This Article is From Aug 22, 2010

The virtual route to Australian elections

The virtual route to Australian elections
Sydney: It seems like the cyber world has captured the minds of candidates fighting elections in Australia. Elections were fought as much in the virtual world as in the real one.

The average Australian loves games, animation and the social media and this election the average Australian politician is taking the cyber route to reach out to voters.

Candidates from Labour, Liberal, and the Greens left no 'comment' unturned to please their fans and followers. Press conferences were supplemented by video-blog style clips on Facebook.

As one million Aussies tweet and nine million of them are on Facebook, it's a near cyber saturation for a population of 22 million. And this time they all turned to social media to let off the steam on election issues. Everything from engaging to enraging happened on this new found platform.

But, don't think only the young Aussies were leading the bandwagon, 66-year-old Lesley Dewar made over 12,000 followers for her 140-character political reflections.

With a new trend setting in, how could the media stay behind? They not only took notice of the trend but went a step further to capture it all through their websites.

As critics summed it up all, the Australian election this time appeared more like a race of who gets their first, than who makes it in the end.


.