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.

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!

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

Adam Sniders last blog post..Get Off Your Collective Ass and Vote, Canada!

I’d like to see more of that type of Twitter use in the mainstream media.

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!

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.

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 Sniders last blog post..Get Off Your Collective Ass and Vote, Canada!