::fibreculture:: Facebook and politics

[Lisa Gye]

Lauren Parle writes this week in Crikey.com about the way Australian and American politicians are using social networking sites in an attempt to appear web savvy and appeal to younger voters. She also notes that:

".. it appears in Australian politics MySpace is getting all the action. Despite membership growing 273 per cent over the past four months, rival social networking site Facebook just doesn't seem to accommodate for Australian politicians the way it does for those in the US.

One reason may be because US politicians are given a "Supporters" component on their profile allowing people to add themselves to the list without necessarily becoming a "Friend" of the politician, such as on Barack Obama's Facebook. This feature is not yet available to Australian politicians, so Facebook users have been showing their support by adding Kevin as a "Friend". The problem for Kevin Rudd is that the number of "Friends" allowed to a single Facebook profile is capped at 5000. But don't despair, Kevin assures his aspiring "Friends" that he's been discussing the issue with Facebook administration."

Link to full article http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20070813-Pollies-on-MySpace-and-Facebook-just-a-popularity-contest.html 

Barack even has his own application called the Obama. Sadly, it notes that "Barack has no friends who have added this application".

Lisa Gye
Lecturer in Media and Communications
Swinburne University of Technology
http://www.sportswithoutborders.net.au
http://www.altx.com/ebooks/ulmer.html
http://www.lisagye.net
Tel: +613 92148345
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
Dorothy Parker


Swinburne University of Technology
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