At The Senator THE PONDITS PONDER
Does Social Media Matter (yet) in Canadian Politics?
Rob Silver is a Principle at a national public affairs firm and his practice focuses primarily on the energy and infrastructure sectors. He regularly appears in Canadian media including his blog in the Globe and Mail. He was recently named one of 2010’s international “Rising Stars” by Campaigns and Elections magazine.
Mark Spiro is a Principal at Crestview Public Affairs and a veteran of international and domestic political campaigns at the municipal, provincial and federal levels.
Chad Rogers is a public affairs consultant specializing in public opinion research, communications and strategy at Crestview Public Affairs. He is a reformed political staffer and campaign activist at home and abroad.
This week our panel, Mark Spiro, Rob Silver and Chad Rogers look at the emerging social media landscape in Canadian politics and ask, ‘are we there yet?’
Chad Rogers: So we’re here at the Sena- tor again. And our goal is to discuss the effect or the importance of social media in political campaigns. So let me put it out there: Mark, is it important?
Mark Spiro: Yeah, it’s important. The question is: why is it important? Is it important from an overall utility, or is important from the standpoint of need- ing a presence in order to be taken seri- ously? I say “yes” on the latter question “in order to be taken seriously,” but as to its overall utility, I’m still somewhat skeptical.
CR: Rob?
Rob Silver: It is important, but it’s not important for the reasons a lot of people think it is. It’s not about the next Obama; it’s not about mobilizing two million 18 and 19 year olds to vote for you in the next election. Where I have found so- cial media, Twitter in particular, extraor- dinarily important is in terms of media narrative. If you were to sit back and fol- low the Ottawa Press Gallery all day on Twitter, you would see that they spend most of the day talking amongst them-
6 Campaigns & Elections | Canadian Edition
selves about stories of the day. They do it very quickly, almost like an online echo chamber or a live chat forum and create a consensus of what are the acceptable and unacceptable narratives of the day’s events. So, if you’re running a campaign, whether it’s an election campaign or an issues campaign, following that narrative and getting in to that narrative is abso- lutely critical. That, to me, is the real im- portance of social media today in Canada, from the campaign perspective. What do you think, Chad?
CR: It’s become the forum for our early adopters and our most connected peo- ple; the people who, thirty years ago, we would have wanted hosting events, working the phones or being key or- ganizers are now, by definition, users of social media. They have three or four hundred friends that they communicate with on a regular basis about the things they like and, maybe more importantly, the things they don’t like. Some people call them ‘mavens’.
RS: Good Malcolm Gladwell reference there, Chad.
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