Hummingbird604.com » Politics 2.0

My interview with David Berner on The Power of Social Media in Public Policy

Raul — Fri, 20 May 2011 03:07:15 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked by David Berner to be a guest on his show on Shaw Community TV on The Power of Social Media in Public Policy. Given my experience in the field (I teach and do research on Public Policy, and I have a strong social media presence and work and consult on this topic), I felt particularly honored and felt that this was an incredibly fitting opportunity to discuss issues of how we use social media in public policy. Below is the full 30 minute show.

Thanks to David for inviting me to his show and giving me the opportunity to discuss issues that I’m passionate about and that I’m currently working on. It was a wonderful conversation. And I think it’s particularly timely.

What the heck happened this past Canadian Federal Election?

Raul — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:30:43 +0000

I was reading a tweet by Joe Solomon regarding an upcoming talk he’s giving on the use of internet and social media to help solve the climate change crisis. I won’t get into the details of whether it is solving the climate crisis or at least mitigate some of the effects it will have and adapt to climate change. That’s for another post.

But as I was reading Joe’s tweet and thinking about what we can do, something made me stop in my tracks. You DID have a great tool to vote strategically (VoteForEnvironment.ca). Did people NOT use it? I mean, as you can see from the results of this election, the Conservative government is staying in power and Stephane Dion is stepping down from the Liberal leadership.

If (as argued by many comentators) Harper’s climate policy is less than ideal, and people wanted to vote to achieve environmental goals (using the Vote For Environment strategic voting tool), why didn’t anything happen to shift from one government to the other? I can say that the website VFE was really popular, so clearly people were looking at it. Did nobody take action?

Just puzzled…

Beyond national frontiers with Twitter

Raul — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 18:15:17 +0000

Credit: JMilles

Yes I know I tweet. A lot. With over 9,000 tweets since April 2008, I have no clue how I have managed to actually maintain my followers. You are too kind! At any rate, while I was in Mexico I started thinking about following some people there but then I unfollowed them as I figured that I wouldn’t be staying for long and thus it was kind of pointless.

Through my tweeting, I’ve discovered that I now have followers not only from Canada, but also from the US, United Kingdom, Mexico, and that’s kind of neat to me. Because I sincerely think that Twitter should trascend domestic frontiers.

I know that I shouldn’t care about my stats but since I was asked to provide some metrics of traffic, I did a quick Alexa search and found out that about 30% of my traffic comes from the US. Nice! To be quite frank, I didn’t even think anybody read my blog in the US (seeing as the vast majority of my writing is fairly hyper-local, e.g. Vancouver). But I’m glad people do, and I’m glad I am able to provide some content that can have wider appeal.

Credit: justj000lie

On a semi-related tangent, I also have to say that I’m glad that Elizabeth May (leader of the Green Party and candidate to Prime Minister of Canada) is interacting with her followers on Twitter (@elizabethmay). I was very impressed with the way she conducted herself during the debates, and I have several very close friends of mine who are friends with her (or at least know her very well).

Politics 2.0 – Data and research methods (and Twitter)

Raul — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:00:47 +0000

I briefly saw a little segment by Susan Ormiston on The National (the night news) where she explained what has been going on Twitter. She has teamed up with Dr. Greg Elmer from the Infoscape Research Lab at Ryerson University. I hadn’t heard about them (although I kind of think that Dr. Elmer was here for Cossette Convergence/VIDFEST — but then again remember that I am not really a tech/new media/social media researcher (like danah boyd or Frank Stutzman). So I should be cut some slack

However, as a researcher and a scholar, I kinda like to know the research methods when I examine a project. Given that I do social media as a hobby, but still look at it from the research perspective, I was kind of taken aback when Susan was explaining that Twitter was “sort of a micro-blogging platform” ( I know I’m being nitpicky, heh ).

They (and by they I am meaning Greg and his team) implemented a tracking mashup “OrmistonOnline” and its corresponding website where they were tracking the Canadian politicians debate that happened tonight (with Stephen Harper, Stephane Dion, Jack Layton, Elizabeth May, Gilles Duceppe – I hope I didn’t miss any candidate!).

I saw part of the debate, and I was kind of taken aback that at some points, the leaders weren’t really very polite to each other, interrupting each other. But I digress. My point of this brief post was that I’d be interested in seeing a global mashup (e.g. not only tracking with the hashtags #ormistononline but tracking for all and each one of the candidates).

I also saw some really neat graphs on television, and I’d be interested in knowing the methodology behind them. I must say that I like the approach of surveying new media on the part of mainstream media. As I have said before, bloggers and journalists both have a role.

And *geek alert* Greg Elmer’s website is powered by WordPress.