The growth of the iPod phenomenon and online blogging has added a new technological gleam to the 2006 sprint for Ottawa.

Some parties now offer access to their own blogs and podcasts, presumably in a bid to attract a younger generation of voters. All three major parties include television ads and speeches which can be downloaded and tossed on to your nearest iPod or portable media player.

But despite the power of these trendsetting, debt-inducing mediums, opinions on their ability to get voters to the polls are mixed.

“I think it might,” said U of T student Mojan Jianfar. “You might read up on something you didn’t think about before,” she said.

A visit to the main websites of the major federal parties shows that links to a campaign’s multimedia content are front-and-centre.

Their accessibility isn’t quite universal, however. If you want to get in on podcasts from the NDP or Conservative websites, you have to install Apple’s iTunes program or other software in order to download the subscription-based audio.

In addition to being able to hear campaign speeches made all over the country, some party websites have regularly updated blogs that follow their respective party throughout the campaign.

A list compiled at www.confeederation.ca offers access to most, if not all blogs run by the individual candidates of all five major parties.

The main Liberal party blog, maintained by Paul Martin’s speech writer, Scott Feschuk, has drawn negative attention that may explain the apparent ineffectiveness of party blogs in being able to draw in voters.

“He gives a funny ‘behind the scenes’ [account]…but he doesn’t really give any insight into the heart and soul of the campaign,” Mark Federman says, formerly the chief strategist and head of McLuhan Management Studies at the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology.

The Conservative’s campaign blog is not free from Federman’s criticisms either.

“Neither party understands that a blog is an amplification of an ordinary human being’s voice….It’s not the voice of a campaign, because a campaign isn’t a human being,” said Federman.

Currently involved with research in the area, Federman believes that party blogs, if done right, have the ability to gain support for the party by removing their inherently cold, “corporate face.”

“There’s no other way that they’re going to connect with the people, other than the very limited fashion that broadcast politics provides,” he said.

For Federman, who points to his grey hair to indicate that blogs aren’t just for the young, “it is mandatory for the leader of a political party to blog him or herself” to make a connection with the people.

There is no one else capable of conveying the heart and mind of a party other then the leader himself, or at least someone close to the campaign, according to Federman.

None of the party blogs at this point are written by the leader of the party.

As the internet, media, and politics evolves, Federman notes that party blogs are not the most important players in U.S. and Canadian politics. He cites a case in which a house majority leader in the U.S. senate was brought down after mainstream media picked up on the continuing chatter of regular bloggers.

When the results are tabulated at the end of the day on January 23, there will be at least one party leader who will have time to consider Federman’s theories.