The Tories believe the Liberals, or their supporters, started the website www.thetruthabouttim.com, above, after they launched www.truthabouttimhudak.com.
Tanya TalagaQueen's Park Bureau
It may be all smiles for the cameras as Ontario political leaders fight their way toward the Oct. 6 election, but online the fight is nasty.
On Wednesday, the NDP launched a new website to counter social media attacks and rumours they claim are being spread by other parties.
The site, www.stopthesmears.ca, aims to dispel myths such as the NDP have a fleet of 20 orange SUVs on standby for the election and that leader Andrea Horwath is really the incarnation of Mike Harris. People are tired of whisper campaigns and negative ads, said NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo (Parkdale-High Park). She claims the NDP website will “tackle the smears” and get the facts out.
Party leaders have vowed not to wage a dirty campaign before the Oct. 6 election.
But in the social media universe, the election is running a different course. Fake people espousing partisan views have proliferated on Twitter, there are YouTube videos making fun of certain party leaders, and websites have been created by the political parties to try to make sense of it all.
The profile of @GrandmaHudak presents itself with a picture of an elderly lady in a black bathing suit getting out of a swimming pool. GrandmaHudak states she likes to swim on hot days, dry her clothes on a line and that her opinions are her own and “not those concocted by my grandson’s idiot spin doctors”.
Another fake is @FakeDonnaSkelly, a spoof on PC Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale candidate and former TV news anchor Donna Skelly. A recent tweet from this account shows how the gloves are off: “Thinking about pulling an @andreahorwath and photoshopping 20 pounds off my campaign photo.”
The Tories started www.truthabouttimhudak.com and within 24 hours they believe the Liberals, or their supporters, started up the parallel site www.thetruthabouttim.com. The later site does not advertise who created it but it notes Hudak would “cut $3 billion out of health care” and that he wants to scrap the Liberals’ Green Energy Act. “We stay focused on our positive plan to keep Ontario moving forward and don’t get distracted by the games of others,” said Christine McMillan, the Ontario Liberal Party’s vice-president of communications.
McMillan says they’ll continue to talk about their “positive plan to keep moving Ontario forward and the risky schemes of the PCs, both at the door and in our communities as well as on websites and in social media.”
However, the social media noise distracts journalists from the real news and it can confuse voters, said Greg Elmer, a Ryerson University media professor.
At its worst, social media in campaigns is a “distraction factory” trying to divert attention from positive policy announcements coming from political opponents, said Elmer.
This won’t be the first time political parties have run at least two campaigns.
There is relatively little mud-slinging on the campaign bus tour as the leaders make shiny happy proposals, he said.
The flip side to that are the online anonymous dirty campaigns. Elmer predicts as the vote gets closer, there will be a proliferation of videos, blog posts, sound files and tweets.
“Often what happens is that we are all focused on what these objects mean — is that really the person we see in the image, is that really the voice of the premier we hear in that crackling, web-based audio recording? What is often displaced is who is circulating these,” he said
