UK: Politicians fall behind in cyberspace race

London, Apr 18: Politicians are lost deep in cyberspace, struggling to reach a new generation of tech-savvy voters through blogs, social networking sites and video-sharing.

In the United States, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama used their Web sites to launch their 2008 presidential campaigns.

In France, supporters of the main presidential candidates have clashed over policy in the computer game Second Life, a virtual world that has more than 2 million users. In January, a spat between the far-right and left that featured exploding virtual pigs made a newspaper's front page.

Across the world political candidates have posted profiles on the social Web sites MySpace and Facebook, even set up offices in Second Life.

But there is a sense it is mostly one-way traffic from ''them'' to ''us'' and analysts say politicians need to expand their online ambitions towards interactivity and user-generated content.

''Governments have been very slow to do this,'' said Professor Helen Margetts, director of research at the Oxford Internet Institute, part of the University of Oxford.

''If you look at governments across the world, there is very little use of Web 2.0 applications (short-hand for the second, more interactive Internet age), very little opportunity for citizens to generate content.'' To reach an electorate bombarded with messages from the new and old media, politicians will have to make more use of online journals or blogs, and sites such as Facebook and MySpace. They also need to move into video-sharing sites and forums where ideas and policies can be challenged online.

''They haven't been very innovative,'' Margetts said, adding that old style politics of knocking on doors to recruit members and spread the word is no longer valid.

''They tend to hark back to the idea that they're going to have lots of members again and people are going to tramp the streets and persuade people. I think those days are dead.'' And if politicians don't show the way forward, others will.

The row this month over World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz's pay rise and promotion for his girlfriend triggered the revival of Web site www.worldbankpresident.org to air speculation of possible successors, even though Wolfowitz had not quit.

'Talking To The Kids'

This month, British Prime Minister Tony Blair appeared on YouTube to launch his ruling Labour Party's ''Labourvision'' campaign to allow ministers to speak directly to voters.

Many applauded it as a valiant attempt to find a new way to publicise and debate government policy. But critics derided it as a ''cheap stunt'' that stuck out like a sore thumb among the usual clips of pop music, dancing dogs and computer games.

Reuters