Socialmedialand

Posts Tagged ‘presidential blogs’

Despite your (or my) personal political affiliation it’s commonly accepted that our current President’s approval rating has been pretty low over the last two terms. He’s made a lot of unpopular decisions, for better or for worse, both domestically and internationally. I think one of the most interesting results of that is watching/listening to Americans try to explain as patriotically as possible (especially to non-Americans) how our President doesn’t necessarily represent us (lowercase) as individuals or the US (uppercase) as a nation.

And I think that’s all about to change – and it’s going to change because the Social Media groundswell is integrating into politics.

[And here I hesitate - because talking about politics is such a hot topic and I don't want to open myself up to attack or the chance I might offend someone, so bear with me while I try to stay as close to center as humanly possible. I also want to be clear that I'm not attempting to make any value judgements - just simply talk about what is going on right now.]

But here goes – since the election on Nov. 4th I’ve seen a few people passing around a URL I hadn’t seen during the campaign – http://www.change.gov. I wanted to check it out and see what it was all about and I have to say that any politics aside it’s a very exciting site.

We were all very excited when social media came into play during the election campaigns – and I think it was generally accepted that Barack Obama had the most success using social. There was my.barackobama.com,  a Facebook page, a Twitter page, and viral videos galore. To give credit where credit is due, many of the other candidates also utilized these tools. But they were often late to the game and, most importantly, forgot to interact directly with the communities who formed there (or at least not to the extent that Obama’s staff did.) I think comparing Hilary’s Twitter to Obama’s sort of illustrates this (note how many people they are following back):

But at the same time I think we all questioned whether the responsiveness in these communities would decrease or end altogether after the election… Just like a lot of other campaigns where a candidate promises to listen to you and your needs and promptly forgets about you the day they step into office.

I won’t say that that question has been completely answered – it’s still to be seen what will happen over the next 4 years when Obama takes office in January. But Change.gov is a start, and it’s a promising start. There are places on the site for users to post their “visions” or ideas for the country and share their personal stories. There’s a blog that keeps people up to date with current news about Obama, including video in most cases. Part of the site is dedicated to an outlining of Obama’s agenda and there’s several links throughout the site that explain the transition and what the significance is of the major decisions being made right now.

This is a level of transparency that I would argue has never been seen in government before. IF the site follows through on its promise, meaning there is a sizable staff to pick through these ideas and bubble up the ones the reoccur the most often it could completely change the way Americans interact with government. Additionally, IF Obama actually carries through with the social mindset he claimed to have in his speech of listening to and sincerely considering any opposing opinions to his stated agenda he might be able to make the progress he’s been promising.

Quick side note: in the past any politician who made a decision or said anything different from their previous opinion is accused of “flip-flopping” on an issue. I’ve always been confused by this because don’t we want them to listen to us and follow our wants/needs rather than their own? But I think this will be a greater issue if Obama follows through with his site’s promise and changes his policies according to the feedback he gets – it’s what we’d want him to do but I wonder if it would actually end up hurting his reputation? Just a random thought…and now back to the technology…

It’s definitely not perfect – I would like to see more functionality to view and vote on what others have posted (this was also suggested on Groundswell’s blog post about Change.gov), and maybe add comments (although I see how that could lead to a logistical nightmare if the site gains popularity). Either way it’s certainly a giant step ahead of being ignored entirely like we had been in the past, that is unless it was an election year.

One more side note: This trend has applications beyond just Obama and the President’s office – social media has been making inroads into politics in other areas as well. My coworker, Dustin, wrote a post about city governments joining Twitter to start discussions about the economy and how that could easily expand to include other topics like traffic, saftey, and more. Maybe Change.gov is just a piece of a larger movement?

But just imagine what it would be like if you truly believed something you said had a chance of reaching the President’s ear and he was willing to listen to it. We’d all, in a sense, be part of the cabinet.

What would you say?

It might finally, truly, be a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

So what do you think about social media in politics? Let me know in the comments section! (Please, no discussion of specific policy, if electing Obama was right or wrong, etc. Let’s keep this to a discussion of how social media can/will affect politics. I reserve the right to remove inflammatory comments.)