Social Media and 2008 Canadian Election: Stephen Harper and Jack Layton Are On Twitter
Some pretty big events in Canadian politics happened this week. Our Prime Minister and one of the opposition leaders fired up their Twitter accounts. Yes, social media has come to Canadian Politics. Sort of.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has TWO twitter accounts. One for the francophones, @premierministre, while English Canada gets a more active update @pmharper:
Here’s what NDP Leader Jack Layton is twittering @jacklayton:
Stephane Dion and Gilles Duceppe? Well, I guess Twitter hasn’t caught on in Quebec yet.
I’m working on a piece about electioneering and social media for 24hrs this week, and I’ve contacted many of the best socmed experts in the country and many are embarassed, aghast, and .. well .. unimpressed by the lack of vision seen by our current crop of politicians.
In the US, Obama’s use of Twitter and SMS has inspired an entirely new generation to become politically active and spread the word.
Here .. well .. if Canadians aren’t whining “Do we have to vote?”, then we’ll be closing our eyes and randomly scribbling an X on the ballot, or just finding a spot and writing in Obama.
If you have any thoughts on how the parties could be better reaching out to people, or if you know of some ways they’re using new media successfully, please feel free to add comments below.
The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?
Tags: 2008 canadian election, bitching, geek, news, politics
Thanks for the links!!
At least Layton was using twitter the way others do. Am pretty sure that Harper has a PR aid that is “tweeting” for him.
I’d love to see some more dialog around what the leadership is saying – not so much of a one-way communication. Isn’t the web supposed to be collaborative?
[...] to younger people this time around. More specifically, Buzz takes a look at the Twitter accounts of Jack Layton and Stephen Harper. Are those accounts working? Are they [...]
[...] I know that there is already buzz around the town on the use of Twitter (seen a couple of posts by Buzz Bishop and Kate Trgovac, as well as one on The Tyee’s The Hook, led by Monte Paulsen), Facebook and [...]
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