Comments on: Who Cares Whether Your Local Politician Is On Facebook?

By: Ciaran

Ciaran — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:22:58 +0000

I think your post above is very good - it makes me wonder though about the point of Irish politicians adopting email at all.

It seems, like you say above, that most politicians in this country haven’t sat down and asked themselves what they want to achieve, who they want to reach, or indeed why they want to use technology. Without a strategy, their approach will be as scattergun as dropping leaflets (only cheaper).

I think the polarisation of politics on the other side of the Atlantic is a factor which must be taken into account. Irish politics are more diverse in terms of the numbers of parties and our voting system lends itself to voters being empathetic towards several ideologies rather than being strictly party loyal. Also, our representatives tend to be very accesible in contrast with American public servants.

On that basis, it could be that politicians in Ireland are using technology to “get in touch with youth”. Cringe. If that indeed is the case, then how come no-one has mentioned the fact that Obama managed to connect with youth becuase he is quite young (for a politician/president), sharply dressed and appears quite afable? Another example of an engaging politician might be Sarkozy or even Tony Blair.

Few of our politicians have the personality to engage with young voters and so, whether they adopt traditional or new methods to reach voters, they must also seriously examine and work on their charisma and personality.

By: Piaras

Piaras — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:18:01 +0000

Good insights Keith, particularly the second point.

By: Keith

Keith — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 14:04:02 +0000

Thanks for the link, Piaras.
Two comments:
First, the thing Obama’s team did well was to simply use the new technologies available to make existing tasks easier. They pushed everything possible downwards towards the individual people on the ground. That included organising phonecalling (a big thing in the states) and canvassing. Rather than going to the predetermined meeting point and being given a map by a campaign worker, the volunteers could print the map off the website themselves, and data enter the results later. Of course, the lack of data protection laws in the US makes that easier. Anyway, all they’re doing is making existing tasks easier by using tech.

Secondly, there’s an issue of scale. An Irish national political party has less money than your average Congressional campaign in the States, never mind a whole party or Presidential campaign. That means they’ve fewer staff, which means it’s more difficult to allocate people to use social media properly. Labour has had a social media person in their press office for years now, and you can see it in their website, Twitter and Flickr accounts. Both FF and the Greens have recently hired web/social media people too. But it’s a big ask for a party to dedicate one person, never mind the whole team that would be used in the States, just to do online stuff. Given the scarce resources, allocating that same person to support new candidates is probably a better use of money and time.