Is Twitter the New Face of Diplomacy?

Posted by Casey@SMS on Sep 1st, 2010 | no comments

The world was shocked when it was released that North Korea joined Twitter. In a land where censorship is nothing out of the ordinary, joining a social network like Twitter seemed like an unlikely move.  The official Twitter account, @uriminzok has a surprising 10,000 followers but it doesn’t follow a single other account. With quick help from Google Translate, the Twitter feed can be roughly translated to English but this provides little help in understanding many of the tweets.  Why join a social network if one does not intend to be social?

Despite a lack of interaction via Twitter, US State Department Spokesman Phillip J. Crowley has made numerous attempts to create a dialog between the US and North Korea with pointed tweets and hashtags of #Korea. He has even gone so far as to specifically reference the country’s censorship on public communication saying, “The North Korean government has joined Twitter, but is it prepared to allow its citizens to be connected as well?”  Crowley is referencing a known penchant for the North Korean government for censoring media. It is believed that despite the government’s involvement in social media, the people of the country are actually unable to view such content. This paradoxical situation seems quite unfair to most of the world.

Twitter is not the only social media outlet North Korea is engaging in. They are also found on Facebook and YouTube. Is this a new form of diplomacy or just a new way to fight back at accusations? North Korea has yet to respond directly to any tweets or posts, yet they continue to tweet and post their own content which includes making accusations and harsh comments towards both South Korea and the United States. Social media could be just a way to progress their political agenda instead of communicate with the outside world. Until a response is given however, why not continue trying to reach out using social media as the new form of diplomacy?

UK follows in Obama campaign’s footsteps

Posted by wsewell on Mar 25th, 2010 | no comments

BusinessWeek discusses how UK politicans are taking a note from Obama’s 2008 campaign.

March 25 (Bloomberg) — Gordon Brown and David Cameron’s campaigns are taking a leaf out of Barack Obama’s book.

With the U.K. election, which must be held by June 6, likely to be the closest since 1974, strategists for Prime Minister Brown and Conservative leader Cameron are trying to use social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and Google Inc.’s YouTube as effectively as U.S. President Obama did in his 2008 presidential campaign.

“For the first time in a while the campaign actually matters, therefore the media matters,” said Charlie Beckett, the director of the London School of Economics’ Polis research center. “Activists and media people look at Twitter.”

Although U.K. campaign rules make a large-scale import of the U.S. model difficult, the two parties are seeking to reach voters in new ways, including using online networking tools that were largely credited for Obama’s organizational and fundraising success.

On Facebook and Twitter, the parties link to videos, speeches and online petitions. The Conservatives outstrip the Labour Party in Facebook popularity, with 25,096 fans on the site, which links to videos on YouTube and photographs on Flickr. The Labour Party has 7,728 fans on the site, which offers wall posters, including a spoof of George Osborne, a spokesman for the Conservatives, entitled “Boy George.”

Both parties have applications for Apple Inc.’s iPhone, with the Conservative app carrying a guide on policies, a “simple mechanism for donating,” and automatic Twitter updates. The Labour app has a calendar of events and access to a “virtual phone bank” for canvassing.

Campaign Groups

“We see an incredible success level in being able to spread our message virally,” said Craig Elder, an online communities editor for the Conservatives.

Cameron’s campaign managers have hired eight people to work on the party’s digital output, compared with four at Labour. The Conservatives offer users “widget” applications for download, including one that calculates an individual’s share of the national debt.

Elder helped set up the Web site myconservatives.com, a network to organize activists based on Obama’s campaigning Web site. Local campaign groups are focused on electing specific candidates, while national ones include those opposing a third runway at Heathrow Airport or countering Labour’s plan for identification cards. About 300 groups are “moving their offline organization online,” he said.

U.S. vs U.K.

A poll for the Sun newspaper by YouGov Plc completed on March 22 put support for Cameron’s party at 36 percent and Labour at 32 percent, leaving Britain facing the possibility of its first minority government since 1974. The sample size and the margin of error in the poll were not provided.

U.K. political rules limit party spending in an election year to about 19 million pounds ($28.6 million), capping U.S.- style fundraising efforts, the LSE’s Beckett said.

“We just don’t have the same system in the U.K. of grassroots fundraising,” he said.

Social media sites are better at organizing and motivating existing backers than winning new support, strategists said.

“At the very fringe of interaction in the digital space social media tools win votes,” said Joe Rospars, Obama’s former social media chief and a founder of Blue State Digital, a campaign consulting firm in Washington. “However, the bang for your buck is serving an underserved audience, your supporters.”

During the U.K. budget announcement yesterday, over 11,000 related Twitter messages were sent, more than two every second, as Chancellor Alistair Darling spoke to lawmakers, according to the Tweetminster blog, which monitors political messages.

Social Media Campaigning

In the European elections last year, the Conservative Party got supporters to donate their Facebook status, allowing organizers to send out campaign messages to friends.

Similar approaches were used by the Obama campaign. Its Web site registered 20,000 volunteer groups with 2 million members by the time Obama was elected. Supporters watched 14 million hours of YouTube video and raised over $8 million online, by the campaign’s calculation.

One aspect of the U.S. system will emerge in the U.K. for the first time this year. Three televised debates between Brown, Cameron, and the Liberal Democrats’ Nick Clegg will be aired after pressure from broadcasters.

“You might find they will be terribly dull as they try not to make a gaffe,” said Kerry McCarthy, a Labour lawmaker who sends more Twitter messages than any member of parliament.

Even so, they will be “really important,” she said. “I would like to organize a tweet up, where everyone watches it up on the screen.”

YouTube Moments

The strategists are well aware of the dangers of putting candidates on camera. In the 2006 Virginia senatorial campaign, Republican candidate George Allen lost his election bid after a YouTube video showed him speaking to an opponent’s staffer using racially charged language.

In the U.K., candidates have found that the Internet can quickly be turned into a weapon.

A campaign Web site recently set up by the Conservatives to highlight Labour’s link to the Unite union in the British Airways Plc strike backfired when its Twitter feed was hacked, redirecting visitors to the Labour Web site.

Also, after a widely viewed poster of Cameron was found to have been airbrushed, a spoof poster Web site called mydavidcameron.com allowed users to create their own parodies of Tory advertising. One poster showed the Eton College and Oxford University-educated Cameron saying, “Some of my best friends are poor.”

“The defining moment of this election online will most likely be a YouTube moment,” the Conservatives’ Elder said. “The most watched video, the most impactful video at the election is going to be the one that the candidate wished was never made.”

–Editors: Vidya Root, Simon Thiel.

Which world leaders are using Twitter?

Posted by wsewell on Mar 18th, 2010 | no comments

A new study called “Real Leaders Tweet” found 15 percent of the world’s countries, or 24 of 163, have government leaders on Twitter.    Approximately 84 percent of those countries are democratic and stable.  The study also noted that countries facing political instability are likely to view social media as a threat.

Huffington Post highlighted 15 world leaders using Twitter.  They are:

Latvia Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis – 1,700 followers

Philippines President Gloria Arroyo – 2,400 followers

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – 2,800 followers

Denmark Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen – 5,000 followers

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key – 8,000 followers

Malaysia Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak – 12,000 followers

Norway Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg – 15,000 followers

Canada Prime Minister Stephen Harper – 48,000 followers

Chile President Sebastian Pinera – 74,000 followers

UAE Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammad Al Maktoum – 330,000 followers

Japan Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama – 403,000 followers

Australia Prime Minister Kevin Rudd – 918,000 followers

Jordan Queen Rania Al Abdullah – 1.2 million followers

U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown – 1.7 million followers

U.S. President Barack Obama – 3.4 million followers

Twitter rumor & fake account hit Australian politics

Posted by wsewell on Mar 15th, 2010 | no comments

A recent social media hoax in Australia sent a controversial rumor around Twitter.  The incident (described below) makes two things evident:

1.  If you don’t claim your own social media space as a public figure, someone else will.

Create an official account.  Even if it only features brief news updates, an official account lets the public and media know what messages come from you and which are ugly rumors.  Stop misinformation before it spreads.

2.  Create a social media strategy.

The article below points out using social media for the sake of using social media doesn’t proactively help you.  While the first tip here deal with risk management, real benefits are seen when social media is used with purpose.

Either way, your voters are there.  The media is there.  At a minimum, you need to be there too.

One evening, a couple of weeks ago, the Twittersphere went into a frenzy as the following 82 characters appeared on computer and iPhone screens across the country:

Mr Rudd needs to rule out US-style death panels from his health care “reform” plan

The Twitterer responsible for the tweet was @BronwynBishopMP, a user whose profile features an official photograph of Ms Bishop and a comprehensive archive of serious, sober tweets related to her portfolio. The user’s 500+ followers (this writer included) had until that point not doubted for a moment that @BronwynBishopMP was the real deal; the account bore none of the classic hallmarks of other Twitter fakes such as comedy avatars or sarcastic tweets.

“Death panels!” screamed Twitter in response to those 82 characters, gobsmacked (but not entirely surprised) that an opposition MP in Australia had pulled out the strawman defence used by opponents of proposed US healthcare reforms. It was a beautiful moment for the online political discussion community which loves nothing more than a bit of madness in their political thrust and parry.

For the next thirty minutes mainstream journalists with Twitter accounts flailed about, desperately seeking proof or otherwise that the account was genuine, fingers hovering over the publish button on hastily-written death panel articles; the phone lines were apparently jammed at Bronwyn Bishop’s Canberra office. Eventually, journalist Lyndal Curtis got through to Bishop’s staff and announced to a breathless online network that @BronwynBishopMP was indeed fake – the real BB does not possess a Twitter account.

Looking back through the fake’s archives there is only one small clue that points towards impersonation, probably laid quite purposefully by the extremely patient faker:

One of the first issues I want to pursue is one that gets little media attention – the problem of identity theft amongst senior Australians

Overall it’s pretty nice work, you gotta admit.

It’s only one small and isolated incident, but a handy pointer to this year’s likely political and social media epicentre. Twitter looks like being the hot social media tool of the 2010 federal election, picking up where YouTube left off in 2007. In the first half of that year, as the election approached, every serving or prospective politician signed up an account, proudly displayed a YouTube graphic on their websites, and did … something. Social media efforts back then ranged from stiff and sickening videos from Prime ministerial incumbent John Howard and challenger Kevin Rudd, to some truly bizarre efforts from obscure Senate hopefuls such as Stewart “hammer the screw” Glass.

But it’s highly doubtful that any of the enthusiastic YouTube stuff swung more than a handful of votes, if it swung a single vote at all. If anything, electioneering YouTube videos did nothing more than provide fodder for journalists looking for something to report and rusted-on political bloggers looking for something to take the piss out of. When social media is used for its own sake there is unlikely to be any real benefit for the user.

Coming back to the future, it’s also highly doubtful that the class of 2010’s Twitter efforts will be any more successful at changing votes. While social media – if used cleverly – is probably an effective medium for organising and mobilising existing support, its effectiveness in influencing support is less clear.

Unfortunately, at this time there’s no real way of making assessments about social media’s impact on political outcomes beyond broad, anecdotal observations. Political analyst Possum Comitatus says the impact probably won’t be properly measurable until after this year’s poll because social media didn’t hit a critical mass of users until about 2008. But based on social media’s larger role in American politics, Possum reckons it so far seems to have potential in the areas of small donor fundraising and debunking of myths propagated by political opponents. At the most recent Presidential election, social media “definitely succeeded in the first,” says Possum, while efforts at debunking myths were “pretty much a dismal failure.”

Back here in Australia we are starting to see a preview of how Twitter might be used in the lead up to this year’s federal election. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is a reasonably prolific tweeter who (between he and his team) pumps out a steady stream of carefully-crafted on-message units of spin, interrupted very occasionally by an insight into the Rudd family’s cinema preferences. Opposition leader Tony Abbott maintains a Twitter account (as does his penis, strangely enough), although his tweets are sparse and tentative. There are a few dozen other politicians active on Twitter but, by-and-large, their efforts are fairly dry and uninspiring.

It’s a bit of a shame, really, because through Twitter a politician has a chance to communicate directly with their supporters and potential supporters, transmitting their message while revealing a little bit of the human personality behind the grey exterior that often dominates their public image. This, combined with the interactivity built into the core of social media, can maximise the connection voters might feel with politicians and possibly influence votes. But just like in 2007, simply putting a Twitter badge on your website and making a few cursory and unidirectional efforts at using the tool will result in precisely zero impact on your electoral prospects.

We’ll have to wait and see how it all pans out, of course, but in the meantime we simply must give a special mention to Victorian state opposition leader Ted Baillieu who last week went above and beyond the call of political duty, taking time out from electioneering to give storm and building advice to the Twitterers of Melbourne:

With extreme and heavy rainfalls on unattended construction sites over 2-3 days, exposed foundations may need extra attention and repair

Good on ya, Ted.

Lessons from Dutch politics

Posted by wsewell on Mar 2nd, 2010 | no comments

The Dutch do it differently when it comes to political campaigns.  They’re using social media to promote rapping politicians and to hope sex really does sell.   This article helps you learn from their mistakes.

Social media are becoming more and more important in election campaigns, although only a very small percentage of the electorate actually reads, watches or hears what their political frontmen and frontwomen have to say on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or their blogs.

With only a few days to go before Wednesday’s local elections in the Netherlands, Dutch politicians are putting in their final efforts to win the support of their prospective voters. In the old days, local candidates simply handed out flyers while canvassing in the streets of their municipality, but these days, modern social media have taken the place of the oldfashioned flyer or placard.

Succesful
If you want to be a successful politician, you should at least have a Twitter account, a Facebook page, a Flickr photostream or a YouTube video page. The occasional posting on a website or a blog simply won’t do anymore — or so it seems.

Only a handful
According to a report by Dutch research bureau Berenschot, almost half of the Dutch local parties are using Twitter, YouTube, Hyves (the Dutch equivalent of Facebook) and LinkedIn for this year’s  campaign. But only a handful of voters are actually following them. Berenschot says only four percent of the voters regularly read or watch tweets, videos, blogs or a picture posted on Flickr.

The average local political party only has two to five Twitter or Hyves followers out of every 10,000 inhabitants of the municipality they represent.

‘Talk to them’
So if these figures are so low, do local politicians actually benefit from their social media efforts? Marc Hesp, a local councillor for the conservative VVD party in the north of the Netherlands, says most politicians don’t get it: “We don’t call it social media for nothing”, he says. “It means you have to interact with your readers and listeners. Simply telling them who to vote for is not enough. You have to talk with them, listen to them”.

Mr Hesp should know, as he is nominated for the “Best Local Web Politician of the Year” award, which will be announced on Monday. He currently has 55 fans on Facebook, 628 followers on Twitter and a blog which he updates almost daily.

But sometimes politicians simply get it all wrong.

Campaign song
The PvdA (Labour) party in Kampen, for instance, produced a YouTube clip in which they made an attempt to sing an uplifting campaign song. The local party quickly withdrew the video once popular Dutch guerrilla-style blog GeenStijl mocked the video. You can still see the video on the GeenStijl-website.

Another local politician who displayed her singing talents – or lack thereof – in a YouTube video is VVD (Conservative) candidate Sabine Koebrugge from the northern city of Groningen. In the video, she raps her way through political topics like student housing and the local economy:

A group of female councillors from the southern city of Roermond produced a web video calling for more women to vote. Their message is: “Nobody can stop us now”, but one of the comments on their YouTube page simply read: “Now I know I’ll definitely vote for a man”. Nevertheless, the video has already attracted over 31,000 viewers:

The VVD in Enschede chose a different approach to get their message across – by using a model and the age old message that sex sells. Well, the video doesn’t contain any sex, but watch out for the model taking off her winter coat. Click here to watch their video.

In the nude
Local party Student058 from Leeuwarden went a little bit further and put up election posters displaying their leader Michel Hania in the nude, with only a glass of beer hiding his private parts. “Our slogan is ‘Nothing more, nothing less’”, Mr Hania said. “And this is what we are, this is what you get. Back to the basics of life and politics”. You can see the poster here.

Ashton Kutcher… in Russia

Posted by PoliticalCampaigns on Feb 24th, 2010 | no comments

Actor and web savvy actist Ashton Kutcher is stirring things up in Russia.  He says he will “crowd source” questions about The Kremlin’s push to develop a Russian Silicon Valley to his 4.5 Twitter fans.  Kutcher has become a very active part of the US delegation of technology and social media team in recent months and is one of the leaders that arrived in Moscow as part of the White House efforts to improve Russia. 

The actor has goals to “translate the Russian voice to an American audience” to help Russia build its own high tech center.  The Kremlin is in agreement and would like to develop a Russia’s own Silicon Valley to help modernize their struggling economy that depends mainly on energy exports. 

The US delegation strongly urged the Russian government, businessmen and students to use social media to tackle problems like human trafficking and corruption.

I remember when Ashton Kutcher’s show Punk’d came out and no one took him seriously, and now he is travelling to Russia with the Whitehouse to help a struggling government.  We all have to grow up sometimes I guess.  But in all seriousness, I love what Ashton Kutcher is doing, he is a man who understands the power of social media and technology and is using his knowledge, experience and popularity to really make a difference.

Twitter & Politics in the UK

Posted by wsewell on Feb 15th, 2010 | 2 comments

The BBC was mandated to use social media not long ago, and now the UK’s politicians are debating if they should jump aboard the social media bandwagon.  Here’s an article on Twitter, Politicians, and the UK:

Somebody will put their foot in it.

Opinion may be divided about how much influence YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the social media phenomenon will have on this year’s general election.

Sites like YouTube have become huge since the 2005 election

But there is one thing all the experts can agree on.

Some hapless candidate will say or do something which will make them an instant, if unwitting, internet star – bringing instant shame and embarrassment to their party.

“Candidates are going to have to be on their guard all the time,” says Tim Montgomerie of Tory-supporting blog ConservativeHome.

Social media was in its infancy at the 2005 general election – now it is everywhere and the consequences for politicians are only just beginning to sink in.

‘Too many tweets’

With so many camera and Twitter-enabled phones in circulation no political meeting can ever be considered private again, argues Mr Montgomerie.

“Everything you say could potentially be recorded. You are being watched all the time and you have to be careful what you say,” says Tim Montgomerie.

I think Cameron would be good at it. It’ll be a great medium for communicating in a warm, direct way Tim Montgomerie, Conservative Home ‘More than 100′ MPs using Twitter

Even when they are relaxing after a hard day’s campaigning, election candidates can not be sure that the person fiddling with their phone at the next pub table is not Tweeting their every word.

But the benefits of social media for politicians on the campaign trail far outweigh the risk of making a gaffe, argues Tim Montgomerie.

Twitter, in particular, offers them a chance to get their message across to voters in a more relaxed, intimate way than was previously possible.

Tim Montgomerie has been urging Conservative leader David Cameron to overcome his wariness about the micro-blogging site, which allows users to post updates on their day in 140 characters or less.

“I think Cameron would be good at it. It’ll be a great medium for communicating in a warm, direct way,” he wrote in a recent blog.

‘Great medium’

But his pleas seem destined to fall on deaf ears. Mr Cameron made his views on Twitter plain last year, when he told a startled radio presenter he believed “too many tweets make a twat”.

If nothing else, the incident proved that you don’t need to be on Twitter to put your foot in it.

But with the opinion polls narrowing the Conservatives cannot afford any slip-ups.

Whatever I write on Twitter now I have to just assume the Daily Mail will read it Tom Harris, Labour MP

The party is encouraging candidates to use Twitter and other social media websites – but party managers have also been accused of attempting to vet their online utterances, after an e-mail to candidates was leaked to the press which said “electronic publications such as websites, blogs and Twitter have to be approved before they are posted”.

The Conservatives say it would not be practical to vet everything that their 650 general election candidates say online and they were merely seeking to remind them to stick to party policy.

What worries Tim Montgomerie and other Tory supporters is that many more Labour MPs than Conservatives are active on Twitter.

Recent research by Tweetminster found that of 111 MPs tweeting, 65 were Labour, 23 were Liberal Democrats and 16 were Conservatives.

Gordon Brown does not have a Twitter account but his wife Sarah is a something of a Twitter phenomenon, with more than a million followers.

‘Chaos’

Of the big three party leaders, only the Lib Dem’s Nick Clegg has used Twitter to hold debates with voters and announce policies. Mr Clegg also boasts of having the maximum number of friends on Facebook.

But does any of this matter to voters?

Labour MP Tom Harris, one of the most prolific and widely-read political bloggers and Tweeters, believes most of the electorate will not even notice social media and it will have little, if any, impact on voting intention.

Gordon Brown’s early forays on YouTube were not judged a success

He believes the main impact of Twitter will be as a source of stories for the mainstream media – something he has bitter experience of, when comments he made about an “‘army of teenage mothers living off the state” were picked up by the newspapers.

“Whatever I write on Twitter now I have to just assume the Daily Mail will read it,” he says.

The other effect of social media on the general election campaign – and this is something most of the pundits seem to agree on – is that it will speed everything up.

“It will add to the general sense of chaos,” says Tom Harris.

Instead of worrying about the main TV news bulletins, party managers will now have to keep across literally thousands of media sources.

But far from loosening their grip on the political agenda, Mr Harris believes the internet has given the parties more control.

“If the parties want to respond or attack, they can now do it instantly. A lot more of the power to move the agenda is back with the parties,” says the Glasgow South MP.

Cameron spoof

And he is scathing about the ability of the big political blogs, a handful of which probably wield as much influence as newspapers in shaping the political agenda, to keep the spin doctors in check.

“There will be a huge push by all the like-minded bloggers, both left and right, to promote their own party’s agenda. I think you are going to get quite a lot of discipline,” he says.

Perhaps. But Mr Harris may be underestimating the ability of the internet to subvert party messages and take them off in unexpected directions.

One of the biggest hits on Twitter in recent weeks has been the myDavidCameron site, which allows people to come up with their own, spoof versions of the Tory leader’s recent “airbrushed” election poster.

More than 70,000 have had a go. With money tight for Labour at this general election, this kind of “viral” effort could prove crucial to the party.

But the biggest impact of social media may be at a local level – and this is where much of the parties’ efforts are being concentrated.

‘Creativity’

It is thought Conservative candidates are being encouraged to record their own YouTube videos saying what is important to them – ready for when voters type their constituency name into Google.

Former Liberal Democrat web chief Mark Pack believes the internet will spell the end of indentikit candidates, all repeating the same election message crafted for them by party HQ.

David Cameron made clear his views of Twitter’s risk during a radio interview

“It will encourage individuality and creativity,” he says.

He even argues that round-the-clock scrutiny by camera-phone wielding voters is a good thing for aspiring politicians: “In a less politically divided age, the personal attributes of a candidate are increasingly important.”

But Mr Pack, who co-edits the Liberal Democrat Voice blog and is an associate director of PR firm Mandate, says social media may not truly come into its own until after the final vote has been cast.

With a possible hung Parliament and one or more of the parties potentially facing leadership contest, politicians are going to need a fast, cheap and convenient way to rally support and raise money.

As Barack Obama found during his US presidential campaign, when it comes to generating a “bandwagon effect”, the internet is hard to beat.

What can you learn from Canadian politicians?

Posted by wsewell on Feb 2nd, 2010 | no comments

Below is an article from the Ottawa Citzen about Canadian politicians and social media.

Here are some key takeaways:

• Don’t be afraid of a Facebook “Fan” page over a “Friend” page.  “Friend” accounts do max out at 5,000 friends.  If you want to reach the most people and encourage them to become passionate about your policies, a “Fan” page is the way to go.  If you’re worried about personal information, keep your “Friend” page to interact with friends and family and you “Fan” page to discuss your campaign and policies.

• If you do separate your “Friend” and “Fan” pages, make sure you’re still demonstrating your charm and personality on your “Fan” page as well.  Let the voters get to know the person behind the politics.

• Use social media to encourage your supporters to join you as you campaign offline whether that be through events, fundraising, or bringing your name up in a conversation.

• Have a plan behind your social media usage.  Know what you’re trying to accomplish and why before you even put your fingers to the keys. Make your goals specific.  How many followers do you want?  How will you engage them?  What offline actions do you want them to take?

Bob Rae has a problem with Facebook.

“I’m only allowed to have 5,000 friends,” laments the MP for Toronto Centre. “I have about 1,600 people on the waiting list that I can’t add.”

Facebook isn’t budging. They’ve told Rae if he wants to have more friends, he should start himself a fan page.

But Rae’s not interested. “Fan pages are different. A fan is not a friend.”

U.S. President Barack Obama’s successful use of new media in his presidential campaign has generated an enthusiastic buzz about social media’s potential for linking politicians with the public. Unsurprisingly, Canadian politicians have since been jumping on to popular networks like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in hopes of connecting with a wider audience.

But many politicians are learning that just getting a Facebook profile doesn’t turn everyone into the next president.

“In Canada, politicians are doing an incredibly poor job,” says Daniel Paré, a communications professor at the University of Ottawa.

While U.S. and British politicians are at the forefront in using these technologies, Paré says the sense of enthusiasm among Canadian MPs just isn’t there.

“They are light years behind.”

The problem for most of our MPs is that they lack a new-media plan, says Rahaf Harfoush, a media strategist on Obama’s election communications team and author of Yes We Did: An Inside Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand.

“The reason the Obama campaign was successful was because everything we did was part of a larger overarching strategy,” she says. “There was a strategic, logical reason behind every single thing we did.

“But here, they just go on Facebook because it’s easy; they go on Twitter because it’s easy. No one’s actually using these tools as part of a community-building effort.”

The Obama campaign focused on connecting the online and the offline, she says — getting people who connected to the campaign via the Internet to volunteer on the ground, fundraise and recruit their friends.

Charlie Angus, 49, and the New Democrat MP for Timmins-James Bay, believes in the power of social networking after a YouTube video aimed at getting a new school for a First Nations reserve in his riding went viral, but he avoids Twitter with a passion.

“Politicians are going to be out blowing their fingers off with their BlackBerrys every time they write,” he explains. “They need to ask: ‘Why do we need to hear all of this stuff and what’s the point?’ ”

The most important rule in using these tools, says Angus, is to keep it strictly professional.

“I don’t post family pictures or personal information, I don’t post what I’m doing on my off time. I post music because most people know I had a band. And I do politics. But I do nothing personal, at all.”

Some older MPs are particularly mystified by these new tools, says Niki Ashton, an NDP MP for Churchill and at 27 the youngest member of Parliament.

Ashton is regularly on Facebook, updating her status with what’s going on in the House of Commons and posting related articles and links. But her profile is also a personal account she uses to communicate with her friends and family. Her public and private online lives are one.

“For me, it’s just the way I communicate along with my generation. So it’s very much normal and I’m glad I can fit my work into it.”

Ashton agrees that social networking can be a valuable tool to rally supporters to a cause.

She points to last year’s campaign to keep federal funding for social sciences and humanities research scholarships open. By connecting with student groups protesting the issue on Facebook, Ashton’s online petition garnered more than 20,000 signatures. It was later tabled in the House of Commons.

Social media wasn’t the only reason for the campaign’s success, says Ashton. It did, however, raise awareness among university students and linked her to other interested Canadians.

Ashton makes her updates herself. While she’s familiar with Facebook and enjoys using it, she says showing personality on profiles that are also used professionally can be a balancing act.

“Yesterday I wrote that I watched Twilight: New Moon,” quipped Ashton. She was surprised to see how many people jumped on to comment.

“Yeah, OK, I’m a human being. What’s the problem with that?”

Rae, 61, says that with very few exceptions, he’s the one who posts updates to his own Facebook account.

“The more [updates] become impersonal and the more they just become the master’s voice and you know you aren’t getting the real person, the less useful they become,” he says. “Because then people just feel they’re being abused.”

Ottawa South Liberal MP David McGuinty, 49, isn’t jumping on the social media bandwagon anytime soon. Aside from his website, you’ll only find him on Facebook — and there only with a fan-page placeholder. It has nothing but a link to his website and the phone number of his office, but it’s there to make sure no one starts an account on the site pretending to be him.

“Social media is important but I don’t think it’s taken seriously,” says McGuinty, and sites like Facebook and Twitter do little more than turn politicians into personalities.

“I don’t think a legislator is supposed to be a personality. I think a legislator’s supposed to be a legislator. I think a member of Parliament is supposed to be a good MP.”

With four or five staff working in two offices, he says, there’s no time to update profiles or feed tweets to the masses.

“I don’t have the time. If I took the time to do that, I wouldn’t have the time to do my work,” says McGuinty. “If I spent an hour a day on that, it’s an hour less that I can spend on really productive files.”

Harfoush says a successful social media strategy doesn’t need a lot of time or resources.

“I think you can be effective with whatever resources you have. You don’t have to be on 14 social networks, you can be on one social network where your constituents are and be just as effective.”

Ashton agrees with Harfoush about the importance of online dialogue. She thinks most MPs don’t give it enough credit as a viable communication tool.

“It’s incumbent on us as public people to recognize that it is a legitimate way of communicating,” says Ashton. “Does posting on Twitter mean you’re going to vote? No it doesn’t. But it’s about becoming engaged in our community.”

Connecting the twitterverse to the real world should be any MP’s ultimate social media strategy, says Stephen Taylor, an Ottawa-based conservative social-media consultant who runs the Blogging Tories and Right of Twitter websites.

“Poking someone on Facebook is worth nothing,” says Taylor. “But inviting them to an event and actually seeing them at that event, offline, is certainly something that is currency for a politician.”

The future for politicians and Twitter, says Taylor, will be learning to integrate location-based technologies that will allow MPs to let their constituents know where they are and how to reach them. For example, a politician back at home for the weekend could broadcast a GPS address of a local coffee shop for an impromptu chat with constituents.

It’s a new technology, but based on old political strategy. “If politics is local, you should tell them where you are locally,” says Taylor.

Party politics adds another level of complication for MPs and social media. Some parties discourage Facebook and Twitter use, considering them either irrelevant or a dangerous means of letting MPs breach the party line.

Instead of banning social media use, parties should seriously consider developing policies and practices that introduce their members to these tools and how to use them effectively, says Paré.

“There are benefits to be had, but at the same time to reap those benefits you have to manage it carefully.”

The challenge for MPs and parties, says Harfoush, will be whether they can handle the public response — especially when it’s critical, even harsh. While disabling comments and remarks on blogs or social networks may seem like an easy way out, it’s a big no-no.

“People will set up a fan page and not let anyone comment on anything. It defeats the purpose of being part of a community.”

The road to meaningful online communication between MPs and the public will not be an easy one, says Harfoush. But it will ultimately pay off, both in better government and electoral success for politicians who learn how to use new media to communicate with their constituents.

“It just requires a shift in approach, a shift in perspective.”

EU politics 2.0: Getting the citizen into European democracy

Posted by PoliticalCampaigns on Nov 4th, 2009 | no comments

Julien Frisch, September 3, 2009 – Personal Democracy Forum

An interview with Tom Watson MP, Britain’s ‘blogging Minister’

Posted by PoliticalCampaigns on Nov 3rd, 2009 | no comments

Here is a post from, Dominic Campbell of the Personal Democracy Forum, featuring an interview with Tom Watson MP, Britain’s ‘blogging Minister.  October 28, 2009 

Tom Watson MP will be speaking at next month’s Personal Democracy Forum Europe in Barcelona. In this short interview we give you a quick run down on Britain’s first blogging minister, the man credited with bringing digital engagement to government in the UK.

Who is Tom Watson?

That’s the deepest question of the lot! My life hit a crossroads at a young age. The early 80’s was not a great time to be a teenager. With mass youth unemployment, poor training and an economy on the skids, I joined the Labour party to change the world.

The path I chose not to take was the one where I followed a personal interest in coding – I spent most of my spare time on the ZX81, BBC Micro and later the Spectrum. I sometimes wonder whether I made the right choice.

How was it that you came to be the ‘blogging minister’ in 2003?

I’d come across these things called weblogs through reading the Guardian site. Rececca’s Pocket was the first site I visited and I realised that the technology existed to hold a conversations. I no longer needed to be on broadcast only.

What was your vision / dream back then and how has it changed or developed since?

To publish and stimulate a discussion, really excited me. Back in 2003, political blogging hadn’t really matured. It was a bit like being on the frontier – being shot at from all sides. To be honest, I was a bit sporadic in the way I approached blogging, so my six year experiment has only had limited success.

Whether we’re talking about We.Gov, Gov20 or digital engagement (here in the UK), what does it all mean to you?

Oh, that’s easy for me. It’s about wider participation. Simple as that. Governments listening – and learning.

What was your proudest achievement within government? And since?

Hmmm. I’m proud that the Power of Information Taskforce set and agenda that is still being acted upon. I’ve not had much of a chance to be a backbencher yet but I intend to be a very loud voice for our digital pioneers – that doesn’t just include e-democracy types but also gamers, open source campaigners and digital rights activists.

Is the bureaucratic culture the single biggest barrier to adoption and is it something that can ever be cracked?

Yes it can be cracked but It requires strong leadership from politicians and, in particular, senior civil servants. I’d give both party leaders an improving 7 out of 10 for their leadership right now. Senior civil servants score much lower!

Next year there will be national and local elections in the UK. What are the major opportunities and risks for politicians in taking part in this agenda? What would your advice to your colleagues be?

I think we’ll miss the great opportunities for web 2.0 in the next elections. Sure, parties will produce widgets to get their message out in clever ways. They’ll use digital tools to organise. But they’re not going to let go like they need too. The election after next will be the interesting one for this space.

Individual MPs and councillors are beginning to use the tools to engage and collaborate though. They’re the people we need to support and encourage I think. I’m most excited about hyperlocal communities finding their voice using social media tools. They’re the real pioneers.

Where next for both Tom Watson and the digital engagement agenda in the UK?

Oh, I’m going to be banging a loud drum from the back benchers. European copyright reform, global digital “wows” like every school in Africa getting a broadband connection, the global free expression movement, taking digital inclusion seriously. There’s a lifetime’s agenda to campaign for. I can’t wait.