How can informative, compelling coverage of state, European and federal elections be integrated in regular radio programming? This question was tackled from a variety of angles and served as the basis for animated discussions.
Andreas Heine, editor-in-chief at Radio MK and a staff member at Hoerfunker.de, a site operated by the Federal Office for Political Education, demonstrated how home stories featuring politicians, a review of promotional gifts, a test for first-time voters, or an election comedy can serve as interesting content beyond news programming. Heine stressed the importance of systematically featuring the elections in the programming, in order to counter the trend toward declining voter turnout.
Heiko Senebald (left) and Stefan Hennewig
The examples were rounded off with a plea for the medium of radio, delivered by Stephan Offierowski, programming director for Hit-Radio Antenne Niedersachsen, and with background talks with representatives from the political sector: Heiko Senebald, press spokesman for the CDU party in Thuringia, Stefan Hennewig, Head of Internal Management at the CDU Federal Office, Kajo Wasserhövel, Federal Chairman of the SPD party, and Gregor Gysi, Chairman of the Die Linke Bundestag party. Despite their different party platforms, the politicians agreed on one major point: social media is one of the buzzwords for future election campaigns.
Platforms like Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Wer-kennt-wen have become crucial elements in campaigning, yet the parties still place much less of a priority on them than on conventional media. This was demonstrated in lectures about the parties’ online campaigning strategies given by Markus Beckedahl, Netzpolitik.org and co-founder of Newthinking Communications GmbH, and Joachim Radünz, Director of RTL Audiotainment RCB Berlin. Although all parties now sustain various types of online presence, they haven’t achieved the kind of mobilisation that Barack Obama attained in the US election campaign.
Lutz Meyer, CEO of Scholz and Friends Agenda, and Peter Matuschek, Head of Political and Social Research at Forsa, provided further food for thought. Meyer presented the EU-wide campaign on the European elections developed by his agency, while Matuschek elaborated on the instruments used in opinion and election research. He explained the factors and mood barometers that allow him to forecast who would be elected if an election were to take place next Sunday.