::fibreculture:: Facebook and politics

[Tama Leaver]

Hi Lisa & Fibrefolk,

I've been following the "web2.0" attempts of Australian politicians
(or, more accurately, non-Liberal Australian politicians) too, so
these few posts might be of interest on the back of the Crikey piece
...

Kevin 07! (Or: Team Rudd gets its Web2.0 on!) - 7 August
http://tinyurl.com/33uwwz
(Looks at the similarity with US Obama and Hillary Clinton portals)

Australian Politicians on MySpace this week… - 13 July
http://tinyurl.com/2o3u7k
(The comments on this post follow the growth of friends on Rudd's
MySpace page across the first 10 days)

and
Facebook and Australian Politics?
http://tinyurl.com/3bkgx4
(Includes comments on the three fake John Howard profiles.)

Cheers,
Tama

On 8/15/07, Lisa Gye <lgye at groupwise.swin.edu.au> wrote:
> 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
>
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-- 
Dr Tama Leaver
University of Western Australia
35 Stirling Highway
Crawley WA 6009 Australia
Ph: (+61 8) 6488 1502
Fax: (+61 8) 6488 1156

blog: http://www.tamaleaver.net
edublog: http://tama.edublogs.org