The Dead Roo

Howard’s foray into the new media continues with a foray into the world of Yahoo! Answers.

The question is:

If given the opportunity to ask the Prime Minister one question, what would that be?

For those of you who’ve never used Yahoo! Answers before, anyone can post an answer, and people can then vote the answers “up or down” digg style. So far there have been over 800 questions.

It appears that this is part of a wider attempt by Yahoo7 to bring the election to the Yahoo community. This blog post by “Yahoo!7 Answers Team” states that:

Over the coming weeks, right up to the election, Answers will be the place to communicate with Australian politicians, from both the Government and the Opposition.

Yahoo7 are claiming that the politicians answers to the question will be posted in video form to the Yahoo7 Answers blog.

It’s unclear what level of censorship will be applied to this experiment. John Howard’s youtube page allowed anyone to comment, but involved the regular purging of all comments. The only conditions Yahoo7 impost are their standard community guidelines, but you will note that nowhere on the site does it say the PM will actually answer the highest ranked question.

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