Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Lets have some interaction then!

I have been monitoring Gordon Brown's campaign website based on my initial hopes that here was something different, something that demonstrated the listening and learning philosophy Brown has committed himself to; but I'm not really finding any indicators of real interaction.

The blog, run by Oona King (right) is a central feature and seems to get a lot of traffic. Following Brown's announcement on housing and the building of eco-towns, Oona extolled the virtues of the policy and received 29 comments in about 24 hours. The majority are serious questions that should rightly be posed. But there are no answers. Even following the post on the campaign launch, which received 51 comments, there are no comments, not even a thank you to the majority who offer their support. The only positive is that there seems to be no censorship as alongside the congratulatory is a description of Brown as a 'one man disaster area'.

But the site seems to fail to show responsiveness. Brown may well be listening and learning, but this is only demonstrated through responding. Failing to do this gives the impression that the 'so much to learn' line is rhetorical and designed to give an impression of responsiveness but containing no real substance.

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