Facebook and Elections

The current election for Prime Minster in Canada serves up an excellent example of how using the new media can backfire if you don't think things through.

It is important to note that Canada has five political parties in the run for office. Four are national parties and one is Quebec-based. This makes the dynamics of politics more interesting than in many places where voters are limited to a choice of Party A or Party B!

With approximately 17 million Canadians having Facebook pages it seemed like a good idea to make use of the power of social networking to connect with the under-25 crowd.

This is the first time in Canadian election history that every party leader has a Facebook page. They use their page to post policy announcements, pictures of their families, their favourite movies and other personal information, all aimed at making them more appealing to young voters.

However, there are new rules for the new media.

Before the advent of Facebook, political parties carefully controlled the content and style of their ads, how they were placed in radio, TV and print lineups. They would conduct media monitoring and analysis to see how successful they were at achieving their political objectives.

This is not what happens with Facebook pages.

Citizens are posting unflattering comments on the leaders' sites and some are using Facebook to turn things around - to use Facebook to organize against the parties and their leaders.

For example, when the one party's leader opposed the addition of another leader in a nationally televised debate, he was slammed by people who said they had been his supporters, but could no longer support him or his party because of his "narrow-minded opposition."

Facebook pages give voters that instant opportunity to express their opposition and to open up discussion.

On Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Facebook page, one user managed to put a "Redneck" label on his photo. Not what you want to see on your page!

Another Facebook group has been formed calling themselves "Anti-Harper Vote Swapping Canada." They have set up a system to help users strategically prevent wins by Harper's Conservative party. It works by connecting users whose preferred candidate has little chance of winning with other members willing to vote for the party that has the best chance at stopping the local Conservative candidate.

Will, this work? It's hard to say, however,  predictions are that no one party will be able to break through with a clear majority, so these swing seats could be very critical.

Note to politicians: when you decide to use the new media you better be ready for creative counter-uses by the new media-savvy crowd.


Photo by Jacob Bøtter. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic