When I think about using YouTube, I think about all the time I spend listening to music, watching clips from television shows, or some newsworthy moment of the day. Now, we can apparently use YouTube to “interview the Prime Minister”. According to YouTube’s blog CitizenTube, on March 16th, 2010 at 4pm, Stephen Harper will be answering questions posed by YouTube users. The preferred method of question is actually user posted videos.
Prior to this, on March 11th, Stephen Harpers’s response to the throne speech was streamed on YouTube as well. This is being done via a YouTube Channel called TalkCanada.
This is part of a growing trend of politicians having a social media presence via channels such as YouTube and Twitter. While social media is undeniably important in politics, is this really an attempt to engage with the Canadian public? Do Canadians really want to see Stephen Harper on YouTube? Or is it more of an appearance of an open forum? It can be assumed there will be quite the screening process of questions since YouTube and its commenter’s are not exactly known for their eloquence or tact.
It will be interesting to see how many Canadians participate in this, and if it provides a more open discourse with the Prime Minister.
Farewell, but not Goodbye!
14 years ago
Personally, I think this is a great attempt to engage with the Canadian public. It's allowing the "average joe" to pose a question to their Prime Minister. Although these questions can will obviously be censored it's still creating a new open forum for the general society. Traditionally questions to the Prime Minster would be conducted through press conferences which would contain high security, and would only allow specific people to ask questions (i.e. Credited Journalists) I feel that this is yet another example of where we see the active citizen become as credible as a professional journalist. No longer is it going to be seen as a privlege to speak to the Prime Minister. However this statement may be very naive of me. As this "appears" to be a great way to engage Canadian pubics whether or not this is the true intention of the Prime Minister, I do not know. Perhaps I could be falling into exactly what he hopes the rest of society will think, because really he still has the power to choose which questions to answer...
ReplyDeleteI like what you said about the removal of the idea of talking to the Prime Minister as a privilege. Canadians are who voted for him and who he is accountable to, so there should be access for citizens, and there concerns should be taken seriously.
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