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The War Room WArren KInsellA


The Power of Twitter


I


have seen the future of election campaigns, and it is Twitter. It’s true. In 2011, a whole whack of


provincial elections are taking place. Federally, there’s a good chance Canada will be heading to the polls in the spring.


Each one of those races will be dif-


ferent. But, in every one, the one thing you’ll be hearing about —and seeing the effects of, over and over—is Twitter. Twitter—which permits you to post 140-character text messages called “tweets” on the Internet, gratis — is rather fashionable now. You may have heard of it. It now has 200 million users worldwide. Politicians, and the reporters who write about politicians, love it. Most of the time, Twitter is referred to as a social


networky thing, like Facebook. Or, it’s defined as “micro-blogging.”


Neither definition seemed satisfactory to me, so


I asked the politically-savvy readers of my website about it. • “It’s the new telephone … an online party line.”


• “A mental pollution disseminator.” • “The crack cocaine of social media.” • “Quicker misinformation.”


People are overwhelmed by data smog, so they tune most media out. For corporations, unions, governments and political parties, data smog is a big problem.


In any campaign, and as every backroom types knows, it’s safe to start from the assump- tion we have a national memory of about seven minutes. Because Joe and Jane Frontporch are so busy in their everyday lives — ferrying kids to the rink, beating rush hour, working late,


52 Campaigns & Elections | Canadian Edition


catching some precious shut-eye — they don’t have time to pay attention to the hundreds of thousands of words and images the media bom- bard them with every day. One smart U.S. writer, David Shenk, coined a phrase for it: “Data smog.” People are overwhelmed by data smog, so they tune most media out. For corporations, unions, governments and political parties, data smog is a big problem. If they are to be successful selling something—a widget or candidate—they need to punch through that ubiquitous smog. In a political campaign, Twitter helps do that. It’s


free, instantaneous, and a way to dodge the main- stream media’s filter. It also allows voters to con- verse directly with political leaders, and vice-versa. Do tweets capture votes? New Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi Twitter-towered over his op- ponents, with thousands of followers—and with many more thousands of acolytes on his Facebook and YouTube pages. Social media are widely seen as a big factor in Nenshi’s startling win. Toronto Mayor Rob Ford wasn’t particularly popular in Twitter—but his campaign team made highly effective (and unethical) use of it when it created a phony Twitter persona called “Queen- sQuayKaren.” Ford’s staff used “Karen” to smear opponents (I


worked on one of those campaigns), subtly trum- pet Ford and play dirty tricks on the Toronto me- dia. Despicable—but it probably helped Ford win. Stephen Harper’s PMO - as well as many of his younger ministers, like Tony Clement and James


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