Wednesday 6 October 2010

The secret diary of a new media dodger, by M.P. aged 44 and a half

Just come back from a fascinating few days as a fly on the wall (watching, listening and tweeting...) at a party conference.  I went to understand how digital and social media is currently being used in the democratic process; where the government and elected representatives still need to do more work to connect and engage with people: particularly Gen Y millenials (those born after 1980); and what all this could mean in the context of the "Big Society".

Among the most encouraging things was meeting a vanguard of really savvy MPs and Assembly Members, who've managed to fund and create imaginative, informative websites incorporating bang up to date social media tools.  Even better, they are personally generating regular blogs and tweets and responding to comments, giving all their voters a better opportunity to get to know and interact with their elected representatives.  (See these two great Tory and LibDem examples!)

There are also encouraging signs from central and local government leaders of a new attitude to consulting tax payers, service users and employeees: using digital crowdsourcing tools such as Delib (used for HMT's recent Spending Challenge) and Counter Context to gather and evaluate new ideas, rather than carrying out a prescriptive box ticking exercises.    I also heard many inspiring stories from councils, companies and charities using new media to engage and motivate young people in their communities - such as ITV's www.itvfixers.com - and I think we'll see a lot more of this under the Big Society agenda.

More frustratingly are those MPs, MEPs and Councillors still stuck in the Stone Age:  either avoiding new media entirely or possibly worse still, regarding it as just another channel for broadcasting their name and opinions.  Expenses fallout is partly to blame, but is not a good enough excuse.  Greater transparency and visibility is the medicine to recover from that, not less.

Other excuses given by MPs during the week included:
the boring:  "I don't have time", "I have too many Blackberries",
the verbose:  "I can't say anything in less than 140 characters",
the narcississtic: "I won't start tweeting because if I stopped the media would demand to know why"
....and the disarmingly honest: "I'm afraid I'd get drunk and tweet something by accident".

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