Citizens Interview the PM

As mentioned on my blog for class, I discussed Stephen Harper’s foray into YouTube to answer questions put worth from citizens via the web. I would like to re-examine this here, and take a look at how it was received, and whether or not people have deemed it successful.

The YouTube broadcast has been viewed over 200,000 times. This is a substantial amount of people that partook in the event but compared to the population of Canada as a hole, and even compared to the top rated videos on YouTube, it is not a monumental number. Is the engagement of government in social media really working? Are Canadians not aware enough about these events and tools? Or do people not care enough about politics/expect to see their politicians in a more traditional media form, like a television broadcast?

Journalists have found that overall this new attempt at having an “open” forum with the public was successful. The Globe and Mail published a write up on the interview and provided some insightful suggestions on how to improve on this type of governmental media event:

“Be careful of refocusing questions
Re-directing questions does not qualify (when questions get walked around there is not ability for the citizen to respond and bring this up)
Lack of follow-up questions (not a true back and forth conversation)
Pick your interviewer carefully
Ask the most-voted questions
People ask good questions but could do with some advice
Video questions are better than text questions
Share each answer as a small video
Be real. “And that's when social media works best – when we get to see people being human. Otherwise, you just look wooden and, frankly, uninteresting”

That is the crux of social media being used as a form of democratic/citizen media. People need to be accessible, otherwise the barriers of traditional forms of media still exist.