Our friends in Norway have set up a nice Norwegian blog buzz monitor connected to their upcoming elections. After Anders blog which generated a lot of conversations around the French election and the often discussed press release on the Belgian election it seems to be an area that does interest a lot of people. I am very curious to see what predictive aspects come from the monitoring.
From my point of view the insights generated by buzz monitoring for elections will be increasingly part of the monitoring mix for politicians. In the US much of the 2008 canvassing is already happening in social networks, (e.g. YouTube) and it makes sense that a well executed campaign in the networks will be able to help gain visibility and even credibility. Politicians will monitor how this is progressing. What is not clear is if people would actually change their mind on who to vote for by reading a blog post or forum article. It may have more success for now in mobilising people to vote or bring local issues to people’s attention. I believe this is an area that warrants further analysis…