Over the weekend Generation Zero and a number of other organisations launched their latest joint project, ClimateVoter.org.nz. The idea behind this is to get a large number of people to pledge to voter for the environment this coming election. This isn’t a bad idea. Plus, despite the known leanings of the organisations involved, they have done a reasonable job of living up to their non partisan claim. The Herald reports:
MPs were today asked to leave the non-partisan launch of a campaign to make voters conscious of climate change.
But
Labour list candidate Dr Michael Kidd was a guest speaker and was in attendance with Ioane Teitiota, described as the world’s first climate change refugee. Teitiota fled Kiribati for NZ in 2007.
Anyhow, that is not what I wanted to talk about. The Climate Voter campaign, like the Rock Enrol one, is based around the use of social media to spread the word. Not only is there the @ClimateVoter Twitter account, but their profile features the Hashtag they want people to use, #ClimateVoter:
Now this is what a number of people having been using, including Greenpeace NZ and the Green Party:
They even talk about using the #ClimateVoter hashtag to ask questions of the parties each week.
To compliment this, part of the process of signing up asks you to share your sign up on social networks. This is an automated process. There is just one issue. Some of the people posting seem to be using the incorrect hashtag:
So I thought I would sign up to see what was causing it. There appears to be some issue with the preprepared tweet they that appears for some people.
I am not sure how many people are getting the one with the Z and how many aren’t, but it isn’t a great start to the campaign. If any party or organisation is going try and run it a campaign around a hashtag, particularly with an automated system, make sure the hashtag use is consistent.
