Dear John is a new website started by a group of young Australians interested in motivating their peers to defeat Howard and the Liberal party in the 2004 elections.
The founders of the site do not belong to any political party, but are both deflated and outraged by the way Howard’s hardline conservative politics are compromising Australian society, environment and global reputation.
The site’s initiators were motivated by the significance of the youth vote in Spain, and the recent success of grassroots websites for fostering community action in the US. Given the increasing power of viral electronic campaigns to influence change overseas, it seemed that the ‘connected’ lifestyles of young Australians and the culture of forwarding witty emails could be put to good use.
The founders decided to target uncommitted voters aged between 18 and 30. The goal was to engage an often cynical or disinterested demographic in the upcoming elections. Recognising that many people have turned from being political in the traditional sense, the site’s designers set out for the website to acknowledge and accommodate this post-political climate:
‘We did not want to convert voters to discuss Politics with a capital P; we wanted to motivate young people to discuss and debate the socio-cultural issues that determine the society they live in.’
Many young voters’ disinterest in politics is related to one or all of the following three factors.
First, diminishing belief in the rhetoric of the empty sound bite: ‘All politicians sound the same.’
Second, increasing cynicism towards the power of mainstream news media to independently report politics: ‘It’s not news, it’s spin’.
Third, a sense of being overwhelmed by information overload and the responsibility to make an informed decision: ‘Don’t know where to begin or who to believe.’
Stuart Geddes, site designer and co-founder of Dear John, said: ‘In designing Dear John, our idea was to keep clear of the language of journalism or politics and avoid citing articles to back up our convictions. Instead we chose to make it personal; we would let Howard know that it was time the Australian people dumped him, it was time for a Dear John letter.’
The website has been designed, not simply to convert, but to spread its message by engaging young voters to download and forward material within their community. The site offers Dear John projects and invites people to download t-shirt transfers, badges designs, screen savers, and forward letters and animations to their friends. There is also a gallery space on the site to showcase material they have created themselves.
The website’s main goal is to inspire networked communities of young people to forward e-mails amongst their friends and begin to talk about these issues amongst their peers.
The measure of success for Dear John will be when ‘dumping John’ does not feel like a weighty political decision but an intuitive humanitarian imperative.
Since going live the website has received media interest from newpapers like the Australian and the Financial Review. And on the street – Mathan Ratinam, aged 27, talks about how ‘from the first day I wore my Howard is Naughty t-shirt I have had strangers come up and ask where I got it from. It is like the ultimate conversation starter’.