Last night was Kim Dotcom’s “moment of truth”. I will leave it up to others to others to assess the content of the evening. But I want to talk about how the Internet Party, and others, covered it on social media. There was the typical promotion before hand, with their graphics and tweets and Facebook posts of the live stream link:
Chris Hipkins and the delete button
Last night Chris Hipkins took a dig at the PM’s comments about Glenn Greenwald:
Which he also followed up with a tweet:
Which are both good comments to make, and pretty even handed. But what I want to talk about is something that happened on the Facebook status. I got a tip off that there was a pretty nasty comment on the status. Unfortunately I was on the phone and didn’t get there before it was removed. But according to the tip off I got, the comment was by a Roddy Llamagas and was about doing an ISIS on shylocks and chopping off John Key’s head…and disposing of his issue. Someone on the status called him on it:
And Chris responded by deleting the comment. I am not sure how long it was up there for. But I want to congratulate Chris on not only deleting the comment, but also owning the fact he did and using it as a chance to make a point. What is said on a politicians Facebook page shouldn’t be counted as reflecting on them. But what should reflect on them is how they handle the comments made. Chris has handled these comments well and has gone on the record to point out his disagreement.
Expectations for the last week
This is the last week of the campaign. It doesn’t feel like that long ago that the date of the election was announced, but time has flown, and here we are 5 days our from election day. Coming up this week we have Kim Dotcom’s “bombshell” and the final leaders debate. We also have the closing statements, which are being filmed at the moment, coming up on Friday night:
So what do I expect to see happening. I suspect we will see a big get out the vote push, particularly from parties on the left. This will be a combination of posts about actually voting, as well as graphics, like we have already seen from the Greens and Young Nats, for people to use as a way to promote voting for the respective parties. I expect we will see some policy review graphics popping up, or the reposting of policy graphics from earlier in the campaign, to remind people of the policies that have been announced. Act will continue to tweet a lot, but with no real coherent plan behind it. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see a bigger emphasis on getting content retweeted/shared to try and reach those people who don’t really engage with politics.
So they are my expectations for the week, lets see how it pans out!
This year I’m voting. And I’m voting National
I blogged this morning about the Green Party avatars that they were promoting. National also have some avatars doing the rounds. They are not as wide spread as the Green avatars. But that could be because I can’t find where they are coming from.
I have looked back on the National Facebook page, and John Key’s page. I also checked the National Party and Teamkey websites and there is nothing there. It was only after checking with a contact, that I established that they are coming from the Young Nats. Now they aren’t being directly promoted as profile pictures, but I have seen a number of people using them as such. So they also have the same issue that the Greens have, there appears to be no explanation about how the graphics would need to be removed as profile photos if users put them up as their profile picture and then want to use their social media profiles before 7pm on election day.
I’m vote Green avatars
A key party of any campaign is getting out the vote. In the past that has been done by calling people up on election day, asking if they have voted and offering them rides if they need it. But as social media has become part of the campaign tool box for the main campaign, it has also become part of the get out the vote campaign. I suspect we have all seen the climate voter stickers on peoples profile photos. The Greens have started promoting their I’ve/I’m voted/voting Green avatars. They have posted about them on Facebook:
