Politicians and social notworking

Poor Michael Ignatieff just can't get a break.

With the federal Liberal leader’s approval ratings plummeting on what seems like a daily basis in recent months, the latest farce on his party’s credibility comes courtesy of some scathing remarks made by Janine Krieber — wife of former party leader Stephane Dion — on Facebook.

“The Liberal Party is falling apart, and will not recover,” she exclaimed on the note posted to her Facebook page, rallying her troops for action, and emphatically asserting that the Grits would have stood a far better chance in Parliament had they gone ahead with last year’s coalition government.

Unfortunately for her team, however, nobody told Krieber that the methods to her mayhem on the social networking site shouldn’t really be the preferred M.O. of most tech-savvy politicians or supporters these days. It’s not the first time that a public figure has landed in hot water for a digital faux pas, but it’s the latest in a series of increasingly frequent blunders that only serves to demonstrate why politicians might as well give up on this whole social media business altogether.

Case in point: last week, New Democrat MP Charlie Angus made a public statement urging his fellow elected representatives to cut out the “banality” of Twitter and put away their Blackberries while in session.

“There is something about it that turns otherwise intelligent professionals into Grade 9 jocks and cheerleaders in a school cafeteria,” he pleaded in the Commons, outraged over a post by Liberal MP Michelle Simson, who took an insightful and oh-no-necessary jab regarding the maturity and physical girth of Heritage Minister Dean Del Mastro.

One could fill countless pages with examples of bad posts, tweets, and updates by elected reps from all parties and levels of government, but it already goes without saying that when it comes to the Internet, many are just doing it wrong. Edmonton-Calder MLA Doug Elniski of the provincial Conservatives learned that lesson the hard way when his misogynist updates shamed him into all but wiping out his web presence back in June. Even cultural minister Lindsay Blackett fired up some Internet trolls with some embarrassingly arrogant remarks posted live to Twitter during the controversial debate surrounding Bill 44.

In addition, that we’re to the point of social media being heralded as the new “grassroots campaigning tool” is unsettling in itself, when, in essence, campaigners are merely preaching to their respective choirs. Twitter activists by and large are more likely to follow the politicians they support, ignoring the ones they don’t — that fact is a prerequisite of being a campaign cheerleader, after all. Shovel on a heap of vapid comments and re-tweets from said supporters to validate those inane remarks, and you’re left with a useless echo chamber of political backwash. Like trained parrots presented with a cracker, these mindless politicos will repeat whatever they’re told ad nauseum, all the while thinking they’re instrumental in changing the shape of the political landscape.

When it comes down to it, many Canadian politicians are as guilty as the masses, treating social media like the shiny new BB gun they’ve just been given for Christmas, firing off updates wildly without having read the necessary warnings about proper conduct. It’s a fundamental rule of the Internet that the anonymity it grants transforms normally upstanding citizens into complete idiots. But too many politicians are either forgetting or don’t understand that in today’s virtual landscape, they’re just as accountable for their actions online as they are at a podium or a cocktail party; one misfired quip, slur, or slander, and someone’s bound to lose an eye — or an election.