Election Campaigns in Canada

 Election Campaigns in Canada

Short Essay Assignment: Reading Political Party Websites


What the assignment involves
Students will examine the official website of one of Canada’s national political parties – Conservatives,
Liberals, NDP, Bloc, or Greens – and prepare a 5-7 page paper outlining what they think will be the key
issues and political strategies that the party will campaign on, whenever the election may be called.
Anything appearing on the website can be used as evidence to make the case about what the party may
do in a coming election and why.
The assignment objectives:
(a) identify the audience(s) that the party is trying to reach with their different messages, appeals, and
policies;
(b) analyse the strategies (rhetorical and visual) the party is using to appeal to them i.e. note how the
issues connect with the audiences the party is going after;
(c) assess whether and how the strategies may or may not work.
Reading between the lines: how to critically assess what parties put on their websites
The ‘reading’ of the content on a party website should be critical not in the sense of being for or against
any particular political party’s goals but in not simply accepting what the messages say at face value.
Students must unpack the meaning of the messages in terms of both direct and indirect appeals. Direct
appeals speak to a clearly named group and their objectives (e.g. auto plant workers wanting to avoid
layoffs). Indirect appeals operate at the level of values, emotions, and beliefs and then seek to connect
an audience that holds them to a particular party policy (e.g. care of the environment with a carbon tax).
Some website content is about what the party itself proposes to do while other content criticizes
opponents or says what they should be doing. Specific policy promises and criticisms of other parties
both tell us something about what a party might do in an actual election.
The form the essay should take
After reading a party website, students should be able to produce a descriptive and interpretive essay
that clearly situates where the chosen party sits in the political system in terms of its general values, who
it sees as its main competitors, and how it is trying to appeal them in the coming election. Students
should link their claims about what they think their party will campaign on to specific material on the
party website.
Evaluating the assignment
The assignment will be assessed in terms of how effectively students have analysed what the website
content tell us about their party and how well they have stated and supported said claims. It will be
important to clearly link claims about the parties – their audience(s), political strategies, techniques of
persuasion, etc. – directly to specific content as well explain how and why the content supports any
given interpretation.