{"id":4460,"date":"2011-05-19T23:09:08","date_gmt":"2011-05-20T06:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/?p=4460"},"modified":"2011-05-19T23:45:44","modified_gmt":"2011-05-20T06:45:44","slug":"what-i-said-about-social-media-and-political-engagement-in-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2011\/05\/19\/what-i-said-about-social-media-and-political-engagement-in-2008\/","title":{"rendered":"What I said about social media and political engagement in 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"

Social media mavens, Victorians: take note. We have a municipal election coming up this fall, and I just re-read a piece I wrote for FOCUS Magazine<\/a> in the run-up to the last municipal election in 2008, published in October of that year: Smart Twits?<\/a> (the link takes you to Scribd).<\/p>\n

Below, I copy and paste the entirety of the article. It pains me to say it, but I was way ahead of my time here – underscoring that “here” is not where I belong.<\/p>\n

Smart twits? A user guide
\nby
\nYule Heibel<\/p>\n

The scenario: municipal elections approach, but you haven’t managed to get excited enough to pay attention.\u00a0 One candidate says, \u201cour backs are up against the wall,\u201d while another suggests affairs are trundling along as always.\u00a0 Which one gets your attention?<\/p>\n

My bet is on the one who tiddles your panic button (even if you don’t like it).<\/p>\n

But wait…\u00a0 Don’t they say that once you’ve panicked, it’s already too late?\u00a0 Who manages smart decisions when panicked?\u00a0 But when you’re voting, choosing smartly is important.<\/p>\n

So maybe that’s why you decide not to vote?\u00a0\u00a0 You leave the panic-mongers to their wide-eyed, sputtering friends, and you don’t like the \u201ccareer politicians,\u201d either.\u00a0 Face it, bud: you’re an alienated citizen, …although we both know you’re smart.<\/p>\n

What should politicians do to engage you?\u00a0 It’s not an academic question.\u00a0 Locally, I’ve overheard the \u201cour backs are against the wall\u201d statement numerous times in recent weeks, and simultaneously I’ve watched more temperate players struggle to develop a message that gets people’s attention.\u00a0 There’s definitely a chance to run a dumb race to the bottom, where candidates exploit fear instead of explaining opportunities.<\/p>\n

Can we google this problem?<\/p>\n

I spend lots of time online.\u00a0 Believe me, the holy grail of many web developers is to create applications that make users feel empowered and smarter.\u00a0 Smart is powerful, and it’s in our DNA to learn: we’re a monkey-see, monkey-do kind of mammal, and we want to feel like smart apes, not dumb chumps.\u00a0 I’m convinced that in the aggregate, web technologies make users smarter.\u00a0 Since it’s election season, let’s see if politicians are learning here.<\/p>\n

Online, I’m immersed in a river of information and feedback generated by an array of sources, from individuals to organizations to traditional media outlets.\u00a0 That web-based informational flow is as real to me as daily mail, newspapers, and chats by office water coolers were to previous generations.\u00a0 By using technology, I gather flows of information without relying on just one or two broadcast sources.<\/p>\n

Savvy politicians have figured out that they, too, can’t afford to ignore how users are actively re-organizing information, as opposed to being its passive recipients.\u00a0 Look, and you’ll find that nearly all the local politicians are on Facebook, “conversing” with their social networks.\u00a0 Look further, and you’ll find that those with national aspirations and an adventurous bent use even more immediate social networking tools.\u00a0 Twitter, for example, is a microblogging platform where users “tweet” (and can tweet each other) in a constant ping-pong of real-time informational back-and-forth.<\/p>\n

We’ve seen a persistent migration to online social media in politics.\u00a0 The goal?\u00a0 Relationships with other users and with potential voters.\u00a0 Politicians need voters to win elections, but first they need to communicate with them.\u00a0 At the national level, Jack Layton and Stephen Harper \u201ctwitter,\u201d Stephane Dion and Elizabeth May don’t (yet).\u00a0 All are on Facebook, though, as are many of our municipal candidates.<\/p>\n

Mainstream media and information sources have migrated to social media, too.\u00a0 CBC journalists, Macleans Magazine, the Vancouver Sun, the Globe and Mail, the National Post all twitter, as does the Vancouver Library and many individual librarians (who typically are early adopters).\u00a0 Businesses small and large twitter (AirCanada, anyone?), and customers can tweet complaints (or kudos) directly to a business’s stream.\u00a0 If the business tweets you back, that conversation is visible to anyone. WorkSafeBC twitters new guidelines, updates, and more, all in real time.\u00a0 Even BCLegislation twitters (“Automated alerts for legislative changes …Published by Quickscribe’s BC Legislation Portal”).\u00a0 Facebook and Twitter are just two platforms.\u00a0 There are others: blogs, Tumblrs, Flickr, MySpace, Identica, FriendFeed, etc.\u00a0 The list will grow.<\/p>\n

Many smart users are online, skinny-dipping in a river of news.<\/p>\n

Except not so much at the local level, where information flow is often turgid, dependent on broadcast media, or on having access to the \u201cright\u201d individuals (who may or may not be online).\u00a0 Local politicians and the civic institutions they represent aren’t using social media to talk directly with \u201cusers.\u201d\u00a0 There’s no VicCouncil twitter-stream, …unless you consider the actual experience a tweet.\u00a0 While quite a few candidates are on Facebook only a tiny minority of incumbents are.<\/p>\n

At the same time, it seems improbable that the lessons of social media technologies aren’t having a powerful effect on local politics.\u00a0 Online mavens know that VibrantVictoria.ca’s discussion forum has opened up the city’s conversation on urban development and politics (along with many other things) to anyone with access to a computer.\u00a0 Ask a question, get an answer.<\/p>\n

Candidates who face the icky choice of either getting your attention by panicking you, or boring you because they have nothing attention-worthy to retail, should talk to users (potential voters) directly: open the conversation and engage alienated voters.<\/p>\n

Just don’t try to get our attention by panicking us.\u00a0 That’s so dumb (read: not-smart).\u00a0 Smart should be empowering and make YOU (the user) better.\u00a0 As one of my Twitter friends noted, \u201cDon’t focus on making your BOOK better… focus on making the READER better.\u201d\u00a0 She also wrote, \u201c[It] NEVER matters how good YOU are. Only how good USERS can be.\u201d\u00a0 Substitute \u201celection platform\u201d for \u201cBOOK,\u201d and substitute \u201ccitizen\u201d or \u201cvoter\u201d for \u201cREADER\u201d or \u201cUSER,\u201d and we can start talking.\u00a0 …Or tweeting.<\/p>\n

Of course it’s inevitable that we’ll eventually meet offline.\u00a0 As someone twittered recently: \u201cAll my batteries are dead.\u00a0 Talk to me in person.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, that was my take on public engagement in Victoria THREE YEARS AGO<\/em><\/strong>. How have things improved?<\/p>\n

PS: This is part 1. Next up, Part 2<\/a>, about my September 2008 article, which is another piece worth reading, considering that municipal elections will soon be upon us again…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three years ago I published an analysis of how politicians could and should be using social media to engage voters. Read it today and ponder whether my ideas were implemented, say, in Victoria BC, to create real engagement. I say they haven’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1114,96,1002,1418],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","category-politics","category-social_critique","category-victoria"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4460"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4471,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4460\/revisions\/4471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}