Another Canadian election has come and gone. Programmed mainstream media coverage was again, less than inspiring. I found that to truly enjoy this national exercise, you have to watch it in the company of friends, as you would a Saturday afternoon hockey game.
I spent election night online. Using a variety of free sources, I was able to watch the results as they came in. Using Twitter, it was possible to know results in eastern Canada before the blackout lifted here in Alberta.
Here are some of the tools I used to monitor the 40th Canadian Election:
- Twitter — dedicated default communication channel. CB Radio. Fun. By using Hashtags, you can focus your discussion to others who monitor the same Hashtag (Channel). The best election Hashtag was #CanadaVotes. Oh, and yes, please do follow me on Twitter
- TweetDeck — Twitter application that allows you to group, sort, filter, slice and dice your incoming Twitter flow. In the screenshot of my election night desktop, it took up my left-hand 22″ monitor.
- Google Chrome — having multiple browser windows open at once would prove challenging to Firefox. I have 20+ plugins so I run a Fat Firefox. Chrome is lightweight and each instance runs independently; if one window crashes, the others stay running. I had four instances of Google Chrome running in my second monitor (17″) on the right.
Ok, that’s the tools, now what was I doing with them?
I’ve already mentioned that TweetDeck was my main communications medium for the evening. The back-and-forth discussion amongst people monitoring the #CanadaVotes channel was insiteful and entertaining. It was great engaging with other Canadians in a national discussion.
On my other monitor, I had Google Chrome running (in clockwise order):
- CBC Website – live results map of my ridings of interest
- CBC Website – live national results map
- CBC Website – live streaming TV coverage (sorry, it doesn’t show)
- Globe & Mail website – Live national results chart broken down by party
At one point, I did have another two windows onscreen containing Global and CTV coverage, but frankly, there wasn not enough new or insiteful commentary, so I reduced the redundancy and dumped them.
Overall, watching the various media sources and participating in the Twitter traffic was the best way to engage in, what many believe to be, a somewhat mundane national exercise.
Your turn, what did you use to monitor the results? Traditional media? New media? Comments are open!
Technorati Tags: Canada, Election, 2008, Canadian, PC, Liberal, Twitter, Social Media, Monitoring, Results, Election Results
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Very similar to you, except I relied on Twitter Search instead of TweetDeck. I like having it all inside the browser.
No question, Twitter is revolutionizing political and news media.
Mack D. Males last blog post..Canada votes, nothing changes
I used a mix of TV and Internet, mostly CBC (web and TV) and Twitter.
Adam Sniders last blog post..Get Off Your Collective Ass and Vote, Canada!
@Mack D. Male – Thanks for the comment (Number 1000 on the blog it seems!)
Agreed, though I think mainstream media has a way to go to catch up. Ormiston’s coverage of Twitter on CBC needed some serious work. But given the frequency of national elections, they’ve got 18 months to review and improve.
@Adam Snider – Thanks for the comment! Yeah, TV usually gets me started, but once they drift off to Eastern Canada’s results, I drill down to the local ones online.
I followed the election on Twitter as well (and then followed you!). I agree that it was the best part of the night.
The way to make elections interesting is to think of them like any other sporting competition (minus the spandex; that would be wrong … just wrong). Everyone fights it out for a month, and then we declare a victor.
The newscasters should report the election results with energy and enthusiasm. Some of them at the CBC were obviously enthusiastic about the politics behind the results, but none of them communicated it the same way they would if reviewing sports scores.
On Twitter, it’s like watching a live hockey or basketball game unfold. The seats won by each party are the scores, and you’ve got the fans of each party sniping at each other, political junkies making observations of various witty degrees, and the odd person questioning why the CBC insisted on that “#ormistonvote” hashtag and then only referenced Twitter three times….
I don’t think we’ve quite reached the point where social networking media like Twitter and Facebook are having a huge impact on elections. We’re getting there, as the number of scandals over candidates’ pasts and the activism on Facebook groups attests. What remains to be done is for the newscasters to truly integrate social media into their broadcasts, and not just poke it with a stick like Susan Ormiston did. I commend the CBC for trying, but there is room for improvement.
@Ben Babcock – Agreed re: election == sporting competition and social media influence.
Social Media can only grow in use. As more people adopt the channel, it’ll grow. I bet nobody anticipated Twhirl and TweetDeck usage when Twitter was first developed.
I predict there’ll be a tipping point in November when the US Election happens. Twitter could very easily be better integrated into mainstream media coverage. Consider how blogging is now part of the story (any story). Give it time and Twitter will be there too.
Thanks again for the great comment!
CNN actually does a good job on integrating Twitter, when they decide to do so. I saw a special on the financial crisis a week or two ago where they actually used Twitter to field questions from the audience (in addition to the usual routes of telephone and email), and they should the actual Twitter stream, instead of the lame PowerPoint slides that CBC used on election night.
I’d like to see more of that type of Twitter use in the mainstream media.
Erm…by “should the actual Twitter stream” I, of course, meant “showed the actual Twitter stream.”
Adam Sniders last blog post..Get Off Your Collective Ass and Vote, Canada!
@Adam Snider – Yeah. Rather than co-opt the media (as Ormiston was doing on CBC) they should rather embrace it. It’s an input source for programming, but they didn’t really use it other than to say “Hey, look what’s happening over here…now back to OUR coverage.”
How hard would it have been to Direct Message some Twitter commenter, get them on the phone and then discuss the issues? That would have been great for Live TV. Heck, even get them using Skype. If Oprah can do it, others should be able to figure it out
CBC actually does use Skype. Leading up to the election there was a program on Newsworld at 6pm each day called “Canada Votes: Your Turn” where they invited people to speak about different issues each day. In addition to man-on-the-street style clips, they read emails and used Skype to interview viewers at home.
CBC is actually quite good about adoption new communications methods and the whole “citizen journalism” thing, but for whatever reason, they fell short on election night.
Adam Sniders last blog post..Get Off Your Collective Ass and Vote, Canada!
@Adam Snider – “fell short on election night.” no kidding!
Wow, if they had Skype available, and didn’t use it, talk about a missed opportunity.
You know, given all that CBC is doing on new media, I wonder if they just ‘forgot’ to include anything in the election plans and cobbled something on at the last minute.
They do quite well in other areas. I listen to Radio1 every morning on my kitchen Mac. News Headlines and The National are streamed to my media centres, Radio3 is awesome the new Digital Music channels are cool, I’m not sure about Bold yet
but they can do things well, which is why this coverage was disappointing.