Review of social media use regarding the NB Power sale
Posted by Lamespotting on 16 Nov 2009 at 04:00 am | Tagged as: Reviews
The debate about NBPower is a fast-moving one. In today’s age, information travels quickly. I’ll review how well each of the parties did.
The CBC – A+ Again, the CBC does a bang-up job. Not only have they been on top of the deal, they’re also using social media in the two way format that it was designed for. It’s good to see a local news source well ahead of the curve.
Twitter user @JoeFitzIII – A+ From what I can tell, Joe FitzPatrick is a Fredericton based lawyer. It almost looks like he is planning to enter politics. Of all the knowledgeable people in the group, he is the only one that is actually responding and interacting to concerns and questions (excluding the CBC). If he is going into politics, he’s on the right track.
The Liberals – F – They use Twitter and Facebook, but they fail at actually using it to engage. Many people have posted valid questions on Twitter, but have received nothing but silence from the Liberals. In fact, rahter than use the established hashtag of #nbpower4sale, they went ahead and started using #lowerrates. That actually leads to less discussion.
The Conservatives – F – They seem to be very disorganized. Shortly after the deal was announced, they made some noise on Twitter, but it was closer to the quips yelled on the Legislature floor rather than anything of any actual substance. They had a great opportunity to engage and come up with a strong opposition front to the deal, but they missed the boat. They didn’t even respond or attempt to defend this disastrous video of their leader refusing to answer a question.
“NO to Sale of NB Power” Facebook group – B – Doing a great job, but they seem to be having some problems separating the loons from the valid concerns. Despite that, they’re actually having productive discussions and getting things organized to protest the sale.
For A Better Tomorrow, Sell NB Power – F – Another example of failing to engage. The Facebook group has been renamed several times, gone to invite-only and then gone back to being public. This makes it hard for anyone to join. Their loon-control policy is to delete everything that opposes the deal. This also removed a lot of legitimate debate. Most of the activity has been from the admins. Many of the legitimate complaints aren’t actually getting addressed, they are just being ignored.
A problem with those last two, the yay and nay Facebook groups, is that to engage you must join and that suggests you support the position they take. I have a problem with my presence being taken as being either for or against simply because I want to engage in a conversation. However, I don’t really see how they could avoid this — I suppose it depends on what the purpose of each page was set up for. In both cases, it seems they were created to generate support rather than debate.
One you missed is David Campbell’s blog (http://davidwcampbell.com/) where I’ve found the most interesting debate.
and blogs???
There were just too many blogs to cover, I couldn’t review every one of them. I think we’re at the point now that we can expect a lot of good blog articles on any controversial subject.