Your blogger, above centre, ponders the Harper Conservatives’ plans to make a foray into social media. Below right, your blogger before he grew his beard, with Daveberta author Dave Cournoyer. Alberta political bloggers may not be exactly as illustrated. Below them: Prime Minister Stephen Harper, when he was still young enough to understand social media. Bottom: Typical young Tory use of social media.Surely the federal political news story of 2012 is going to be the effort by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives to use social media to woo the Canadian public.
You may think the fact the federal Tories are considering this is a pretty strange claim, but I’m actually not making it up. I read it the other day in the Globe and Mail while I sat in a coffee shop.
“Ottawa cautiously dipping its toe in social-media pool,” the Globe said, while other coffee drinkers looked at me strangely and wondered what that big sheet of grey paper in my hands was. “Some kind of funky wrapping paper maybe? Cool!”
Well, your blogger may be old, but he’s got a Twitter account too, hooked right up to his iPhone. Really! More on that in a moment. But first, some more from the Globe on the Great Harper Conservative Social Media Experiment:
“Documents obtained this month by Ottawa-based researcher Ken Rubin under federal access-to-information laws … indicate a strong interest in sharing videos through Youtube and conversing with the public through Twitter and Facebook – but also a wariness of the potential for calamity when communicating through forums that cannot be tightly controlled.” (Emphasis added.)
As we say out here in the blogsphere, if you’ll pardon the expression, “no shit, Sherlock!”
Or, in the more sober language of the Good Gray Globe, a memo from Human Resources and Skills Development Canada that was among the documents obtained by Mr. Rubin “lists several pages of risks to promoting departmental services on the video-sharing site. They include, among other things, the possibility that some Canadians will think it is a waste of money, that people may try to create spoofing or mocking videos, and that there would be a perceived lack of transparency if users are not permitted to post comments.”
Oh, yes. Indeed. In fact – and I think Mr. Harper can count on this – if the federal government thoughtlessly fails to provide people with a place to respond, people who have no p
lace to respond will create one of their own. No?OK, so Problem No. 1 for the Harper federalistas is going to be how to respond quickly in a medium where it is generally considered necessary to answer fast, or not answer at all.
Here’s another Globe story: “PMO Staff to Grow to 20,000 Employees … Most Employed in Approval Process for Tweets.” The report goes on: “‘We have a slight problem,’ a spokesman for the PMO explained. ‘The Prime Minister insists on approving all the Tweets personally, and that’s proving to be a bit of a bottleneck.’”
Alright, I admit it, I just made that one up. You know, just like they make up facts for the actual Tory Rage Machine.
Or how about this report: “Representatives of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s staff traveled to Pyongyang this week seeking hints from North Korean President Kim Jong-Un’s social media management team on how to run Canada’s Twitter and Youtube accounts…”
OK, I made that one up too … maybe.
Let’s get back to the real article from the real Globe. And by the way, I’m sorry to quote so much of the Globe story that I’m practically violating their copyright, but, really people, you just can’t make stuff up that’s this good. To wit: “As for Twitter, the HRSDC has come up with a list of possible phrases that employees manning the site could Tweet. They include things like: ‘Thanks for the response. I’m not sure your facts are correct.’”
Actually, this is a very good idea and I intend to put it to use myself when opponents of the gun registry and other members of the Tory Rage Machine start to get up my nose about my blog posts. For example:
ACTUAL RECENT TORY RAGE MACHINE TWEET TO ME (in response to a post advocating saving the long-gun registry): “
You can have them all (his guns, he means), right after every last one is red hot and empty, you fascist prick.”FUTURE BLOGGER DAVE RESPONSE: “Thanks for the response. I’m not sure your facts are correct.”
Or…
ACTUAL RECENT TRM TWEET: “Haga are you a commie???”
FUTURE BLOGGER DAVE RESPONSE: “Thanks for the response. I’m not sure your political analysis is correct.”
Or…
ACTUAL RECENT TRM TWEET: “Ur tinfoil hat is cutting off circulation to ur brain.” (This last one from an actual Conservative candidate in the recent federal election. Really!)
FUTURE BLOGGER DAVE RESPONSE: “Thanks for the response, Mr. Hastman. I’m not sure your facts are correct.”
Anyway, I think you get my drift, readers.
Problem No. 2, from the Harperite perspective, is that the same bright young social-media savvy Tories that the government will ask to provide its responses to Canadian taxpayers (some of them practically senior citizens, like Yours Truly) will be these very same youthful contributors to the Tory Rage Machine.
And these young fellows, not to put too fine a point on it, are not really very nice people, and strike back instinctively.
Say, for example, the bereaved parent of a soldier killed in one of the government’s wars abroad criticized the prime minister.
IMAGINED TRM RESPONSE: “Note that this guy is an Iggy supporter.”
Oh, wait. That’s not imagined! That actually happened.
No need to go on. One just has the feeling this experiment with social media is going to end badly for Mr. Harper. And it’s going to happen some time this year, 2012.
This post also appears on Rabble.ca.
5 comments:
Wasn’t it Oscar Wide who said “there is nothing so old-fashioned as the desire to appear modern?”
It all seems a diversion from the changes being made by Harper in the reality based world which undermine the rule of law, health care, and the other things people rely on.
Reading the comments on articles on the G&M and Toronto Star websites shows an interesting pattern. Once the Cons put out the word that they wanted attack thumbsters to work for them, the trend started to show if you read the posts in chronological order, oldest to newest.
First came the posts from people who had actually read the article and expressed various points of view.
Then...the deluge from those on the Con payroll, all in a bunch, all of one mind (if you can call it that) and almost all using the same buzzwords or phrases. I suppose the command had just come down from the Ministry of Information that their one-fingered typing, usually the middle one, was required, along with the script they were to use.
Sometimes there are a few posters with multiple "identities", each making the lunatic fringe sound like a crowd - or maybe even a plurality, if not actually a majority.
I liked the top picture and the next one. The one of the guy in the plaid shirt made me feel queasy, though. I'm sure I've seen him somewhere before.
So be sure to polish up your screen-capturing skills, kids!
Holly Stick makes an important point. When offensive and otherwise potentially controversial material becomes an embarrassment, the posters tend to remove it quickly. It's a sound policy to immediately make a screen capture and store it safely.
I deeply regretted not storing screen captures of Premier Redford's leadership campaign platform page, which amounted to a useful record of her promises, and which has now gone down the Memory Hole. If anyone has a screen capture of that page and would send it to me, I would be very grateful.
As for Filostrato's discomfort with the fellow in the plaid shirt, I'd say it's more of a check, and you can't blame a man for his relatives!
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