Rigging the Irish Election Part 4 – Embargo day
The day before an election sees a ban on election reporting and advertising in the media. This does not apply to the online world and in reality can never do so since you might be able to embargo Irish websites but not websites outside of the country. The Embargo module will be used to leak a sensational story about a competitor which can be perpetuated online but cannot be covered in print or on radio and TV. Every gaff and inconsitency from a candidate should be lined up and ready to go. One page fact sheets on the parties should will be sent out to all cell members and sympathetic bloggers which contain information on “flip flopping” and scary facts on parties. The Embargo module can suggest create draft blog posts to cell members with blogs and can be lined up from 10pm before the embargo. The module will also send automated emails and text messages out to people with details on controversial stories with the return address of the cell members. With a traditional media blackout, it means that there is no ability for a candidate to counter these claims until the morning of an election.
Advertising should be ramped up on Embargo day too since people will probably be going online that day for election information. Ads connected directly to the candidate can be released as well as ads not connected to the candidate at all. This is for ads linked to search results. However Google and the other online ad companies list which sites are part of their advertising networks and so you can line up 24hour only campaigns to start on embargo day with ads tailored to youth sites, health sites, babycare sites and so forth. These ads would concentrate on issues which will influence these audiences. Politics sites themselves should be avoided for advertising as they are full of politics junkies and their self-indulgent fantasies.
This is Part 4 of the Rigging the Irish Election series. You can also read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
The ‘moratoriam’ as it’s called, only applies to TV & Radio under BCI rules. Newspapers do tend to report as normal.
Worth noting, incidentally, that it would be relatively straightforward for Irish law to prevent advertising *by* a candidate on the last day without reference to the location or medium of advertising (the offence being the spending) – although of course, in that case, you could still use your various friends and proxy organisations and get away with it 😉
Loving the series by the way…
IrishElection & Politics.ie did some interviews and general reporting on moratorium day this year.
Cian et al from IrishElection actually went around interviewing candidates on the day and podcasting the results. Very interesting, and got up the noses of RTÉ a little.
This amounts to an electronic version version of what Bertie and Cyprian did to Mary Fitzpatrick in the general election
And what about this
“Politics sites …… are full of politics junkies and their self-indulgent fantasies.”
Christ Damien, where’s the love!?