Using Social Media (SM) for (political) engagement and change involvement  

Getting politicians and media to listen to social media  

Listening to what’s going on

• how it often takes govt a month to catch up to what SM is talking about
• Premise is that population using SM is worth listening to – politicians being open to that
• Isn’t it important that politicians listen to blogs and etc . and not just mainstream media?
• Newspapers are no longer the only source for information
• Resistance to SM has to do with control.You have to be willing to let go of control and that’s one of the biggest fears of politicians. ..people will be talking about something and it has your name on it. But ppl are commenting and passing it on and you can’t control that
• Controlling the message

How do you think politicians should be using Social Media?

• People want to know that politicians are people too.
• Social of social media – connecting with those groups that are interested in different topics /issues
• People respect someone who is actually responding back to citizens.No ghost writers.Using it as a social tool and not necessarily a promotional tool
• Right now the current system comes down – passed down to citizens, rather than the other way around.Bringing the information up
• How does a politician know they are actually talking to a constituent when someone on Twitter, etc. asks a question? -- fear is they don't know WHO they are talking to. Are they talking to a member of the opposite party?  Are they even in Alberta or in the population that they serve?

How do you connect with MLA’s etc, / elected officials?

• Real time – Twitter – it’s a conversation. Much more responsive.
• Sometimes email is not read by them, and def. postal mail is not either
• Those who are connecting with politicians/gov’t – are often at either end of the spectrum.The question is how to engage those who don’t have time to get really deeply involved ie: face to face meetings, focus groups?
  

As people who are fluent in social media, we have a responsibility to show our elected officials how to use SM to their advantage and to the community's advantage

• Teach them how to respond to the aggregation of all the information out there
• By responding to the “negative” comments, you are able to educate threads that start to get out of hand
• Transparency, accountability and open data –but increases cost of operations by 30-40% in order to give that accountability trail – Kai – and that's just aggregating the data
• Informal process – could be very effective through SM – a blog.Very simple and easy way to open and transparent – not edited, not peer reviewed

If they knew that everything they were saying was going to be turned around and tweeted, wouldn’t that create more accountability?

• It doesn’t seem like anyone is “controlling” how politicians are using Social Media? I wonder how long this will last.Is there a filter?It will last until something big (bad) happens and then rules/filters may come into effect
• Can Social Media be controlled?Or should it?
• User beware - -you always need to judge the information you get in and think logically about it.
• Blog aggregators – need to make sure not narrowing perspective.How do you capture all the information you need to?