#Aras25 Campaign Roundup
Over the last few months I have tried to dig out and get on the record some of the hidden and more ephemeral aspects of this election. Here is a recap of what we covered.
It is polling day! We won't get another choice for President for 7 years, so do (please) make your voice count today. The Electoral Commission has resources on voting if you have questions.
Today I'm doing a recap newsletter of the #Aras25 campaign.
But first: if you are following the count tomorrow you might see me pop up:
- đș I will be on IrelandAM (Virgin Media) tomorrow morning a little after 9am
- đ» And on RTE Radio 1 around tea time
I get these opportunities in no small part due to the lovely community of people who follow this newsletter; there are over a thousand of you now. Thank you! for following along and for giving me space to think through with you how technology is shaping Ireland. GRMA <3
Oh - and in case you missed in - in the midst of last year's General Election I wrote a 2am love letter to election count coverage, with you can find here:
Liz Carolan
Three longer form piece by me in the papers
I'd a campaign review piece in The Irish Times yesterday, highlighting the 3 moments that I thought explained how the Catherine Connolly campaign won the internet this election (TL:DR - she got influencers behind her)
Liz Carolan
And in today's Irish Examiner I break down the 4 reasons why someone might have launched a deepfake attack on the Irish Presidential election this week (including my pet theory that it was to build marketing materials for an election disruption tech vendor)
Liz Carolan
And a couple of weeks ago, when Jim Gavin dropped out and his entire online campaign was deleted overnight, I had a piece in The Irish Times that highlighted the risks inherent in relying on private tech companies for our democracy infrastructure.
Liz Carolan
Election campaign coverage on TheBriefing.ie
With our coverage I have tried to dig out and get on the record some of the darker, more ephemeral aspects of what happens in an election online, and that I think can be hard to get broader media interest in.
In this case we covered Elon Musk's early - and dangerous - intervention in the race:
Liz Carolan
I was able to cover and capture the early political ads circulating online - which have now been erased along with the political ad archives:
Liz Carolan
And I broke down the financial costs of Presidential election campaigns, going back through public records to see what happened last time around and what we might expect now:
Liz Carolan
There is also on the site a comprehensive analysis of the Fine Gael attack video:
Liz Carolan
And I went into far much detail explaining a joke from a comedy bit that to me summed up the subtle yet powerful way that the Connolly campaign owned the internet:
Liz Carolan
And we also looked at the withdrawal of political ads by Meta and Google in the midst of this campaign, including this piece with expert insight into how this might affect Irish political campaigning:
Liz Carolan
I think we will see this being part of the post-mortem if Fine Gael lose; ads are such an important part of their campaigning apparatus, and they didn't pivot in time.
The most read piece on this site was - by a very long way - when the news we broke that Google was - in addition to banning ads - erasing their political archive for the EU. That got picked up by a few US outlets, and got about 30x the normal traffic.
Liz Carolan
And there hasn't even been a vote cast yet!
Spread the word & consider chipping in
If you have enjoyed this coverage, I might ask you to spread the word - you can forward this email to someone, or link to any of the above articles or home page: TheBriefing.ie
And (I promise this is the last time I will ask for a while) - I don't really believe in subscription models for something as niche as what we do here - but it does cost money to run this newsletter, mostly because I use a privacy safe alternative to Substack.
Thank you to those who have pitched in to make this project viable.
