American President Barack Obama nearly crashed the popular social media site Reddit. Embarking on an ambitious ‘ask me anything’ online seminar the President received over 10,000 questions in about 90 minutes on Tuesday night.
Now don’t expect Chief Minister Katy Gallagher to receive the same overwhelming response throughout this election campaign, but in the modern world we would expect social media to play a part.
It’s difficult to comprehend sometimes that Facebook is only seven years old; Twitter only six. The brave new world of alternative online media has become so ubiquitous that we can have some problems seeing the forest for the trees. Obviously this provides an enormous platform for our politicians and aspiring politicians to launch their personalities and policies to the public. But how effective is it? And how do our MLA’s match up?
President Obama has 673,622 Twitter followers, our Chief Minister has 2790. Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has 947,281, his Canberra counterpart Zed Seselja has a miserly 723. It may be unfair to compare our politicians with the American heavyweights but it is worth contemplation.
The ACT Young Liberals and the ACT Young Labor Left both have Facebook pages however their parent parties do not. A quick YouTube search will reveal startlingly little content from any of the major parties. Bullet Train for Canberra, Marion Le Social Justice Party and Pangallo Independents Party don’t even have Websites.
The Senate Occasional Lecture Series recently had Dr Sally Young as a speaker. An Associate Professor of Social and Political Science she gave a speech titled Media Reporting of the Next Federal Election: What Can We Expect? Although she was focussed on the Federal election her words can equally apply to the upcoming ACT election. “The fact will remain … when it comes to getting election news, TV will still be the most important medium for the majority of Australians … So will radio and newspapers still be important for setting the news agenda and influencing other media.”
So despite the prolific nature of social media, and the connection it gives the average voter, it seems that most of us will imbibe our information the same way we always have.
Perhaps it’s just as well; Justin Bieber has over 27 million Twitter followers.
Read Dr Sally Young’s entire speech here.
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