Social Media & Politics: When Will It Be Taken Seriously?

Why doesn’t government and politicians take activism on Social Media services seriously? To some degree they do. For elected members activity on blogs, comments on news sites, some Twitter commentary; can be an indicator of citizen sentiment on an issue. But what about petitions and gaining change within government?

My theory is that there’s a few issues at work here, legitimate ones for government. Issues that will need addressing in the future.

Content Quality: Let’s face it, often times the “comments” left in online news services and blogs are often crap. They are highly opinionated and often without the evidence needed to make the opinion based on some qualified research or data. Often they are rants and by people who likely can’t be persuaded to an alternate stance anyway; politicians and government understand this. It’s not worth the effort to address them.

Anonymity & Identification: This to me is a serious element. Most people post on blog comments or news media site comments under an assumed false name or “handle” like “opinionator123″ and don’t use a real name. One has no idea if that person is a smart 12 year old or a 40 year old, male or female or living within the jurisdiction of the story being addressed. This then goes to the issue of identification and validating the responses or discussion.

What Will Be Needed?

Today, there doesn’t exist a way to truly validate an individual (beyond online voting systems, which are not scaled to go beyond electoral requirements and time lines.) Outside of Cyburbia, we have established means of determining personal identity (drivers license, identity cards, passports etc.) which we do not have in Cyburbia. Hand written signatures on a petition are acceptable because there’s a proven means of validation, trusted and accepted. But there isn’t for our lives in Cyburbia.

So Where Does That Leave Us?

For now, I think that just leaves politicians and government bureaucrats with taking Social Media seriously – but only so far. More in terms of “general sentiment” or identification of potential issues to cross over into voter or constituent actions. But that’s it. Government has a responsibility to the public to make decisions based on quantifiable sources and via accepted means.

So until some form of personal validation system is developed and validated by governments, we can’t expect activism in Social Media services and channels to be taken overly seriously. Services like Move On are gaining momentum, but still remain on the fringes of acceptance. In India such activism is taking hold, but only hits the “elites” or those that can afford computers and Web access; still missing the majority of the population.

What do you think?

(Author: G. Crouch)