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Tuesday, December 02, 2008

#coalition versus #canadarally via twitter.

Like many online Canadians, I've been following the political drama as it unfolds in Ottawa through the near instant information updates and conversations on twitter (and was surprised to see one of my twitter updates flash across the screen for 3 seconds on last night's the National on CBC). Mack at Mastermaq has written a great post on twitter and the hashtags being used by politically engaged twitter users this week.

Initially used by Conservative Party/Rally for Canada supporters, it has been interesting to watch the #canadarally hashtag be slowly co-opted by supporters of the Liberal-NDP coalition, who have generally been using the #coalition and #libndp hashtags. It's a fascinating example of how the organic nature of social networking sites like twitter enforce their own version of online citizen democracy.

Also, Mike Soron has shared some thoughts on the newly sprung political websites like 62percentmajority.ca and the aforementioned Rally for Canada website.

UPDATE: coldacid dot net and the Blog According to Buzz have some interesting thoughts on twitter being used in the current political situation.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think it's incredibly interesting to watch how social media, and Twitter in particular, is transforming the way we find and discuss news! It's unlike any tool we've ever had.

Thx also for the link Dave.

Greg said...

What's interesting is that the pro-coalition folks registered makeparliamentwork.com and .ca domain names. The anti-coalitioners registered rallyforcanada.ca, BUT the pro-coalition peeps grabbed rallyforcanada.com! Ah, the fight for cyberspace real estate.