Social Media's Role In The Election

By Michelle Cyr-Whiting

Prince George, B.C. - There is no doubt about it - Facebook is changing the 'face' of campaigning...

Chats, tweets, blogs are all social media avenues being vigorously pursued by the candidates as a means to 'update their status' with voters. 

The tweets were fast and furious from the federal party leaders prior to yesterday's debate.  And, when Harper spoke out about the prospect of one-on-one debate with the Liberal Leader while out on the campaign trail yesterday, the tweeting went direct: Ignatieff sent a missive to Harper, "A one-on-one debate? Any time.  Any place."  Harper responded that the Liberal camp had failed to speak up when the Conservative proposed it to the consortium broadcasting the debate.  Not to be left out, NDP Leader Jack Layton referred to his performance at the 2008 debate when he tweeted, "Don't blame you for not wanting to face me again" to Harper.

UNBC Political Scientist, Jason Morris, says, "I had Twitter on while I watched the debate and there were about 20 to 40 tweets just on the election debate every minute or so, so that's a lot of people participating this way."

"What we don't really know yet, is if this has any impact in terms of, say, parties getting more support or, in turn, parties getting better feedback from people," says Morris. "Further, we don't know yet whether new social media does such important things as increasing voter turn-out."

"We're really in the first social media election for Canada and we have to participate this way - the parties have to - but we don't really know the benefits yet."

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