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Julie and the cybermums: marketing and women voters in the UK 2010 General Election
journal contribution
posted on 2013-10-28, 13:51 authored by Emily Harmer, Dominic WringDominic WringCertain groups of female voters have long been recognised as potentially vital to
deciding the outcome of elections. This paper explores and compares efforts made by the
British Conservatives to focus on addressing the concerns of mothers with children. The
party made a significant attempt to cultivate this kind of woman during the 2010 campaign
through the use of a lay person, Julie, whose personal testimony and image was central to this
effort. Here comparisons are drawn with the intriguingly similar figure of Sylvia used by the
Conservatives 40 years before. Discussion also focuses on another important gendered
aspect of the election relating to the growth of new social media platforms and, more
especially, how they are represented through the still important medium of agenda-setting
newspapers to promote certain perspectives that can be highly partisan in their selectivity if
not their intent.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies
Citation
HARMER, E. and WRING, D., 2013. Julie and the cybermums: marketing and women voters in the UK 2010 General Election. Journal of Political Marketing, 12 (2-3), pp. 262 - 273Publisher
© Taylor and FrancisVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publication date
2013Notes
This article was published in the serial Journal of Political Marketing [© Taylor and Francis]. The definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15377857.2013.781472ISSN
1537-7857eISSN
1537-7865Publisher version
Language
- en