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Claims that the recent Australian Federal election was the "YouTube election" or an ‘e-election' are greatly exaggerated.
There was a lot of hype about how Web 2.0 technologies allegedly influenced the last Federal Election. However, research shows that much of the claimed impact of YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, blogs and other ‘new' media remains questionable at this stage.
From July through to November as the election campaign rolled out traditional print and television media were awash with claims that wikis, blogs, vlogs as well as websites like Facebook, and YouTube were changing the way we deal with our politicians, and the way they deal with us.
A study carried out by the Australian Centre for Public Communication at the University of Technology Sydney found that most Web 2.0 type applications used by politicians and political parties failed to take advantage of the interactive ‘conversation' features this technology provides.
So, here's a provocative question - if the answer is social networking, what was the question?
It's easy to be carried away these days by an uncritical tidal wave of emotional engagement with the wonderful world of social networking with its evocative call to connect, communicate and collaborate.
And the evidence is mounting that we're past the stage of passing fad - 70 million blogs and counting, 120,000 new blogs created every day, the social photo site Flickr uploading anything up to 5,000 pictures or more every minute of the day. In 2007, Forrester research suggested that nearly 70% of 12-21 year olds were actively involved in social networks of one sort or another.
A new "point of view" paper from Cisco confronts one of the big questions facing government and public policy arising from this astonishing phenomenon:
So how does the phenomenon of social networking affect government? Why should the ability of a single user to share a video of a skateboarding dog with a global audience of more than 100 million cause governments fundamentally to rethink not only how they interact with citizens, but what they actually do?
An ever-widening mediascape brings the hope that a greater plurality of views, issues and attributes will see the light of public attention.
Last week while the Pope was in Sydney and World Youth Day dominated the media agenda, the founding father of media agenda-setting flew in for a quick visit after speaking at the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association conference in New Zealand and, while attracting a much smaller audience, had some interesting things to say.
Professor Max McCombs who gained worldwide attention in 1972 after publishing research with his colleague Donald Shaw showing media set the agenda of issues during the 1968 US Presidential election, has evolved his views since, but says the media are still setting and framing the agenda of issues and debate.
But now there is a much wider range of media bringing issues to public attention and giving them salience...
How can government make it 'Safe to Play' for citizens when they are offered wiki or blog or social networking styles of interaction with government?
Facebook has recently been rattling our confidence somewhat. On November 6, Facebook outlined a strategy to integrate more targeted advertising into its popular social networking website. By 5 December, the strategy had been wound back & the CEO of Facebook had offered an apology.
What was this about & what has this to do with citizens and governments?
The strategy was "Beacon". Its tracking technology included the ability to report back to Facebook when a user makes a purchase or similar transaction on a Facebook partner website. Any purchase could be broadcast to anyone who has access to the user's Facebook profile. Beacon was enabled by default but users could also opt out (if they were quick & alert & did not have a popup blocker operating), for example on each transaction.
The backlash led to the Beacon arrangement being switched over to opt in & the CEO apology.
And the link to government? What if government starts offering Web 2.0 style services then re-uses user information, be it input or user behaviour revealed by audit logs or 'friends' / community groupings etc?
Social media is changing the nature of information exchange, but it is information itself that is suffering an identity crisis.
If Marshall McLuhan’s global village is to be understood as a toponym for a digitally connected world, then social media have to be seen as a cross between a village meeting point and its informal information (ie gossip) network.
Questions of its purpose, utility and effect are puzzling sociologists, CEOs and communications strategists alike. The possibilities of expanding its economic function are not easily understood beyond connectedness and access to a deluge of raw information. And the transformation of traditional media sources into social media-rules-driven platforms is confusing to anyone who cares about the distinction between useful information and, well, everything else …
It has to be rather ironic that I am using a blog to voice an opinion on the great information noise that has flooded our communications channels since the advent of social media. But, as a respected communications strategist, Roger D’Aprix, recently pointed out, we are all drowning in sound bites and instant judgments, drowning in opinion, drowning in raw information … and in this supposed democratisation of information exchange, we have somehow lost sight of the value of the currency being exchanged – information itself.
