Code Politics, Ontario Election 2007: Weekly Research for Week Ending Sept. 14, 2007

Green Party sees gains across the Web

Facebook

The Green Party of Ontario continues to show strong growth, increasing in size by 25% again this week.

This week the “Vote for MMP” Facebook group became the most popular in our election study. The group saw significant growth in membership from 1180 last week to the number one spot (1588 members this week). “Your big decision” the other MMP focused group saw the largest increase in membership from 82 members to 870 this week. Student tuition fees remains the other notable issue for Facebook groups.

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YouTube

Mainstream media attention had a dramatic impact on popularizing videos on YouTube this past week. Our research noted significant viewership increases for two videos – “John Tory Platform Costing” and “The Simpsons Dalton McGuinty” - both of which received major mainstream media coverage. The former video was posted on YouTube on July 13, 2007, this past week it received nearly 10,000 views.

John Tory

“John Tory Platform Costing” is the top video with surging numbers this week. The video has doubled in number of views from last week. The second and third most popular videos are examples of the new surveillance wars that are becoming common with new technologies. Videos criticizing Tory’s French skills and his comments about the University of Ottawa were uploaded by Liberal partisans that are following John Tory on the campaign trail.

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Dalton McGuinty

The first and second most popular videos for Dalton McGuinty are attack videos uploaded by Conservative partisans. This week is also the first time Dalton McGuinty was caught on camera engaged in a gaffe in the video “Dalton McGuinty comes out Swinging.” However John Tory’s first gaffe video, ‘Zero Respect for the University of Ottawa’ garnered significantly more attention than the McGuinty slip-up in a similar amount of time online.

Howard Hampton

While overall viewership for Hampton is very low with the most viewed video garnering only 1867 views over the past week compared with tens of thousands of views for both McGuinty and Tory. The first and second most viewed videos are an example of ‘content poaching’ with “Sticky Notes” video uploaded by the NDP being satirized in a copycat video “Sticky Notes: Forget Orange” uploaded by Liberal partisans. It will be interesting in the coming weeks to see whether or not the “Forget Orange” label sticks.

“Ontario Election” Videos

Ontario election videos include two ads from the Citizen’s Assembly focused on the referendum. Viewership for Ontario Election videos, including Citizen’s Assembly material is low compared to candidate videos. The video “Visible Minorities” is the first time we have seen local candidates viewed at this evel in our sample. The “Let Frank In” video is still the only provincial Green party video found in our sample.

John Tory

Dalton Mcguinty

Howard Hampton

Ontario Election

Daily Views for Official Party Accounts

Since September 14 official Green party campaign videos have become the most popular of all the parties, followed by a rise in viewership for the NDP.

Daily Views for Unoffical Party Accounts

Blogs

"Ontario Election" Top Issues