Israeli Political Parties Jumping on the Online Campaign Bandwagon
It did not take long for the Israeli political parties to learn from the successes of online campaigning in the US and they have started incorporating ideas and strategists into their general election campaign when ballots will be cast in February 2009.
“We intend to wage a massive campaign on the Internet, and we see the social networking sites and blogs as a serious tool that we intend to use widely,”
Meretz campaign headquarters chair MK Avshalom Vilan
Haaretz Article from today [by Roni Singer-Heruti and Mazal Mualem]:
“The campaign for the upcoming Knesset election is moving online, as parties set aside major chunks of their campaign budgets for Web development and look to Barack Obama’s successful model.
Meretz has even recruited two of Obama’s leading campaign consultants, David Fenton and Tom Mazzei, who arrived in Israel last week.
Fenton and Mazzei “came to Israel at our invitation to advise us on this matter. We intend to wage a massive campaign on the Internet, and we see the social networking sites and blogs as a serious tool that we intend to use widely,” said Meretz campaign headquarters chair MK Avshalom Vilan. The party is considering using most of its campaign budget online.
Likud is also investing major resources online - 50 percent of its budget will go to developing two Web sites, in Hebrew and in Russian. The Russian site will be launched on Thursday. Each Web site will have 10 paid employees.
About one-third of Kadima’s budget is earmarked for an online campaign, which is being coordinated by strategist Eyal Arad. Kadima will also be launching a site in Russian. The party employs 20 people to maintain its Web site.” Continue…
