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You, you social media enthusiast never thought you’d hear the term social media and Canadian federal politics? Maybe you did but I didn’t think it would happen any time soon and I sit corrected. I’ve always had this idea that Canadians are often behind the times. I assumed that Canadian politics would be
From the 2006 election, I just love all the thumbs up
a few years away from engaging in social media, but it seems that we live in an age where things move quickly and also that I am often wrong.
From its FAQ page:
What is electopinion ?
electopinion.ca follows Twitter users blogging about this federal campaign. A mix of posts made by the chiefs, the press or the touring team and the different medias and citizens.
The site is an aggregation of Twitter messages about the campaign and is sorted by the five major parties. The site is very easy to navigate and extremely interesting. I’m very impressed.
Politicians on Twitter
All major parties are represented on Twitter. Most have just recently started writing updates, as the election was only called on Sunday September 7th, but it’s interesting to see them all use Twitter. As far as I know in the United States only Barack Obama has an “official” Twitter presence (correct me if I’m wrong).
You can follow the Canadian party leaders pmharper, ElizabethMay, LiberalTour, jacklayton, gillesduceppe.
It seems that they are using Twitter as a means of announcing their campaign stops for the day and what media outlets they are being interviewed by. It would be nice to see their Twitter accounts (I would assume they have people writing for them) engaging in conversation with other Twitter users, or even other candidates, but I’m not sure if that is realistic considering limited time and budget.
NetPrimeMinister
And my personal favourite is NetPrimeMinisiter. The University of British Columbia’s school of journalism has launched a website NetPrimeMinister.ca that is aggregating content from blogs, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Digg that mentions anything about the five party leaders. We’re only into week two of the campaign and you could probably spend hours reading through all the content that NetPrimeMinister.ca links to.
Let me know if you’ve come across other interesting uses of social media for this election.
Disclaimer: These thoughts come from a non-hockey person.
A lot has been talked about CBC losing the rights to play the ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ theme song. The proposed solution: have a song-writing contest for a $100,000 prize.
Everyone’s upset, calling composer Dolores Claman greedy or the CBC cheap for not wanting to pay for the song. They’re screaming it’s as important as the national anthem. However, it’s only been since 1993 that Claman started to get decent money for the composition. After reading that article, I would argue with anyone calling her greedy. She’s 80 years-old!
I heard one of the DJs on 102.1 The Edge encouraging listeners to write in and complain about the matter. He sounded very upset and very serious. There are a number of Facebook groups popping up with hundreds of hardcore hockey fans lamenting about how watching hockey just won’t be the same listening to the tune on TSN.
This article mentions Liberal critic Denis Coderre demanded Heritage Minister Josee Verner break the deadlock and keep the song alive.
The Hockey Night in Canada theme is a part of Canada’s culture that goes beyond sport,” said Coderre. “If the minister wants to show that she cares about Canadian heritage, this is her chance.
The HNIC theme is a part of some Canadians culture, not all. I have no attachment to hockey and don’t consider it to be a part of my Canadian identity. I feel comments like this are very narrow-minded. I don’t think I’m the only one who doesn’t like hockey. I’m sure there are millions of Canadians who feel the same indifference to it as I do.
I understand why fans are upset, I do. But I think it’s ridiculous how big of a fuss is being made. Does nobody watch the news anymore and see how many actual devastating things occur around the world? Actual real problems, and not just one about a song being played on a different TV channel? Canadians are lucky that this is the perceived worst of their problems.
But, there’s always Mike Myers to come and wave his ‘I’m a Canadian flag’ by featuring the song in his upcoming film The Love Guru, coming out on June 20. The timing of the movie release and this incident is suspicious or coincidental? Or is he just lucky to be able to jump on the coattails of this incident gaining publicity for his movie?
Go to about 3m30s in this clip to see Stephen Colbert’s take on one of the Arctic’s most prized treasure.
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