The Globe and Mail's Matthew Ingram will be doing an election tech-watch during the upcoming Ontario campaign:
In the old days, it was all about TV appearances and newspaper coverage. Now, an election just wouldn’t be the same without blogs, podcasts, YouTube clips and RSS feeds. The Ontario election is no different, although certain players have jumped on the “Web 2.0” bandwagon with more gusto than others.
... Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be looking at how the parties and candidates use (or misuse) the Web, blogs, Facebook, YouTube and other forms of new media -- or “social media,” as some like to call it -- as well as how others are using those tools to support or attack them.
Is anyone making creative use of Facebook to get out the vote? Will we see an Ontario politician embarrassed by a cellphone video, as a U.S. candidate was not so long ago? Will we discover that a campaign worker has fiddled with the details of his candidate’s Wikipedia entry?
A lot of us will be watching for this.
My question, however, is whether this form of attention will lead to a more intelligent and informed discourse, or is it just going to dumb-down the coverage?
If the American experience to date is any indicator, I'm not optimistic.
- Garry J. Wise, Toronto
Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www.wiselaw.net
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1 comment:
There is much being said in the provincial election campaign about funding all religious schools. I wish to point out that we are already funding all religions via tax exemptions which probably amount to many millions of dollars. I've never heard anyone identify the amount of taxation that is lost to general revenues which must be made up by all taxpayers whether they are religous or not. It is said that everyone is free to practice a religion and it should be that a person is not free to practice and support religion. I choose to not support any church or religious group. Where is my right to not pay more taxes so they can be exempt/ subsidized?
What they may or not do in community is not relevant to my freedom of choices regarding churches and religions.
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