360DigitalInfluence

We wear a mask that grins and lies
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes
This debt we pay to human guile
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile

- Paul Lawrence Dunbar

It begins when we are children. As Steve Hein of EQI.org points out, “Children start out emotionally honest. They express their true feelings freely and spontaneously. But the training to be emotionally dishonest begins at an early age. The child is told to smile when actually she is sad. She is told to apologize when she feels no regret. She may be told to kiss people good night when she would never do so voluntarily.” In short, she will slowly be influenced to conform to a social structure that attempts to control what feels true.

But what does emotional honesty have to do with WikiLeaks and Digital Influence, you ask?

It’s simple really. We are still struggling – as individuals and as countries - to break down the walls of ‘protection’ that we have been brought up to believe we must build. We have not yet replaced those walls with the bridges necessary to fully transform society.

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In 2008 I worked for a political research and strategic consulting firm that specialized in political polling and campaign strategy, as well as helping political candidates, parties, and ballot initiatives succeed all around the country and across the world.  So, you can imagine, I was fascinated when I heard that Facebook had accurately predicted many of this past week’s election results.  On Wednesday I saw a Tweet by Facebook’s head of Consumer Marketing, Randi Zuckerberg, which said, “In 20 of last night’s hot races, we accurately predicted 16 based on Facebook candidate “like” comparisons.”  I was very impressed by that information and have grown even more so as other data on this topic has come out.   

According to The U.S. Politics on Facebook note “Social Media Participation Trumps Money,” a campaign’s social media participation is “just as significant or even more significant a predictor of a candidate’s success than money spent.”  This is huge news since money spent has been one of the biggest indicators of a candidate’s success for years.  Of the 118 races that were tracked in the Senate and House, 65% of the election winners had more Facebook “Likes” than their opponents.  Even more remarkable was that of these 77 winners 42 raised less money than their opponents.  And, if these metrics weren’t enough to convince you of the importance of social media participation, the note goes on to say that “there was no correlation between the partisanship of the district and partisanship of ‘likes.’ Candidates were able to overcome their district’s partisan handicap in growing social media presence.”   Regardless of your party affiliation, or how happy you are over the election results, that statement is pretty amazing.  Can social media participation be working towards creating a truly independent voting atmosphere?  My answer would be potentially - hopefully.  It seems to me like voters have become more engaged in the election process and their candidates.  This increased engagement probably increases voter knowledge, and allows them to pick their candidates by more than just their party affiliation.  What do you think?

As citizens are increasingly discussing and sharing content online, we decided to take a look with the European Centre for Public Affairs at digital discussion and debate in the weeks leading up to the European elections. Covering English, French, German, Greek and Polish language, we asked the following questions: Was there an EU debate or were conversations limited to national politics? What were the most popular themes and how did the rankings compare? Did online “buzz” translate into votes at the ballot box? We also examined the digital footprint of an MEP using social networks to see how effectively he communicated with voters. And we purposely chose an online seminar format to do share the results with a wider group. continue reading