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Emily Harmer
Emily
Harmer
Dominic Wring
Dominic
Wring
Julie and the cybermums: marketing and women voters in the UK 2010 General Election
Loughborough University
2013
Campaigning
New media
Targeting
Voters
Women
Language, Communication and Culture not elsewhere classified
Studies in Human Society not elsewhere classified
2013-10-28 13:51:50
Journal contribution
https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/Julie_and_the_cybermums_marketing_and_women_voters_in_the_UK_2010_General_Election/9473435
Certain 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.