Dale Shuttleworth - LNP candidate for the State electorate of Ferny Grove, now has a Facebook page.
I asked the question Who is Dale Shuttleworth? in April. I've since asked Who is Geoff Wilson? My argument in both posts was that the sitting member for the State electorate of Ferny Grove (Geoff Wilson) and his opponents (in this case Dale Shuttleworth for LNP) could be doing a better job of letting us get to know them online.
Dale originally left a comment on the April story that he was looking into ways to improve his online visibility, but a recent Blogger issue seems to have removed this comment and my own reply. Hopefully they will be restored soon.
Setting up the Facebook page was a good start for Dale. Notice that his entries so far are informative and give us a window into what he is up to and how he interacts with people. This is exactly the visibility that I would like for all candidates for Ferny Grove in this election. Well done Dale and please keep it up.
(In case you are wondering, I am currently politically undecided, and don't want to take any particular political slant on this blog. So any candidate who wants me to give a shout out to their online efforts is welcome to contact me.)
Just finished reading all 3 of your similar articles on our local politicians use of social media. Very thoughtful and considerate. Well done. My struggle from the readers end is filtering. The more people I follow tweets/blogs, the less I have time read. So how much is too much from a politician - a tough question.
ReplyDeleteHi Peter, thanks for your comment. I would argue that having the information available is a good thing.
ReplyDeleteDiscovery of interesting information like you say is the hard part. Services to filter and curate the river of information will be more and more important. Facebook does this with their news feed, for example (ie. You don't see every post someone makes there, only ones it determines are interesting), as does Google News (for news) and or Google Reader 'magic sorting'. So far success of these automated services is hit and miss.
The other approach is to let the blogs and people you follow on twitter do the curating for you - find people who pass on the information you want to know about and proactively weed out those sources that just tend to send out noise or whose occasional gem will be picked up by someone else.
Jeff Jarvis (www.buzzmachine.com) talks about these issues a lot. A recent TED Talk on filter bubbles (http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html) warns of the danger of filtering out information that conflicts with your own preconceptions.
It is early days in this area, obviously. So returning to the original comment, I think the availability of information and our ability to effectively discover it are two different things, and neither will make up for the other.