Political parties need a strong social media presence because Canadians are in-creasingly getting information on these platforms.
In the recent Alberta provincial election social media played a big role, say analysts.
At the start of the federal election, the three main political parties were ready for the social media battles to come. Short videos, memes, and info-graphics that concisely describe how a party’s platform will make Canada better are effective weapons in the media fight.
[yop_poll id=”31″]
What seems to be even more effective is content that undermines a competitor’s messages and describes how their platform will destroy Canada.
Read Also
Proactive approach best bet with looming catastrophes
The Pan-Canadian Action Plan on African swine fever has been developed to avoid the worst case scenario — a total loss ofmarket access.
But even carefully planned social-media strategies can go awry.
When prime minister Stephen Harper released a short, and very shareable video on twitter, which described how he would not tax the online American entertainment service Netflix, it backfired.
The claim the prime minister made in the video, that the other parties wanted to tax Netflix, turned out to be false and social media users decided to punish the Conservative campaign for the mistruth.
The hash tag #HarperANetflixShow started trending. On the hash tag people edited Harper into unflattering pictures and added cynical titles of made-up movies and TV series:
Better Rob call Saul, The Silence of the Lab Scientists, No Country for (Anyone but) Old (White) Men, etc.
While many of the made-up movie names were neither funny or in good taste, some of them were and those were retweeted and favourited hundreds of times.
The CPC is a national organization with millions of dollars at its disposal, but was undermined by private social media users with simple Photoshop skills. The other political parties didn’t have to lift a finger; the voters did all the work.
With traditional TV and newspaper ads, investing millions of dollars all but guarantees a political party’s carefully crafted message will reach a specific demographic, with little chance of significant blowback.
The social media battlefront is much less predictable.
