Looking Forward

“Participation must be seen as a defining principle of digital culture with the emergence of independent media centers, as their commitment to open publishing (anyone can post or upload content to the web site), online and offline collaborative media production (producing web sites, print newsletters, audio and video), and open-sourcing decision-making processes (made available through publicly accessible mailing lists and chat channels) shows.... Participation, not in the least enabled and amplified by the real-time connectedness of Internet and however voluntarist, incoherent, and perhaps solely fuelled by private interests is a principal component of digital culture” (Deuze 67).

The forums are now available for the public to contribute to the public sphere and online digital culture, and the government needs to be where its citizens are. The biggest issue with both government employees using forms of social media at work (specifically social networking), and the government using it for its own workers, and to engage with the public, is control. Both Canadian and American governments have PR and communication strategies, and information is not just released to the public. There is also worry of accidental release of private information from hacking and viruses that could but the government and citizen’s private information at risk. While there is a lot of legitimacy to these concerns, it seems to be more about the lack of control on the part of control the government’s image. These forums allow for public feedback, which takes away the parameters in which the government can control their carefully crafted messages. Will there ever be a full back and forth dialogue? Should there be? As mentioned in a previous post, citizens expect their government to be serious, but they also want to see the humans behind the institution. If the government can provide a more truly transparent institution, and not just a heavily controlled appearance of one, then maybe citizens and government can understand each other more, and a fruitful public sphere can exist provide an impact on the way the government operates.

These endeavours are all new and evolving. From discussing what social media is, looking at its development in the Canadian and Ontario government, specifically how it is being used, how the United States government is engaging in social media, and looking at the outcome of Stephen Harper's YouTube interview, I think that it is providing an important yet flawed service of engagement for citizens, and that overtime the most useful tools will last. The government needs to find ways to balance its privacy of information while providing more transparency, but also acknowledge the hypocrisy of its current policies that ban workers from accessing sites like Facebook and YouTube at work, while the agencies are on these sites themselves. If there will there ever be a fully democratic public sphere is a very idealistic notion, but any steps we take towards accessibility, staying informed, making the government accountable and being engaged as a public is a good thing.

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.

America Online

As another Western democratic country, it makes sense to compare our Government 2.0 strategies with the United States and see how each is progressing into a more democratic public sphere.

After examination of both country’s Web 2.0 strategies, they both seem to be progressing similarly, embracing the same social media tools to share information, yet also a similar hesitation about the usefulness of social media, and concerns over privacy and control. This past fall Facebook itself launched a government page to shows international governments ways in which Facebook can be useful to connect with their citizens, and it provided links to the American government agencies that were on Facebook. The US government has its own YouTube channel to showcase its efforts to engage in new media. The government has set up Govtwit, an online directory for all government agencies on Twitter. Similar to the Ontario government’s OPSedia, the US government as a GovLoop, a social networking site for people in government. This is embracing social media in a different way. It is not a open access “democratic” forum, but rather a way for a specific group of people, in this case government workers, to connect and share with each other in a more efficient way, and within the privacy boundaries that a government has.

While these initiatives can be criticised for how much influence citizens can actually have on government decisions, they do allow for a closer view at how those in government operate. It seemingly makes the government more transparent to citizens. Also, if citizens have means of expressing directly to government, or just in a public platforms, such as on one’s personal blog, then this ability to have one’s voice heard and therefore spread ones opinion can make the government more accountable to its constituents.

Taking a Closer Look: The Government & Social Media in Action

Here I would like to look at effective ways the federal government of Canada, as well as the provincial government of Ontario, have used forms of social media to connect with their publics.

The federal government has its own internal wiki, called GCpedia. This past fall the Chief Information Officer of Canada announced that it had been working successfully. The site, a “collaborative text editing environment for federal government employees”, grew to over 8, 600 members and across 95 federal government departments. It began as “a repository for government information", but grew in its uses by the collaborators on the site. Users began to place documents on the site to be shared instead of being stored in their email accounts and being sent around when needed, which would take up bandwidth.

Government agencies have made themselves accessible on all platforms of social media, as well on mobile applications. The Public Health Agency of Canada have a page on their web site encouraging users to “stay informed and stay connected”. The agency is on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, with widgets for users to add to their own blogs and social media sites, and mobile applications available.

The provincial government in Ontario is also present in social media. “The province is employing a variety of Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, RSS and blogs to enable government employees to share information and collaborate on various projects.” The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Affordable Housing, Ministry of Natural Resources and Foodland Ontario all have Twitter accounts, which provide informational updates to their followers. While Foodland Ontario has over 3,000 followers and MNR has over 1,000, MAAH only has over 200. How effective are these initiatives if they are not getting attention? Does this show that the public is only interesting in engaging certain agencies in certain forums?

The Ontario Public Service also has its own version of a social networking site, in lieu being able to access Facebook, called OPSedia. It allows users to create profiles for themselves, write blogs and connect with other members of the OPS. However it is a strictly internal entity. This means is it is not a true form of social media, with access to the public and ease of information sharing. This attempt to control access to information on the government’s part shows there are still many hesitations on their side to embrace fully what social media is, as well as a fully open discourse with the public.

The Development of Government in Social Media

The possibilities of social media have been strong, not only on our personal lives, but on the government and its policies. While this may seem like a technological determinist point of view, there are changes in how people are searching for and receiving information. It is not so much that the forms of social media immediately changed society, but rather enough people chose to use and engage in these forms of media that the government had to not only take notice, but develop policies for their employers, and for how they would incorporate it into their strategies.

In Ontario, the government’s first response to social media sites such as Facebook and Youtube were to not allow them, as they were seen as being used by employees for personal use and therefore deemed inappropriate. “Personal use” is an interesting term. While most companies have a policy regarding emails, email is integral to how organizations function and communicate, and it would be preposterous to consider a company not allowing email. If employees are allowed access (with certain restrictions) to email and phone, should a site like Facebook be completely banned? Are employees not allowed breaks and lunch hours? At government offices, the Facebook site has been blocked from being accessible.

As forms of social media evolved sites with different purposes emerged, providing useful platforms for the government to use to their benefit, and allowing for a more democratic space for citizens to connect back. There are limits to how connected people want to be to the government via forms of social media. According to Ken Cochrane, former Chief Information Officer of the Government of Canada,

“[Canadians] see Web 2.0 as interesting, but there was also cautionary feedback. They don’t want the government to use the technology just because it’s cool – they want such decisions to be based on solid business requirements,” he says. “Canadians expect the government to be serious.”

There are many forms of social media that provide great resources for professional use. LinkedIn for example, allow users to put up their work and educational information, like an online resume. Users can connect to former employers, provide information on what industry they are working in and display what experience they have. Twitter is another prominent social media site that can be utilized for professional uses. While often in the news because of celebrity use, Twitter can be used as an information sharing site, allowing for easy connecting of citizens to each other and prominent figures in different industries. Organizations and individuals on Twitter share information, reply to each other, and “retweet” what others have said to create a greater sense of interaction and interconnectivity. This has advantages for both citizens and the government. People can openly express their opinions, and when a large number of people are talking about something on Twitter, it gets attention. If used how it is intended, it can truly be a democratic form of participatory media, which any citizen able to send a message to a governmental figure or agency.




This is great in theory, but these sites can be criticised about how democratic and useful they really are. Are changes being made because of what citizens are writing about on Twitter or blogs? Who is managing the social media account? A lot of official accounts are run by others, and when it comes to a government agency on Twitter like the MNR, it is not revealed who is running the account. It cannot be known if what people are responding with is being read and considered. There is the chance that there is just an appearance of democratization and rather very little leverage actually given to others.

However, as social media has developed and more and more people are own sites like Twitter and Youtube, it is necessary for the government to be on these sites and find out which methods work for their purpose. While it is not a perfect system,increased forms of access and connectivity are an impovement.

Introduction : Defining Social Media & Government

Welcome to Government 2.0: Social Media and Government. This blog is my final project for CS400H. As we have learned about forms of participatory democracy online this semester, I have chosen to examine the ways in which citizens can engage with government via social media, the ways in which the government participates in, as well as limits forms of social media and Web 2.0.

First, I need to define what I am referring to when I talk about social media on this blog. According to Wikipedia, social media is "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.” Social media is used by individuals, as well as business, for personal and professional uses. Social media can take the form of citizen participation/journalism, or be used for more social and personal reasons in the form of social networking. Social media ranges from blogs, microblogs, wikis, to the uploading of video and pictures such as Youtube and Flickr. The ease of access to publishing and the encouragement for anyone to create and upload content has created a citizen filled media sphere, online at least.

Throughout this blog I will be examining social media in regards to its involvement with the government. This blog will mainly focus on Canada’s government usage, with comparisons to the US government spotlighted as well, to compare how two democratic governments have embraced social media.

The government cannot ignore social media, as it has become so ubiquitous. If the citizens are engaging in it, and government wants to engage with their citizens, then the government should be using it as well. However, the way in which this is done needs to be utilized properly, as not all forms will actually be beneficial. Also, when the government is in social media, it is important to critically examine how much citizen participation and interaction can actually occur without the government trying to control every output.