Jen Porter is a founding shareholder of Trade Mobile Limited (NZ & UK) which owns and operates www.trade-mobile.com and www.voeveo.com. Jen is responsible for the group’s investment strategy and establishing new business relationships offshore. Prior to Trade Mobile, Jen worked as a communications specialist and in the course of this work, traveled frequently to the United States, Middle East, Asia and the United Kingdom on behalf of her clients. Subsequently she was contracted by national and international consultancies to manage public relations and marketing communication assignments in commercial and political sectors. In the lead-up to the 2005 general election, and as part of her PhD dissertation, she worked with several Ministers and strategic advisers. She has a Master of International Relations and is currently completing her Doctorate at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

The main thrust of this thesis is about political election campaign discourse and about the rhetorical strategies used by politicians to construct social reality in a liberal democracy. It is about the extent to which language generates certain agreements about political action which, in turn, have the potential to shape opinion and create a certain type of society. It is about how politicians, in the lead-up to elections, use rhetorical argument to underscore their political beliefs, and why they do this. In short, it is about the rhetorical electioneering methods politicians employ to persuade the public to their way of thinking, and how their words translate into votes