Canada’s First Real Cyber-Campaign
September 12th, 2008
It’s been less than a week, but the campaign is starting to show clearly how online technology changes politics.
- Two party leaders, Stephen Harper and Jack Layton, decide to muscle Elizabeth May out of the leader’s debate. The reaction - an online petition and critical comments on Layton’s facebook page - is immediate, and within a day Harper and Layton reverse themselves.
- The kids in the Conservative war room make two mistakes - the pooping puffin and an email to the media hitting back below the belt at the father of a slain soldier - and they are instantly picked up and amplified and Harper must apologize for both.
The first incident shows how voters can speak up quickly and loudly over the Internet. The second incident shows how power in a political organization has been decentralized and made transparent. Everyone in the war room represents the party in everything he or she emails, text messages, or posts online. A war room can’t run by having every part of every website and every email checked by a supervisor, it must run on the basis of a set of values. Ultimately, the leader is responsible for these values.
It’s still early in the campaign, of course, but a political campaign is made up of millions of actions taken by the foot soldiers and impressions created in the minds of voters. Are they starting to connect the dots?
bob ashley
September 12th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Good post. It does appear that federal parties are grossly underestimating the tsunami-like power of things like the blogosphere and twitterverse. Perhaps, though, in fairness, all the parties may lack resource depth and breadth, including high-level trusted advisers with sterling web2.0 credentials. Or, they do have the depth/breadth, but not the intense vision or will to do what needs to be done with socialmedia.
I hope you’ll continue offer this type of critical commentary on the Cdn fed election.
bob
bob ashley
September 12th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
I might add that in this instance of federal party participation in socialmedia, that the concentration of power in the PM’s office may work against it? Cabinet? What do they do? The PM’s office is where it’s at!
bob