Every candidate attempts to obtain 4 levels of commitment from voters through the running of their campaign:

i) A vote for the candidate
ii) A commitment to “soft” campaigning for the candidate (speaking with friends, family)

iii) A commitment to “hard” campaigning (volunteering for the campaign: fundraising, going door to door, putting up signs)
iv) Financial support (donations)

Based on the recent Federal election, it would appear that candidates in Canada are having a hard time getting the first commitment out of Canadians.Tamir Birk reminds us that at 59.1%, the 2008 Federal election had the lowest voter turnout in Canadian history.

Voter apathy is not a problem prevalent throughout North America. The recent U.S presidential election had the highest voter’s participation level of any election in United States history.

Much can be attributed to these results. However, at the end of the day, U.S campaigns (and President-Elect Barack Obama’s campaign in particular) were better able to reach voters in order to get them to vote. What are they doing that Canadian political campaigns are not?

The answer is social media. Social media consists of all the technological tools that individuals use to communicate and share with each other. The tools (such as blogs, youtube and social networking services) make it easy to share information with friends, so that they themselves can join the conversation as well.

The New Democratic Party has attempted to embrace social media through their Orange Room website. The website is a social media hotbed, allowing users to share images, blogs and youtube videos with one another. Links to official twitter and facebook pages invite users to connect through social networking websites. One of the most interesting elements is the ability to join the Rapid Response. Members of the team “receive alerts as unfair spin or smear campaigns develop – on blogs, message boards, news sites or anywhere else online. [They are then able to] get out there and set the record straight!”

The problem that Orange Room faces is that like all social media, it does not follow the Field of Dreams Rule. Build it and they shall come? Not with social media! Users need to must be inspired in order to interact with social media. Upon looking at the most popular videos posted on the site, 3 out of the top 5 were posted by the New Democratic Party themselves. Where is the quality user generated content? While the NDP have created a strong tool, they have not implemented it to its fullest potential (to the detriment of the party during the last election).

The Liberal Party of Canada displayed the most disappointing mis-use of social media. Their official youtube page currently contains 155 videos. However, social media is about quality, not quantity. An abundance of useless videos provides no value to anyone (especially the Liberals!).

Many believed that Stephane Dion was a poor leader due to his inability to communicate the Liberal’s “Green-Shift” policy. This is exactly where social media could have been most useful. Why did the Liberal party not create a clear, quick video to help easily explain their policy? Failing that, why did they not take advantage of the copious amounts of videos that their supporters created (such as this one ) to spread the message virally. The Liberals dropped the ball on this election, and their ineffective use of social media follows the parties’ trend.

Barack Obama’s use of social media has changed the way campaigns and politicians will interact with voters from this point forward. Much has been written about the Obama campaigns successes with social media (a good overview can be found here. One quick example is how the Obama campaign responded to infamous Joe the Plumber video. The Obama campaign countered with a fantastic video about Al the Shoe Salesman, featuring a cameo by Ed O’Neil, that showcases a tax-savings calculator based on Obama’s tax plan. The video provides the link to this calculator, allowing viewers to see the plan’s effect on their own household income.

The video is effective at targeting the direct attacks related to tax that Joe the Plumber brings up. The video stands as enjoyable on its own (or at least among Married with Children fans like myself) motivating people to send the clip to friends and family. What if the Liberal party had done something similar with their Green-Shift plan? It is not worth speculating on now (and there were obviously other issues at hand that lead to their poor performance) but there is no question that such a manoeuvre could have only helped.

While the election is over, it is not too late (or too early) for political parties to begin effectively using social media. To reduce voter apathy and to empower citizens to contribute, social media holds great potential for politicians and political campaigns now and in the future. The two important rules to remember that were reinforced this election. The first is: just because you build it, there is no guarantee it will be used. The second rule is that in social media, it is quality and not quantity that is most important!

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Tags: election, Federal Election, social media, vote

This entry was posted on Friday, November 28th, 2008 at 6:48 pm and is filed under Federal Election. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.