Social media in today's politics

Grant Bachand
Team Member

I: today’s highly technological era,
everything is available at the touch of
button. Even getting in touch with certain
elected officials has become easier than ever
before; at the same time there are officials
who are still as inaccessible as ever.

Thad this realization the other day as I was
commenting on an article posted by the MLA
for Vanderhoof, John Rustad. Commenting
on an article he had posted about global
warming, I found that he was exceptionally
easy to for me to get ahold of, and if I hada
grievance that I wished to air I knew I could
contact him. This was due to the fact that
Rustand is very active on social media. On
the flip side we have Dick Harris, the MP

for Caribou - Prince George, who doesn’t
even have a Facebook page for me to look
to. If a voter wanted to talk with him, they
could go down to his office or email him,
but past experiences of doing those things
have proved to be unfruitful, as a response
(if any) has sometimes taken weeks.

This got me thinking: should being a
politician in the 21st century obligate
you to be highly accessible and easy

to contact? Should politicians start a
Facebook page devoted to the purpose of
keeping communication easy and simple
as soon as they get elected into office?

Naheed Nenshi, the mayor of Calgary, is a
prime example for social media utilization,
and how to do it right. During the floods in
2012, the mayor was on Twitter, contacting
residents of Calgary and replying to their
needs during the freak rainstorm that hit
Calgary in the summer. He was coordinating
rescue services and answering question

of residents who were in need at a time of
crisis. He has since been a great example
of a politician who knows what he is doing
when it comes to social media. Nenshi, @
nenshi, has 88,600 thousand likes on his
Facebook page and has 209,000 thousand

followers on twitter. A quick glance at his
Twitter shows retweets of missing dog
posters and replies to people’s questions.
Nothing is below this mayor to reply to,
including one comment from a resident

of Calgary asking the mayor if right hand
plows would work better than their current
model. This question prompted immediate
response from Nenshi about a study the city
had conducted on the effectiveness of the
current model instead of a change. Keep in
mind that this is the mayor of a city that has
988,000 people living there. Nenshi is a great
example of something that all politicians
should look at and strive towards when it
comes to open communication between the
people of a community and their leaders.

Looking towards our own local government
we have some who are really promising
and some people who need to do some
more work on their online presence. Brian
Skakun seems to be one of the better

city councilors at this task; his Twitter @
BrianSkakunCity has 1,388 followers, and he
has a separate Facebook page that has 727
likes. Keep in mind that Brain Skakun is no
newbie to the idea of open communication
between city council and its community.
Last winter he chimed in quiet extensively
about the city’s failure to keep the streets
clear of snow, even going so far as to post
pictures of city equipment doing nothing
while a huge dump of snow hit our city.

Jillian Merrick, @newjillenium, like Brian
Skakun, is excellent at social media; for a
new councilor she has 698 likes on
Facebook, and 484 followers on
Twitter. Garth Frizzell, @
garthfrizzell, can teach all
his colleagues a thing or
two about social media.
Leading the roster

at 2,202 followers on
Twitter, he knows how to
use the Internet to help
people stay informed.

The other councilors either have

Twitter and have so few followers that it isn’t

worth mentioning, or they don’t have it at all.

Mayor Lyn Hall does not do a bad job on this
front either; @Lynhallpg has 585 followers
with whom he openly speaks and answers
questions. The Nenshi model shows us that if
you are going to have social media you need
to be active and ensure that communication
is not just a one-way street. Hall uses

eature

government and healthy communication
between residents and local leaders.
Provincial and Federal politicians could learn
from the Nenshi model too. The twenty-
first century is a whole new world, and
social media is a huge part of that world,
so it is important that our elected officials
adapt to it. Because they are representing
our needs, they should easily be able to

hear those needs, or what are they

the Nenshi model, and has tried doing in office any way?

to structure his mayoral

campaign after the example Follow Over the

Nenshi set. Hall did a Edge on Twitter @
good job during the OVERtheEDGEunbc to
campaign of keeping have up-to-date info
up with social media, on what’s going on
although it would appear in your community.
he is slowing down a

bit after the campaign.

This amounts to more

transparency

VOTE

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