The Newsroom Blog

Controversial pro-gun Conservative MP MP Garry Breitkreuz details how the early campaign against the Liberals’ gun registry arouse out of his more than 550 access-to-information requests. See his comments here on Youtube.

It may be just a coincidence, but records on the internet suggest that the Liberal party of Canada registered the www.liberaldemocrats.ca website address (which today redirects to the main Liberal.ca website) in December 2008. “Liberal Democrats” has recently been suggested as a possible name for the merged NDP and Liberal parties.

UPDATE: Well it seems the Liberal party was none too happy about this URL pointing to their current homepage. www.liberaldemocrats.ca no longer redirects to the main Liberal party homepage.

The PMO’s media management strategy is more often than not reduced to a question of personalities—Dimitri Soudas getting his fair share of attention these days. The PMO’s website, YouTube page, Twitter account—all seemingly fed by one staffer schooled in the art of talking point-ology, is similarly well tread territory. Much less known, however, are the media analyses and data mining tools used by PMO staffers in their efforts to track media reporting on all-things-political. Enter Jon Stewart, the master of political TV remixing. Stewart’s The Daily Show staff mastered the art of political analysis and satire through an uncanny ability to identify particularly intriguing moments of televised political history. The Daily Show of course assembles its nightly broadcast, particularly its segments that draw heavily on the absurd moments in televised political life, through the use of video search technology—the same technology that the PMO recently adopted in its own efforts to manage its media relations. The technology dubbed “Snapstream” is defined as a “cross between a DVR on steroids and a search engine.” In case you were wondering, the “conservative” talk show host Stephen Colbert also subscribes to the same technology—perhaps that might have been a better lead for this story.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff may not be the biggest conversationalist on Twitter but he and his staff sure are the most mobile in their use of the social media platform. Nearly 66 per cent of Iggy’s tweets were posted using mobile Twitter software. Conversely, all but one of the PM’s posts were made from PCs, suggesting that they were posted from an office or other static location. Duceppe only posted six tweets on the road (via a mobile twitter software), at the Bloc’s byelection eve party in Montreal, last fall. Only one per cent of Layton’s posts were made on mobile platforms, though Layton’s account also flooded the Twitter-verse with images, some of which may have been uploaded on the road.

Want to converse with the party leaders on Twitter? How about a quick one liner chat with Iggy, that new “networked” leader? Forget about it. Less than one per cent of Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff’s Twitter posts (the OLO) were in response to other posts. Only comedian Rick Mercer and a Twitter account from Canada Place in Vancouver received responses from the Liberal leader.

Next comes NDP Leader Jack Layton’s Twitter account, the busiest of the bunch (more than twice the number of tweets than any of the other leaders), but like Iggy not very likely to engage in a quick social media chat before heading to QP. Only 2.3 per cent of Layton’s tweets were responses to other tweets. Mercer also receives a reply from Layton.

The PM (or let’s face it some staffer in the PMO, I somehow struggle to believe that Stephen Harper is a social media junkie), conversely, only engaged other twits 3.7 per cent of the time that “he” was typing away on his keyboard. In computer-geek-language we could say that the PM is a talkative lurker, only that sounds a bit rude, so let’s keep with the broadcast metaphor.

Lonely, bored? Or want to talk over the future of Quebec? Well Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe is your man, at least on Twitter. The Bloc leader is by far the most conversant of all the leaders on Twitter. Some 16 per cent of Duceppe’s tweets were in response to other Twitter posts.

Some background to yesterday’s discussion about YouTube’s promotion and live streaming the PM in the House of Commons. While Google, YouTube’s owner, continues to expand its range of info-services, some significant media moguls have begun to push back. Rupert Murdoch’s Sky media conglomerate, which includes The Sun, The Times, and The Wall Street Journal among its holdings, has led the charge against Google’s practice of aggregating other media outlet’s online news stories, images, and videos. The story took on a decidedly political twist last fall when Murdoch’s U.K. tabloid, The Sun, dramatically switched its allegiance from Labour to the Tories on the eve of a much-hyped speech from Gordon Brown to his (then less than) party faithful.  Ever since, Labourites have leaked story upon story calling into question Tory leader Duncan Cameron’s payback to Murdoch—a regulatory regime that promises to curtail the reach of Google’s news aggregation services.

Google then is clearly on the hunt for not only free content for its portal and news aggregator—it is also in search of political friends to fend off calls to change its unfettered access to media content across the web.

Where do ideas come from? Where are social, political, and economic solutions developed? Hardly a hotly-contested or partisan question, I thought. And while I wouldn’t necessarily “brand” the recently-announced list of speakers at the Liberals’ much-hyped policy convention as overtly partisan, collectively it would be hard to say that they represent the future of public policy. They are, in short, almost exclusively managers. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a class rant against the bosses, far from it. Managers have a unique bird’s eye or macro view on institutions. And while many of the speakers included in the Liberals’ upcoming event have long and distinguished careers that include various managerial functions, they almost uniformally excel in one aspect of the policy process—the art of sales. The policy speakers are then much more than “managers” in the strict administrative sense, rather they have clearly been chosen as a group for their visionary leadership, collectively having succeeded at advancing and enabling various aspects of public policy. That said, they do not develop it. Like politicians, such leaders have excelled as communicators, ones that inspire confidence in products and agendas, networking to the political and economic classes, and of course fundraising for various causes. But do such administrators, managers, directors, presidents, CEOs bring new ideas and solutions to the table? If history is any judge, the answer is an emphatic no. Rather, innovations in public policy have been developed through a series of public and private interlocutors engaged in policy research, innovation, and experimentation. And then policy is analyzed, typically through short term and localized test cases, the more successful of which are incorporated into election platforms or more subtly integrated into the bureaucracy. This presumes of course a native approach to policy development, which is also historically not the case—in other words, public policy is almost always adopted and revised from other jurisdictions. Some jurisdictions are said to be net policy exporters or innovators (California, or Vancouver come to mind) others importers (no names mentioned!). Policy is also developed socially, in dialogue within policy research groups, peer evaluations, and then among a number of stakeholders, including managers (economic and administrative), practitioners, professionals, front line staff, clients, etc. Innovative policies also tend to evolve out of new experiences and problems, which are, of course, disproportionately experienced and understood by younger researchers, entrepreneurs, and policy professionals. The ability to dialogue and debate about policy, the inclusion of under 40 innovators, a recognition of international/inter-jurisdictional sources of policy innovation and adaptation, and a renewed commitment to public and social research,—these are all key components of a rigorous, inclusive, and potentially innovative process of public policy formation and renewal. Politicians, Liberal or otherwise, are well-schooled in the rhetoric of public policy, they hardly need another venue to practise political communications, unless it is simply an exercise in rebranding—a wrapping of new colours, images, and textures around a political party desperately in need of new, innovative public policy solutions.

I suppose it was a bit rude not to introduce myself and launch into a mini twitter-expose. A friend once told me that I had a very “clean” profile on Google, which of course led to many hours ego-surfing on the search engine to see how my life was progressing (or regressing in some instances). So, I’ll leave it to those interested to check out my aggregated-net-bio on Google. For regular HT readers, I’m hoping you might have seen one or two of my columns over the past few years. My contributions have been variously labeled as editorials (likely when I’ve ranted too much), “Digital Politics” (when I’m focused), or nothing (when I’m unfocused). My previous contributions to the paper version of The Hill Times have been reflections on the introduction, use, and abuse of new information and communication technologies in the political sphere — most commonly in Canada, but also recently in the UK (where I was stationed as a “fella” at the London School of Economics, Anglia Ruskin U., and the University of Manchester).

In the next few months I’ll also be spending time in South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore, so look for this blog to offer some global perspectives in the months to come. That said, the lions share of my ruminations will emanate — geographic and ideologically — from Toronto, where I draw a regular paycheque from Ryerson University. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep my thoughts to new media, but from time to time I might wonder off and talk about media and politics in general — I aspire to blog about political fashion too, but let’s all hope it doesn’t come to that.

Some know me as a professor and research chair of new media at Ryerson, while others may recognize my name as Director of the Infoscape Centre for the Study of Social Media. During the last federal election my students and I helped out with research for CBC’s “Ormiston Online” coverage of the internet campaign. My political friends dismiss me as an “academic”, while my enemies refer to me as a “journalist” (sorry its true!). More importantly, since I generally despise blind or hyper-partisanship, I prefer to be known as a skeptic.

Taking out the trash is all the rage these days — and not just on Friday nights, or before holidays, or by the government for that matter. Twitter has for intents and purposes become the late night, after hours space for all things — and people — political. While responses to daily news reports and blogs flutter across the twitter-0-sphere during daylight hours, the real action begins after 7pm, when politicos let down their guard, talk about social lives, and reflect upon the day gone by. Debates heat up, mis-communications proliferate, and egos glow brighter. Links to articles fade, opinions harden, soften, and harden again. Much laughter ensues. Personalities are exposed. Web editors post the future news and then the cycle begins again.

Twitter resources:

Kieran McKenzie’s list of political twitter accounts

MPs on twitter

#cdnpoli (hash tag often used by political activists, MPs, and journalists)