Is this a push poll?

A push poll is a technique designed to gather the responses you want, or to persuade the 'participant' to think a certain way: a classic example was conducted a number of years ago by a certain tabloid newspaper. The question "in the light of the recent abductions of XXXXX do you think that paedophiles should be given mandatory life sentences", there are worse in politics. Some US push polls try to sell the idea that Barack Obama is in some way linked to Osama bin Laden, clearly thinking some Americans are stupid enough to take four out of five characters and the rhyming nature of the names as a link. Those examples aside that is the idea, so is this a push poll?

I argue it is, not because the question itself is loaded, and it does present the Conservative and Labour case, but this poll loaded onto the Conservative's Bebo profile, contains images that lead the reader to a conclusion. Given that many Bebo users are the young people we may expect (I stress may) to not have much political interest or knowledge, offering the message 'Do we want five more years of this' alongside the 'partly to blame' option suggests steering the reader towards the Conservative line. Currently it isn't working which perhaps indicates something about the Bebo users that engage with politics. Common sense suggests it is not solely Brown's mess but that he did not help the situation, I suggest that is a reasonably informed response and that is the majority albeit a narrow one. Is this practice ethical? Any views?

Branding and Educating

This is a wonderful example of branding which, rather than bracketing off history, is selective in presenting the Conservative leaders: "For more than two hundred years... succeeded by being on the side of progressive change". Some of the 'achievements' of recent leaders seem a little desperate, and there are some great selections and omissions that are clear to anyone with a sense of history; saying that though it is easy to remember why, for example, Eden is remembered as a bad prime minister but not what he did get right. It has been posted to their Bebo and YouTube pages, and possibly more widely. A way of educating about the brand via social networks.

The Bebo effect?

The Conservatives joined Bebo, the California based 'next generation' social networking service, just over a year ago. Interest seems to have grown according to this graph of daily page views posted to their profile. The membership seems to be predominantly young (14-24), apolitical but the party's presence is noticed at the very least. Basically it is a free, unmediated way of extending your profile and getting your message out. But also the party seem to have embraced the concept of Bebo. On the comments area of their profile there are 20 posts, seven are from the party, three of which are direct responses to previous comments or, in one case, a conversation between posters; they also have a poll so allowing a better quality level of interactivity. Perhaps this is evidence that parties are finally getting it and that is why their Bebo membership has tripled in the last month to 322, while Labour have 23 friends and their comments seem to have been taken over by the community; the similar is the case for the LibDems and they have 42 friends. Social networks like Bebo are communities of practice, organisations that try to enter them for their own benefit will have the rules imposed upon them; following the rules can make you part of the network.