Design & Democracy - Massey University

29/7/14
Understand / Define / Ideate

I discovered a great article by Kieran Stowers and Meg Howie of the Design & Democracy project on the solution to youth voting.

The Design & Democracy Project of Massey University [Site]

Design & Democracy target youth voting and agree that the system is way too outdated for youth to interact and relate to let alone understand. They talked about a key point that I tried to touch on in my last post; the reason youth voting is still decreasing is that they are basically too smart for the advertising. This tech-savvy generation grew up endlessly browsing the internet and can easily spot cheap marketing ploys (such as using celebrities) and see straight to the truth, the same old "voting is good" campaign.

They talked about how youth will vote if politics is fun, even though this sounds like a technique used with small children it makes perfect sense. New Zealand politics to most young people is the exact opposite of fun.

Imagine being told: “You should go to this party I’m having; it’s your duty. Nobody your age will be there and you’re not going to understand what we’re saying.” This invitation does not appeal, even if it’s the Orange Guy himself asking. Last election, nearly half of eligible young people said “not for me thanks”, and we don’t blame them.

A huge reason for youth not voting is their group not being represented at all.

The median age of MPs in the current Parliament is 51 years. Two-thirds are male. These men have been around longer than colour TV in New Zealand. If young people can’t see themselves represented in the system, they won’t engage with it.

Another reason for the lack of youth voting is the language, politics uses so much jargon its might as well be another language to young people.

Design & Democracy used this information to develop two websites to help young people along the process:

Ask Away is a website that lets people ask politicians about things they care about and in their own language.

On The Fence is a website that lets users know which parties align most with their interests through a sort of visual questionnaire.

These websites are brilliant, they bring the ancient world of politics into the familiar world of the youth so they can start to understand and participate in what ultimately affects their future.

Rock The Vote and Forced Voting

29/7/14
Understand / Define

'Rock The Vote' promotional video on youth voting [Full site]

Rock The Vote is an American organisation using a huge range of celebrities such as Madonna and Snoop Dogg to try and appeal to young people and encourage them to register and vote. They explain that by not voting you are not being heard and how you can have a say in everything about the future of America.

They are very convincing and have been at it for almost 25 years with amazing results in regards to registering young people. Although I have to say the whole idea seems outdated, young people are smarter than that these days, they aren't going to properly get involved in voting just because Leonardo Dicaprio told them they should, they might vote but forced votes just skew the nation's true views. 

The forcing of young people to vote is as outdated as the system itself; this generation of new voters grew up in a different fast moving time with their views not properly represented anywhere. I think to truly get young people interested and involved the whole system needs to be evolved to fit in and work with this new world and this generation who will grow up to one day run the country. The stats show that "voting is good" being shoved down our throats every election obviously isn't changing the problem, youth votes are still decreasing.

Lorde on Voting

29/7/14 
Understand

A video came out a couple of days ago of Lorde encouraging people to vote. She talks about young people not being represented properly in New Zealand politics and how the answer to fixing it is through voting. Voting for someone from the usual set of people who don't represent us?

Lorde speaking in two 'pro-vote' videos for the New Zealand Electoral Commission

Lorde can't wait to vote

Week 3, Session 2

29/7/14
Understand / Critique

Today we talked about style, composition and colour and how they can reinforce/change the meaning of an image.

We gave and received some critique and carried on with our concepts.

Recent Statistic from John Key

29/7/14

Understand

I just saw this post by John Key, showing that not even two thirds of the country are happy with where the country is going. Around 1.5 million people aren't happy with the direction the government is taking the country. I thought this was particularly interesting because when you look at the stats you often see the 75% voter turnout thrown around to represent the number of supporters of the government when really it is less than two thirds.

New Pro-Vote Video from The Electoral Commission

28/7/14

Understand

A new pro-vote campaign video from The New Zealand Electoral Commission for the upcoming election. Shows an interesting perspective on voting; if you don't vote you don't care about the country, almost emotional blackmail, definitely playing with ethos. The video also mentions that everyone is equal and you should vote even if you are against it all.

Post by I vote NZ.

Week 3, Session 1

28/7/14
Understand / Critique

Today we had a small group critique session of our thumbnails to date and talked about the rhetoric examples we had found and what worked well about them.

We also talked about text and image and how a tagline can hugely affect an image, potentially changing the whole meaning. We were asked to look over our thumbnails and think about potential tag lines that could reinforce the idea.

Election Statistics

23/7/14
Understand

While looking through the Electoral Commisions website I found some voter and non-voter satisfaction statistics that show some pretty interesting things.

I also found some stats on overall participation.

I also found 

Turnout of eligible voters in % across the years [Full article]

Turnout of eligible voters from the 'General Elections 1853-2011 - Dates and Turnouts' pdf on the Electoral Commision website [Link]

As is visible from this information voter turnout in general is still decreasing with less and less newly eligible voters voting each election. It looks like rather than not wanting to vote the reason most non-voters don't vote is for pretty small reasons; couldn't make it, forgot, etc. This shows the lack of importance placed on the system, this could be either because people don't fully understand it or don't believe in it, either way the system needs to change and until it does voting is becoming less and less relevant.

Existing Visual Representations - Anti-Voting

10/8/14
Understand

Existing Visual Representations - Pro-Voting

10/8/14
Understand

Picking a Stance

22/7/14
Define

I wasn't sure which side to take in this argument but through talking about it in class and reading more about the subject I think it will be interesting to take the 'against voting' stance.

Week 2, Session 2

22/7/14
Understand / Define / Ideate

Today we talked more about rhetoric and worked on our thumbnails. I decided that my thumbnails need more work but I am going for the against voting side of the argument.

Week 2, Session 1

21/7/14
Understand

Today we talked about the different types of visual rhetoric; juxtaposition, substitution/addition, pastiche.

We also started work on creating pro and con thumbnails for our chosen topic using visual rhetoric.

Election Research

18/7/14

Understand

I found some more interesting information on the reasons why eligible (even enrolled) voters don't vote.

In 1935 around 92% of New Zealand voters turned up to vote. By 1972 it was down to 80%, and in 2002 around 72%. A large chunk of these non-voters are younger people.

In 2011 42 per cent of 18 – 24 year olds didn’t vote. Rising youth non-voting rates are cause for concern.

A bit of a shock to see how many young people don't vote [Full article]

Really highlights the main points wrong with the voting system for young people [Full article]

Week 1, Session 2

15/7/14
Understand / Define / Ideate

Today we got into groups and discussed our research to bring up angles we might not have thought of and to try and get a sense of which side we might take on the topic.

At the moment I'm not sure which side I will pick but I am thinking that a call to revolution poster could be very interesting.

Article Research

14/7/14

Understand

Some useful articles and statistics that I found. I didn't know a lot about politics before-hand so this was very interesting.

Turnout in the 2011 election was 74.21 per cent, the lowest for more than a century.

21% cited not getting round to it, forgetting or not being interested, with a further 7% not feeling it wouldn't make a difference. 

"It's interesting to see that this group [the 7%] has nearly doubled since the 2008 General Election," general social survey manager Philip Walker said. 

The survey found 42 per cent of 18-24-year-olds said they did not vote in 2011.

This information was sourced from a Stuff.co.nz article and provided some extremely interesting stats [Full article]

Even though these are American stats they still provide an interesting insight into registered non-voters [Full article]