Social Media and 2008 Canadian Election: Jack Layton and the NDP

ndp logo

Canada’s major political parties hit “refresh” on their websites this weekend and they went from a dark world of boring statements and policy papers to a full throttle attempt to win over the blogosphere.

Barack Obama has stirred the political activist passion in the states, and Stephen Harper, Jack Layton and Stephane Dion would like to hope some of that enthusiasm will spread north and get you blogging about all the good things they’re up to.

Here’s the first in a multi-part series breaking down the political parties and the social media fanciness they’ve got up their modem.

NDP leader Jack Layton is on Twitter (@jacklayton) and using a friendly style with his tweets.

“The campaign is on – a great start. Great to see so many people out.” (September 07, 2008) and “Packing for Calgary.” (September 06, 2008) are his first two entries.

His tweets are also prominently displayed, right on the front page of the NDP website.

The NDP website features a section called Blogging Tools.

There you’ll find official logos, official photos from the NDP Flickr account, some banner ads, and a pretty nifty video widget that won’t embed in blog posts, but you can put in your sidebar.

The NDP are also all over Facebook, Jack Layton has a pretty decent profile, and they’re tossing their campaign ads up on the NDP YouTube Channel.

The NDP have all the major bases covered. They’re on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and they offer blogging tools which proves they understand the point of social media is to take your message and trust that your disciples will share your vision.

The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?

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Tags: 2008 canadian election, geek, politics

This entry was posted on Monday, September 8th, 2008 at 8:31 am and is filed under Uncategorized. 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.

Rob Annan

Nice summary of the NDP new media presence. I was very surprised at how poorly the parties were represented on the web at the start of the campaign - especially surprising given that they all knew the election was coming. Seems the NDP has really taken advantage of web2.0 features to try to build community on their site. A contrast from the one way information pushing seen so far. Do you think people are too cynical for politicans to exploit social media like twitter? I mean, it's basically pure political advertising and messaging, no?

neilemac

Fantastic article, hopefully more responders will follow in my wake and find your site to be refreshingly positive, as well. Jack and the NDP usually get a slanted spin in 'corporate media' which of course keeps 'citizens' across our vast nation dumb-downed as the 'patriots' fed rhetoric by their 'corporate media' below the border.

Yes, a vote for Jack and the NDP is a vote for 'You' [all Canadian citizens, irregardless of political stripe], not 'corporate power.' Peace too, in all its dimensions is my will.

neilemac
from the 'fax'