Claims that the recent Australian Federal election was the "YouTube election" or an ‘e-election' are greatly exaggerated.

There was a lot of hype about how Web 2.0 technologies allegedly influenced the last Federal Election. However, research shows that much of the claimed impact of YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, blogs and other ‘new' media remains questionable at this stage. 

From July through to November as the election campaign rolled out traditional print and television media were awash with claims that wikis, blogs, vlogs as well as websites like Facebook, and YouTube were changing the way we deal with our politicians, and the way they deal with us.

A study carried out by the Australian Centre for Public Communication at the University of Technology Sydney found that most Web 2.0 type applications used by politicians and political parties failed to take advantage of the interactive ‘conversation'  features this technology provides.