« Social Apps Should Get You Laid
A Landmark Moment for Google at I/O Conference »

Should Politicians Use Social Media?

Posted by Anthony LaFauce on May 28th, 2008 12:00 PM

The short answer is yes, and no. It seems politicians are suckers for the times. We all have read how Nixon lost to Kennedy because of TV and I remember reading somewhere about fireside chats (Wikipedia it if you must) as a tool to reach the masses. All of this has led me to believe politicians should and should not use social media.

Let me explain; I picked those two examples of politicians using new media as a tool to reach their public very carefully. These two examples, Kennedy and Roosevelt, represent two very different sides of the same coin. The coin is media outreach and the sides are political ends.

Take the first example: televised political events during an election. Kennedy knew he was more ‘dashing’ than Nixon and the masses were sick of the same old same old politicians so it was advantageous for Kennedy to show himself on T.V. as a dashing younger man.

If you watched the debate, Nixon debates with skill and with candor but he looks terrible. Kennedy, doing his best guy next store, is seen as dashing. The substance of the debate was overshadowed by the flash of new technology.

This is how many politicians today are approaching social media. They are not using social media tools to provide the public with more insight or better connection to government. Instead they are using these tools as a way to flash a smile and show the public how ‘new age’ their campaigns are.

Now think of Roosevelt’s use of the fireside chat. Roosevelt was already President, a fairly popular one due to his public works projects, yet he took the advice of his speech writer and adopted a new technology to reach his public.

If you have ever listened to any of chats (read them here) you will hear that they are not political tools but instead a vehicle of the President to reach people who otherwise would have not heard the President. The chats are masterfully crafted and explain to the public how the President would lead them out of the worst depression in the nation’s history.

That is the purpose I would like to see modern politicians use social media for. Don’t use it as a tool to panderer to the public for votes; use it as a tool to educate the public. Social media can allow a politician to have total disclosure (scary) with their public.

So to answer my own question: politicians should only use social media to educate, not to sway votes. Like no time before politicians on every level have a chance to connect with the people they represent. I think they should take this opportunity to really reach the public, not just tell them how to vote.

Do you know of any politicians who have really used social media to connect with the people? I have followed most of the major campaigns and I can say that most of them have missed the point. I don’t know of any smaller campaigns that have connected using social media, but I would love to hear about them.

Posted in Analysis, Social Media
  

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Analysis, Social Media. 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.

Viewing 4 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    I would suggest that educating and swaying votes are probably one and the same. Apathy aside, people generally vote for candidates who share similar values and ideals. If I don't have access to someone's platform, there isn't a chance for me to agree or disagree with it.

    So your best chance to make me identify with your platform is to bring your message to me in the places I frequent (YouTube, Facebook, Blogs, etc.) I think you sway my vote by educating me.

    Sadly, I think the average voter is much more superficial than basing their vote on where the candidates stand on the issues.

    Great post, I really enjoyed it. Very thought provoking.
    • ^
    • v
    good post Nick. I'm involved in a local campaign here in dc and I often wonder how much we should rely on social media. One thing that you don't talk about in your post is the man power it takes keep up with social media and keep it fresh and interesting.

    Another thing is that candidate don't have as much time as they used to, especially at the local level. I would like to hear what you would suggest on how they can better use social media.
    • ^
    • v
    I sit on the monitoring side of social media (we're a social media monitoring service) and reputation is a major issue with politics in social media. If you're going to campaign in SM (actually even if you're not!) you should also monitor what people are saying so you can assess the sentiment and then participate rather than pitch or sway. Social media picks up and spreads opinion a lot faster than conventional online media so monitoring provides an early notification of good or bad trends around a reputation. This 'real time' aspect means that simply setting up Google Alerts is not enough because they're not providing real time results from things like Twitter or the social networks- they have index which has a time lag.
    • ^
    • v
    These are some great comments guys. I am interested in what Eric said about time lag in the metrics of social media and the amount of time needed to invest in it. I find time is a major reason people fail to adopt social media.

Trackbacks

blog comments powered by Disqus