
at the speed of light, proving itself a vital election
tool capable of keeping up with the fast pace of
Germany's election time frame. Germany's
blogosphere was soon crowded with political and
citizen blogs alike, .de domains related to the
election sprung up overnight and an abundance of
innovative election tools appeared on the Internet
scene.
Germany's elections crowded not only the Internet,
but also the Chancellor's office- with no party gaining
a majority, both incumbent Gerhard Schroeder and
his opposition Angela Merkel have "moved" into the
Chancellor's office. The German Government is left in
limbo until parties can negotiate a coalition.
1. Politician Blogs are Timidly Going Where No Politician Has Gone Before
For politicians, who are the ones behind most of the
country's political blogs, this is their first foray into
the brave new world of the Blogosphere. They are
using the Internet journals as a way of informing and
reaching out to voters.
Which parties’ politicians blog the most? A round-up
of politician blogs from Politik Digital reveals that the
Green party has 23 politicians that blog, more than
any other party. The Greens are followed by the FDP
(Free Market Democrats) with 20 blogs and then
comes the SPD (Social Democrats) with 16 politician-
bloggers. Tied for last place are the CDU
(Conservative Christian Democrats and the PDS
(Party of Democratic Socialism, the remnants of the
East German Communist party) with 8 votes each. A
study by Ausschnitt Medienbeobachtung, a media
watch dog, shows that politician blogs have not yet
been personalized. In fact, only one third of all blog
entries have developed a personal relation to the
task at hand. Instead, most entries deal with party
comparisons or the cold hard facts of a candidate’s
stance.
An exception to the impersonal political bloggers is
Social Democratic candidate Niels Annen from Hamburg. Aside from his
party's platforms, readers can learn more -- if not
all -- about Niels Annen himself. "I wouldn't include
certain things about my private life, things I don't
believe belong in the public realm," he said. "But it's
more about personal impressions, or perhaps things
that I've felt at various times. I do include them."
Every day Annen says he receives around a dozen
responses to his blog. Sometimes the remarks are
offensive, but Annen says he is pleased with most of
the comments and writes personal replies.
Many attribute the lack of politicians-turned-bloggers
to Germany’s aging and less than tech-savvy
politicians. But that is changing. One of the few
prominent politicians who -- in spite of his advanced
years -- has recognized the signs of the times is the
Liberals' Hermann Otto Solms. A few days ago he
started writing his own blog. It's taking some getting
used to, but Solms is not about to give it
up. "Through the Internet we have the opportunity
to contact thousands of people simultaneously," he
said. "There's no better medium available. And via
the Internet I meet ordinary people on a much
broader scale.”
While Politician bloggers have come a long way in
Germany, Michael Essbach of the Weblog Kuechenkabinett (Kitchen Cabinet) commented that, “While
American political parties have already refined how to
use Weblogs to their advantage in motivating voters
to get involved in campaigning, it's a skill Germany's
top-down parties have yet to pick up on.”
2. Citizen Political Blogging On the Rise
Germans who are only reading politicians’ blogs are
missing out on the full potential of blogs. Where
politician blogs have failed to network amongst
themselves, link to one another and comment on
other sites, citizen bloggers have embraced blogging
in a way closer to the American Town Hall blogging
concept.
There are around 70 citizen blogs in Germany focused
on the recent elections. Germany’s first citizen
election blog, wahlblog05.de, is an initiative for
interactive discussion with parliamentary
representatives and relevant experts.
Citizen election-oriented blogs deal with a range of
topics in many different styles. Jan Knöttig’s
stoppt-Merkel.de (Stop Merkel) site focuses on
keeping the
CDU’s chancellor candidate Angela Merkel, out of the
Chancellor's office. Carsten Dobschat didn't intend
for his private Weblog, or blog, to be dedicated to
the political realm, but as the entries in his blog's
politics category continued grow, he realized they
could sustain a blog of their own and in June the
group-blog Kamikaze-Demokratie was born,
as a blog that “doesn’t take politics too seriously."
The German media has complained that the German
election campaign did not receive the international
attention it would have liked, citing the language
barrier as a major reason. Michael Naumann launched a
short-lived English-language blog on the German
elections.
Onlookers agree that there has been an increase in
political weblogs and an increased politicization of
the blogosphere. While an established online
community of election bloggers in Germany may not
have taken hold this time, election bloggers seem
satisfied with what was accomplished in the very
short timeframe of the elections.
3. All Parties' Internet Campaign Strategies are Not Equal
The disparity between different parties’ internet
strategies is astonishing. An examination of the
leading parties’ internet strategies reveals that some
parties have focused more effort on their internet
campaigning than others.
Social Democrats (SPD)
Strategists at the Social
Democrats'
campaign
headquarters are helping Chancellor Schröder defend
his title. The SPD has an entire department
dedicated to looking after its Web presence --
around the clock. The Internet could play a decisive
role, according to Sebastian Reichel of the SPD's
campaign team, especially during such a short
election campaign. The SPD had developed an online
campaign for 2006, that was sitting in a drawer
waiting to be taken out. The campaign was designed
over a full year, and thus, had to be modified to the
brief timeframe of the early election.
The SPD has concentrated their campaign on the
party’s site www.spd.de, built
functionally and
content-rich. This site was focused on campaigning
before any other party’s site. Besides explaining their
party's platform and presenting candidates, the
Social Democrats' site tells supporters how they can
get involved, listen to podcasts, and donate to the
party online. SPD supporters scan join the rote
Wahlmannschaft (red vote team), register to
participate and be directly contacted by Email.
The SPD is the first and only party to harness the
power of the Blogosphere as an influential campaign
tool, and it has done so with Blog-portals
(roteblogs.de
and notizblogg.de)
that collect the
voices of their members and supporters.
Chancellor Schroeder also has his own site
GerhardSchroeder.de. Christoph
Bieber from the center for media and interactivity
analyzed the new website of Chancellor
Schroeder, “in this season, it’s diet chancellor,” as
the site focuses on Schroeder’s personality and
contains little political content.
And what election would be complete without some
negative campaigning? The SPD has kept their
negative online campaigning at a separate site
called “the wrong choice” at die-falsche-
wahl.de.
The Christian Democrats (CDU)
Unlike
the SPD where the internet campaign is an
integral piece of the campaign puzzle, the CDU’s
internet campaign strategy is still just a sideline to
the major campaign.
The CDU’s internet campaign focuses on one website-
www.cdu.de,
where viewers can check out
podcasts-- called iKauder, after General Secretary
Volker Kauder – a news ticker, MP3 files of Angela
Merkel explaining key elements of the party platforms
and an FAQ list. One successful online campaign
strategy for the CDU is the eVolunteer project which
has grown from 200 eVoluneetrs in 2002 to 7,000
today.
The CDU also maintains a site dedicated to negative
campaigning to counter the SPD’s called Empty
Promises at leere-versprechen.de.
According to Dr. Stefan Hennewig, leader of the
marketing and internal communication of the CDU,
some things are done solely on the internet because
of the speed in dissemination and because the short
campaign time frame made mass printings unrealistic.
Hennewig commented on online campaigning,” I
believe it is going to help us internally a great deal in
the organization and mobilization of our own people.
The effects of the internet are going to be stronger
than 2002.”
The Green Party
Since
Green Party voters are the most internet-
savvy of German voters, the Green Party invested
lots of time and effort into its internet campaign. The
Green party internet strategy focuses on content
and speed in reaching voters. The green home page
at
Gruene.de
is content-rich and action-
oriented.
Gruene-aktion.de is designed to be
fun. The users become green diplomats with their
own vote signs so they can actively participate in
the election. Like the SPD’s site dedicated to Gerhard
Schroeder, the Greens have a site dedicated to their
top-ranking party member- Joschka Fischer.
www.joschka.de.
4. Germany’s Sonderweg: Oddities and Curiosities of the German Election
The term Sonderweg (special path) is used to
describe many oddities and deviations in German
history; in this case, I am using it to evaluate unique
online aspects of the German election.
Factcheck-
Deutschland.de
Modeled on the successful American concept of
Factcheck.org,
Factcheck Deutschland is a
non-partisan place for citizens to verify comments,
promises and statements in the political realm.
Factcheck is a consumer advocate for citizens,
modeled on tips from the American counterpart
Brooks Jackson. The biggest difference between the
US and German model? The German version of
Factcheck deals heavily with one topic- money,
whereas in the United States politics and economy
are more separated.
Electofix
Another service intended to help voters make an
informed decision on election day is
Electofix.de.
The website consists of a weblog and a wiki where
politicians’ comments can be collected and verified.
Electofix is the brainchild of Tim Bonnemann, a
German native who recently moved from Germany to
Silicon Valley, "I am interested in the use of social
software as a filter to cut through all the nonsense
which you can surely expect to hear in a high-profile
election such as this one.” Tim Bonnemann will
continue his project after the election, at least until
the end of October. Political rhetoric will certainly still
incite skepticism even after the elections.
Ich-gehe-nicht-
hin.de
The web site for non-voters. The percent of German
citizens going out to vote is sinking. In the last
general elections about 13 million qualified voters or
20 percent of the eligible voters stayed home. This
site collected reasons why people did not vote and
gave them a chance to explain their absence. One
cynic claimed, “if voting was really going to change
anything, then it would be forbidden”. The project
has ended following the elections on Sunday, with
more than 100,000 entries in 2 months since the
site’s launch. Christoph Dowe, business leader at
politik digital who hosts the site said, “we hope it is
not only used but also read by those with political
responsibility.” The idea for such a proposal comes
from great Britain who in the last election organized
mysociety.org and notapathetic.com to give non-
voters in Britain a voice.
Election Season at
EBay
Some German voters are auctioning off their votes on
EBay. On September 10th there were 10 votes for
sale. The buyers and sellers of votes are not so
much in it for the money, as for a symbolic critique of
the elections. One vote seller said, “I am selling this
vote so that I at least walk away from this election
with something.” How much is a vote worth? Most of
the time, bidding starts at one Euro, but votes are
taken off the market by EBay before bidding can
really get started.
Wahl-O-Mat
With 30 percent of Germany's 61.6 million voters
undecided before election day, an online craze swept
the country - the
Vote-o-Mat.
This tool is available online and can be downloaded
to mobile phones. The Vote-o-Mat, a political quiz
designed to show voters how their opinions match up
with those of the leading parties, has been consulted
by four million people to date. The quiz allows
participants to say whether they are for, against, or
neutral on a range of policy choices, from nuclear
energy to Turkish membership in the European Union.
**The author, Laura Hammond, spent a year in
Giessen, Germany as a Fulbright scholar. Much of the
research for this report was conducted in German.
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