She said web campaigning - blogs, websites, YouTube, Facebook - took off last election, and this time Twitter is the new player in the digital landscape.
"Twitter is the perfect medium for relationship-building because it is so personal and direct," Dr Robinson said. "National monitor it, but they don't engage, and intuitively I think that's a problem ... John Key is truly missing out by not engaging like Phil Goff. National's tweets are the most boring, the ones that say, 'I'm going to open this centre'. Nobody wants to know that."
Similarly National's blog for its MPs is mainly party propaganda, and sees little traffic compared to Labour's Red Alert site, where MPs write freely and frankly about anything from politics to sport.
Is National losing votes because of its lack of online presence?
"I doubt it," Dr Robinson says.
"We've got no evidence to show there is a connection between good Twitter use and electoral success. It's just getting the message out there and having it seen. If you're not there, which National isn't, you're noticed by your absence."
It's also hard to know if Labour is gaining votes from events like Goffchat on Twitter, when he answers direct questions from Twitter users.
Nevertheless Labour is ramping up its online presence in the coming weeks, with "Where are the jobs, John?" banners to appear on popular websites including the New Zealand Herald, Stuff, Yahoo and Scoop.
Green Party communications director Andrew Campbell said the Greens had embraced digital media because the mainstream media tended to focus on the two main parties leading up to the election.
The Greens have been the most innovative, including streaming a co-leaders' debate in its "Green Room" over the internet, and yesterday launched the Hey Kiwi campaign, aimed at young and expat voters. Visitors to the Hey Kiwi website can download a free music track by checking if they're enrolled.
This week in what the party claims is a first, it announced its policy on copyright law exclusively online through discussion site Reddit.
But the multiplier effect also means that when things go wrong, everyone sees it.
A blog from Labour's Clare Curran accused the Greens of undermining Labour, prompting furious responses over her apparent claim to have exclusive rights to votes. She later apologised, as did Labour MP Darien Fenton, who called Sir Peter Leitch (the Mad Butcher) a sycophant on her Facebook page.
Green activists were recently accused of astro-turfing - swarming websites with comments to hijack debate - and had three accounts banned from Reddit.
A moderator said the "drive-by posts pimping the Green Party are one very small step above spamming".
Green supporters were sent to the site through online alerts, but afterwards a clarification was sent to Green members.
"Absolute bottom lines: Do not spam or flood any website with many similar comments that are off-topic. Post actual arguments or your opinion, not simply 'vote for xyz!"' the clarification said.
It was the same alert system that saw Melissa Campbell, partner of former Green candidate Max Coyle, profiled for a newspaper article on families struggling to make ends meet; she was exposed for failing to disclose party links, and Mr Coyle stepped down.
National's campaign manager Steven Joyce noted the dangers of social media, but said National did not tell its MPs how to use it.
"We're very active on social media - Facebook, Twitter, YouTube - and it's definitely part of the requirement for modern campaigning. It's hard to tell [the impact] ... but you have to be present in all of them.
"I can't be critical of people that don't tweet because I don't tweet myself ... I'm quite busy on other things."
Mr Campbell notes that National has not dropped in the polls, but he believes its lack of online muscle will eventually start to bite.
"It's inevitable. It will erode their base over time. It also ignores a mechanism in which many voters are engaged. Any political party ignores that at their peril."
Online jargon
Retweeting: Picking up a message from your Twitter feed and sending it to your followers.
Goffchat: Phil Goff answering direct questions from the Twittersphere.
Astro-turfing: Swarming websites with comments to hijack the debate.
