Last summer, the Obama Administration got embroiled in controversy with the Henry Louis Gates, Jr. arrest and Barack’s comments about the Cambridge police. This summer, Andrew Brietbart set off a chain reaction with clips of a video at a NAACP meeting that he felt showed how a black USDA official, Shirley Sherrod, was expressing racist views. Here’s Brietbart explaining his position on Sherrod’s talk and his allegations that the NAACP audience was “applauding her overt racism”, although he also acknowledges how she draws distinctions between the “haves” and “have nots” in the context of the story::

Subsequently, the Obama administration pressured her to resign.

Well, as it turns out, the clip wasn’t the whole story. Sherrod’s talk in its entirety is about bridging the race gap and how she had to come to terms with her own feelings. In the aftermath, the wife of the white farmer that Shirley referred to in the video and helped, Elouise Spooner, came forward and said that she did right by them::

When the story broke, I saw it in Toronto on CNN, which was only showing clips which were damning and those outraged at Sherrod’s “racism” at a NAACP meeting. It was a jaw-dropping story, how it was framed, but I wasn’t all that surprised when I saw how the story was more complicated and not at all surprised to hear that the Obama administration is backpedaling after figuring out the rest of the story. Apparently, CNN jumped on the bandwagon, throwing caution and good journalism to the winds::

“CNN’s Rick Sanchez said producers there were intrigued by Biggovernment.com’s posting and immediately started reporting on it. But with all the questions involved — Was this a fair characterization of Sherrod’s full speech? Can she be reached to give her side of the story? — they wouldn’t be ready to discuss it on his afternoon show until Tuesday, he said.

By then, the story rushed by.

“As journalists, we have to protect ourselves the best we can,” Sanchez said. “It’s easy for it to happen to anybody, by the way — jump to a conclusion, get excited, look at the coverage. It’s kind of like creating a bandwagon effect. Once you get on the bandwagon, you can’t hit the brakes. According to the SF Chron::

“CNN’s Rick Sanchez said producers there were intrigued by Biggovernment.com’s [Brietbart’s] posting and immediately started reporting on it. But with all the questions involved — Was this a fair characterization of Sherrod’s full speech? Can she be reached to give her side of the story? — they wouldn’t be ready to discuss it on his afternoon show until Tuesday, he said.

By then, the story rushed by.

‘As journalists, we have to protect ourselves the best we can,’ Sanchez said. ‘It’s easy for it to happen to anybody, by the way — jump to a conclusion, get excited, look at the coverage. It’s kind of like creating a bandwagon effect. Once you get on the bandwagon, you can’t hit the brakes.'”

So, while CNN and Fox were both focusing on the reverse racism angle of this story, Fox’s O’Reilly kicks it up a notch. He cites several stories that the mainstream media didn’t cover as a journalism fail and evidence of a left-leaning bias. Bill practically accuses other networks of embracing a leftist agenda over giving the audience what they want::

All of this frenzy even duped the NAACP, which initially denounced Sherrod. While the media, politicians, and organizations are quick to jump the gun on incendiary bombs like this, what gets lost are the issues at hand on race and the Tea party movement. It gets convoluted, as even ousted Tea Party Federation activist Mark Williams defended Sherrod, as the controversy swirled. At around 7:30 EDT, there were two “highest rated” comments on the full video {link to all comments}, which shows that views are being expressed that show that people aren’t willing to follow a us-them mentality with respect to the Tea party movement and the NAACP::

“I am a white, Christian, Tea Party conservative from Texas….and I must say that while I appreciate much of Mr. Breitbart’s work, he really blew this one with his selective editing. I appreciated much of what Ms. Sherrod said about racial perspectives from all fronts. She sounded like she was sharing honest feelings based on her background, and how she came to terms with that. She should get her job back! Most of the Tea Party folks that I’m around would feel the same way.”—spastikmunkey

“I’m an Old (57) White Male. After watching this, I believe it is wrong for Mrs. Sherrod to lose her job. Yes, she had – and has – some racial issues – especially understandable given what happened to her father – but her heart is good and she has worked to overcome them and do the right thing. I’m all about grace and allowing people to grow. I only hope that blacks will give whites the same room and understanding. It’s the only way we’ll ever achieve racial reconciliation of any depth.”—lostcause53

The actions of CNN and {allegedly} the Obama administration, given USDA deputy undersecretary Cheryl Cook who phoned Shirley and told her the White House wanted her to resign since her comments were causing a controversy, show how the media and politicians are preoccupied with hype and spin, as opposed to getting the facts straight.

I think it’s easy to characterize any social movement in a stereotypical fashion, but I wonder how this plays out in an era of network politics. Where is the agency and what is the exact configuration of the Tea party movement when it comes to positions on race? Clearly, not everyone in the Tea party movement is on board with race as a wedge issue, but can any leader realistically speak for what is a confederation of localized grassroots activity?

Song:: The Style Council-‘Long Hot Summer’

Twitterversion:: [blog] Sherrod debacle highlights media & political #fail, but implications for social movements in networked politics?  http://url.ie/6unp @Prof_K

While Sarah Palin’s recent use of “refudiate” twice would be a double facepalm moment for most politicians, perhaps she gets a bye because of her folksy patois. I do think she’s self-conscious of appearing none-too-smart and rather than just shrugging these things off, she gives them too much play, which is more fodder for the press and pundits. Of course, this keeps her in the limelight even more. While I think that might be shrewd for being a political celebrity of sorts, I think all of this self-consciousness undermines her credibility as a potential political candidate to an important demographic—educated suburban/urban moderates and independents.

This reminds me of the old Fox show In Living Color and Damon Wayans’ character, Oswald Bates, full of his own unique patois::

Just in case anyone cares, if you type in “refudiate” in Twitter…

there is a spellcheck that lets you know you’re in neologism territory…or are just misspelling words.

Song:: The Stills-‘Lola Stars & Stripes’ {lyrics}

Twitterversion:: [blog] Sarah Palin’s “Shakespearean” neologism of “refudiate” reminds me of an old Damon Wayans character. #ThickCulture @Prof_K

Embattled Senate Democrat and majority leader Harry Reid seems to be on a rebound after crashing and burning in the polls earlier in the year. Republican challenger Sharron Angle with endorsements from the Tea Party movement and social conservatives won the primary and it looked like Reid was in for an autumn drubbing. She was riding high in the polls after her primary win, with a comfortable 50-39% margin. She’s slipped ever since and the latest Rasmussen poll has her in a statistical tie with Reid, with 11% supporting another candidate or not sure. Reid’s campaign has tried to characterize Angle as too extreme with her views with the help of Obama, which could sway moderate independents and Republicans.

Her latest spot is focusing on unemployment which is a concern of residents, as the rate shot up to 14%::

I’m not sure how effective this ad is. It’s light on content and doesn’t really hit Reid that hard, other than saying that Nevada is worse off jobwise on his watch.

Both candidates have problems with unfavourable perceptions, which is unlikely to motivate voters to head to the polls. Democrats are supporting Reid at 82%, while Angle is getting 75% from Republicans. The independents have favoured Angle with a 52% to 29% margin. Democrats outnumber Republicans, with independents making up a little over 15% of the registered voters.

Immigration is an issue Angle might get traction with, as the Rasmussen poll finds 65% support for a law like Arizona’s controversial immigration law in Nevada. I’m not sure moving far to the right makes the most sense, particularly in an “unpopularity” contest, i.e., a battle to be the least unpopular. Being “extreme” or out there doesn’t garner acceptance, which I think is the key to this race…get the voters to come out and vote for you, even if they’re holding their nose.

So, what’s the latest? What does she do? She states that her campaign to defeat Reid is God’s calling::

“When God calls you he also equips you and He doesn’t just say, ‘Well today you’re going to run against Harry Reid,’ the tea party favorite said.

In the Bible ‘Moses has his preparatory time. Paul had his preparatory time. Even Jesus had his preparatory time,’ the former legislator said, citing her years in public office as her preparation for the race.

‘God knew all of this in advance,’ Angle added. ‘I don’t know what’s coming up tomorrow but I do know that He is there. He saw it and that He has provided a way of escape and a way for me to endure.'”

Well, this is one way to go. We’ll see how it works out.

Song:: OMD-‘Joan of Arc {Maid of Orléans}’

Twitterversion:: [blog] Harry Reid battling to keep his seat in Nevada. Polls show a tight race & opponent states campaign is God’s calling.@Prof_K

Robert Gibbs says the House is up for grabs in 2010.   My political analysis — duh!!!  A dismally weak economy coupled with the typical coattail effect for Obama in the 2008 election that brought in a whole set of members that had no business winning their races (Democrats representing both of the Dakotas?) is a recipe for big losses.  Jonathan Chait has a nice summation of the effect of midterms on the party in power.  He links to this chart from Seth Masket that highlights the relationship (albeit weak) between economic strength and midterm losses for the president’s party.

/p>

It makes sense.  Republicans are all ginned up = Obama’s a Nazi or a Socialist.  Democrats are dispirited = No we cant?!?  Turnout will drive the election and based on my empirical analysis of catching Fox News on the TV screen at my gym, Republican leaning voters will be primed.  In my 30 minute treadmill run, I learned that “Moslims” are taking over the World Trade Center site, “Felons” stole the Minnesota Senate election for Al Franken and Iranian nuclear engineers are milling around Washington, DC.  It all makes me want to run to the next Tea Party meeting!

So what’s the right midterm strategy for the Democrats?  I wonder why the Democrats haven’t decided to push back in terms of turnout.  Why not recognize you’re going to get shellacked in 2010 and lay the groundwork for future elections.  One key way to do this would be to push hard for immigration reform.  Put it on the agenda.  Force the Republicans to take positions that will be hard to explain to their Latino constituents.  Instead of taking the centrist high ground, why not “go Rove” and work to build a progressive base.  It seems that the Democrats in power are too busy pursuing centrists who are largely disengaged and are not planning to turn out for this election.  You be better served by growing a progressive base that might help buffer against big midterm losses in future elections, even if it costs you a few seats this time around.

My 2 cents 🙂

Yes Magazine asks whether it is time for a tech sabbath? I wonder how much my consumption of Internet content (particularly blogs, email, facebook and twitter) are affecting my attention span.  I don’t want to go all Nick Carr on everyone, but I’m pretty sure the Internet is doing something to my ability to engage with complex ideas for sustained periods of time.  This is the main reason I’ve backed away from this blog.

Rather than run from it, I’ve decided to embrace it (except for my new-found Sunday Tech Sabbath)!

No matter how you slice it, Roman Polanski is a divisive figure. I blogged about his detainment by the Swiss police last fall {that post details the case}, when the Los Angeles District Attorney was angling for extradition. I should add that like I said in my earlier blog, I’m not a Polanski apologist and my concerns have to do with civil liberties. The story stirred up quite a bit of emotions with the anti-Polanski camp calling him a child rapist, the victim wanting the whole affair to go away, and his Hollywood supporters making pleas to sway public opinion. Today, the Swiss Justice Ministry refused to extradite Polanski, citing that the LA prosecution failed to provide enough evidence, among other factors. There is no expectation that U.S. authorities will appeal and he’s a free man.

First, I think it should be addressed why the Polanski affair angers so many people. It’s a reminder of an ugly chauvinistic past and the seeming existence of a two-tiered justice system that a CBC article summed it up quite well last fall::

“…For generations, women have suffered unfairly in rape cases, particularly at the hands of the courts. The onus of guilt was often shifted to the woman under the phrases ‘she should have known better’ or, even worse, ‘ she asked for it.’

These ugly phrases and the often lack of support from the police and courts caused untold numbers of women to suffer in silence rather than seek justice in a public forum.

Fortunately, things are changing, but not far enough nor fair enough. Polanski’s efforts to avoid prison —coupled with all the prominent people who are rushing to support him — are a reminder to many women of the unfairness of both public sentiment and the legal system.”

In my previous blog on Polanski, I called into question issues of due process and prosecutorial misconduct. On a Facebook wall, my arguments were reduced to saying that I was equating his crime with possible misconduct::

“[Kenneth Kambara] is trying to equate purported legal misconduct with admitted statutory rape. I think the latter is proven–by admission–and the former possible but unproven. And the efforts to prove it cannot be attempted from Europe.

Polanski wanted to return to the US, that’s why his lawyers were pushing this issue. If extradition is achieved, he will get his wish. He has nobody to blame but himself.”

I must admit I found this to be a curious statement, as in my mind it highlights how the public wants justice and may not have the patience for due process. The above statement refuses to acknowledge that flaws in procedure matter, regardless of the crime and how reprehensible it might be. Nevertheless, being a stickler for due process can upset the sensibilities of fairness when someone who seems dead-to-right guilty gets away with punishment by faulty due process. Yet, without upholding due process, what kind of legal system would there be?

In 1986, Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, Rose Elizabeth Bird {appointed by Jerry Brown}, and several other “liberal” justices were not confirmed in the general election. One of the major issues was the death penalty and how she overturned cases. The reason? Due process. Bird argued in several capital cases that there were flaws in procedural due process and to try again without the flaw. This holds police and the judicial system to a high standard of conduct, in order to limit the incarceration or death of the wrongly accused. I think this can be frustrating to those thinking that this is a travesty of justice, but it goes back to what type of legal system do the people want.

The Swiss Justice Ministry claimed that they didn’t consider Polanski’s crime, but the LA court’s procedures. The ministry requested documents from the meeting where Polanski’s lawyers met with the original 1977 judge, Laurence Ritterband. The U.S. Justice Department refused, citing confidentiality. Arguably, those documents may have proven embarrassing to the California court and harmed the case. The Swiss threw out the extradition request, which only occurs 5% of the time, citing a lack of support for the request and the fact that it came years after U.S. authorities knew Polanski had a residence in Gstaad since 2006, but failed to act until 2009.

I think FoxNews Entertainment hit the nail on the head on how the State of California managed to look like the bad guy in a child rape case::

“…And [Robert] Reuland [a New York City-based criminal defense attorney] says that while California is probably embarrassed by Switzerland’s decision, this could also be the end of their efforts to pursue Polanski, which is probably costing millions and millions of dollars.

‘At some point, California prosecutors have to decide whether they want to keep at something that is taking so much effort and cost. His public nature plays a big role in why they have pursued it for so long now. But after a certain point, California starts looking like the bad guy in a severely botched case,’ he said.

It’s pretty hard to look like the bad guy in a child rape case, but somehow California managed to do it.”

Song:: Echo & the Bunnymen-‘Do It Clean’

Twitterversion:: [blog] Why the Polanski affair is such a hot topic & the intersection of fairness & due process. #ThickCulture @Prof_K

Notes from North of 49ºN

I was far from the fray two weekends ago when the G20 was in town here in Toronto and I thought the mainstream media was being overly dramatic about the “violence” in the city due to anarchist protesters. On Saturday, the 26th., statements on the news like “Toronto will never be the same” while shots of boarded-up shopfronts on Yonge Street and a police cruiser set ablaze conveyed the message that the city was under siege. More on the cruiser later.

The fact of the matter is that the “destruction” was isolated and targeted at corporate entities, but the lingering fallout will be that of lawsuits and questions pertaining to civil liberties. There were over a thousand detainees stemming from the G20. The Toronto Star {via impolitical} summed things up regarding the detainees and the police use of section 31 {breaching the peace}::

“According to section 31 of the criminal code, officers can arrest anyone found to be ‘committing the breach of the peace or who, on reasonable grounds, he believes is about to join in or renew the breach of peace.’

But according to criminal lawyer Paul Calarco, there is ‘no legitimate basis’ for many of this weekend’s arrests.

‘Wearing a black t-shirt is not any basis for saying reasonable grounds (for arrest),’ he argued. As for arresting peaceful demonstrators en masse, “that is not a proper use of Section 31. That is an intimidation tactic,’ he said.

‘Standing on the sidewalk and exercising your constitutional rights is not a breach of the peace.'”

While some might argue that the G20 protests had the potential to truly get out of hand, the reality was that incidents were isolated. The problem is where is the line drawn with respect to police actions under these circumstances? Should civil liberties be expected to be waived due to extraordinary circumstances and how are these circumstances defined?

One would think that a transit worker in uniform going to work, blocks away from protest activity would be OK, right? Particularly if nothing was “going on”. Wrong. A fare collector spent 36 hours handcuffed in detention for being “in the wrong place at the wrong time”. Gerald Yau heading to work at the Queen’s Park TTC station was tackled and told to stop resisting arrest::

“’I told them I wasn’t resisting arrest, that I was on my way to work. I was in full uniform with TTC shirt, pants, full ID, my employee card, everything,’ Yau said on Wednesday. ‘They said, ‘Really? Well, you’re a prisoner today.’

Moments before, another man had run into him but kept going, Yau said, adding that man was also arrested. There was no protest in sight and not many people in the street, he said.

Berating Yau and swearing at him for being an ’embarrassment’ to the TTC, officers dragged him half a block in handcuffs and shackles and threw him into a paddy wagon, he said.

After a TTC supervisor arrived to vouch for him, he thought he’d be released but was sent to the Eastern Ave. detention centre instead.”

The tactics used by the police bring into sharp focus the lines between public safety and the rights of citizens and visitors to Canada. I tend to agree with Boyd Erman of the Globe & Mail who said the actions of the police give Toronto a black eye::

“But the events of this past weekend have shaken that faith for many. Some of the scenes on Toronto’s streets during the G20 recalled for witnesses those more often associated with dictatorships. There were plainclothes officers snatching people from the midst of seemingly peaceful demonstrations and stuffing them in the back of minivans, before speeding away. Passersby arrested just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There were cops busting into homes and pointing guns at innocent people in their own beds. (That’s what one Toronto couple, veterinarians both, claim happened to them when police snuck into the family apartment at 4 a.m. by mistake, then hemmed and hawed when asked to produce a warrant.)

There were police charges at crowds with no warning. (This is a point the Toronto police dispute, but most eyewitness accounts, including those of journalists, are in agreement that warnings were inadequate, inaudible or even non-existent.)

Some showcase. A few broken windows by lawbreaking protesters have, sadly, become expected at these events. But police behaviour like this and the criminalization of civilian dissent is not expected, certainly not in Canada.

None of the criticism of the police absolves all protesters of blame. Both the criminal element who damaged property and taunted police, as well as the many peaceful protesters who nonetheless refused to disavow violence as a tactic, are at the root of the problem.

However, the police must be held to a higher standard. These were the biggest mass arrests in Canadian history, numbering more than 900. There were surely legitimate reasons for some, but the vast numbers of people simply held then released suggests that police simply picked up everyone in sight, a civil libertarian’s nightmare.”

While it might not seem like a big deal that a peaceful protester gets a little bloody from a police shield, the damage is done when it comes to perceptions of proportional use of force. Frankly, it makes Toronto look bush league with a city government worthy of derision, given prior debacles when the city wasn’t able to handle “crises”, such as Mel Lastman’s snowmageddon, when the army was called in to remove the snow. {BTW, I’ll leave it to Rick Mercer to give his un-PC rant about Toronto and the weather}. Sure, nobody expects the Spanish inquisition, but there should be better planning, policies, and procedures in place to deal with crises—that don’t throw civil liberties out the window.

With the luxury of hindsight, this was indeed a debacle and it’s not as if there wasn’t plenty of lead time to prepare for it, including the expectation of Black Bloc activity. There were also plenty of funds to go around. What about the violence and police cruisers set ablaze? Some are saying that they were “bait”, as in props to fuel the media frenzy. Sounds pretty paranoid, right? Well, in Montebello, Québec in August of 2007, a rock-wielding police infiltrator was “outed” at a protest, which was captured on tape and made the rounds on YouTube.

While it may not be surprising that the underground media is stating that the police “staged” the “violence” or at least allowed the “violence” to seem more threatening than it actually was, what might be surprising is that the mainstream media are picking up on this theme. David Warren of the Ottawa Citizen offered this::

“…No one was seriously injured. It would have taken very little traditional police effort to prevent almost all of the property damage that occurred last week. Instead we spent something like a billion dollars in overkill, necessitated by the bureaucratic need to permit violence before awkwardly suppressing it.”

And so it goes…

Song:: Nick Lowe-“So It Goes”

Twitterversion:: [blog] Post-mortem review of G20 #Toronto police actions & civil liberties fallout. #ThickCulture

There is currently a great deal of fanfare and criticism in the press over Clay Shirky’s new book, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age, which celebrates the Internet’s achievements. The Boston Review sums up the book’s intriguing argument:

“Just as gin helped the British to smooth out the brutal consequences of the Industrial Revolution, the Internet is helping us to deal more constructively with the abundance of free time generated by modern economies. Shirky argues that free time became a problem after the end of WWII, as Western economies grew more automated and more prosperous. Heavy consumption of television provided an initial solution. Gin, that ‘critical lubricant that eased our transition from one kind of society to another,’ gave way to the sitcom. More recently TV viewing has given way to the Internet. Shirky argues that much of today’s online culture—including videos of toilet-flushing cats and Wikipedia editors wasting 19,000 (!) words on an argument about whether the neologism ‘malamanteau’ belongs on the site—is much better than television. Better because, while sitcoms give us couch potatoes, the Internet nudges us toward creative work. That said, Cognitive Surplus is not a celebration of digital creativity along the lines of Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman or Lawrence Lessig’s ‘remix culture.’ Shirky instead focuses on the sharing aspect of online creation: we are, he asserts, by nature social, so the Internet, unlike television, lets us be who we really are.” (“Sharing Liberally,” http://bostonreview.net/BR35.4/morozov.php).

The Los Angeles Times contrasts the book with Nicholas Carr’s thesis in The Shallows, which argues that

“even as we may be developing finer motor skills through constant Internet navigation, we’re losing the ability to focus for the significant periods of time necessary for deep thinking. . . . ‘[T]he news is even more disturbing than I had suspected,’ he writes. ‘Dozens of studies by psychologists, neurobiologists, educators, and Web designers point to the same conclusion: when we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning.’ Even more, he continues, ‘the Net delivers precisely the kind of sensory and cognitive stimuli — repetitive, intensive, interactive, addictive —that have been shown to result in strong and rapid alterations in brain circuits and functions.’ Carr has synthesized a wealth of cognitive research to illustrate how the Internet is changing the way we process information. ‘The Net is, by design, an interruption system, a machine geared for dividing attention,’ he points out. He is particularly disturbed by the Internet’s effect on our relationship with reading: ‘[I]n the choices we have made, consciously or not, about how we use our computers,’ he argues, ‘we have rejected the intellectual tradition of solitary, single-minded concentration, the ethic that the book bestowed on us.’” (“What is the Internet Doing to Us?”, http://articles.latimes.com/print/2010/jun/27/entertainment/la-ca-carr-shirky-20100627)

We have all been thrown into a communications revolution that seems to be advancing faster than we can make sense of it, and only time will tell what the sum of many of our technologies are doing to us while we‘re along for the ride. Yet we need to be attentive to communication about these unfolding matters as much as the unfolding matters themselves. Shirky and Carr are representative of the way a lot of discourse about the Internet is getting carved out between these two poles, so I’d like to highlight one idea that seems to be missing on both scores:

Shirky’s argument lacks a sense of the Internet as an individual activity and, more so, Carr’s argument lacks a sense of books as social activities.

This is not to argue that Shirky is wrong about possibilities for sociality on the web, nor to deny Carr the deep and needed solitude that books ought to provide. Rather, I think these debates we’re seeing unfold—and the policies they may entail—would be greatly advanced by examining how the Internet can be an individual activity and reading books can constitute a social activity.

The very words “Inter” and “net” don’t exactly help us see how the “web” may foster solitude; the terms assume we are all invariably connected. But solipsistic shopping sprees and Internet addiction camps testify to the medium’s individualizing possibilities (http://www.pewinternet.org/Commentary/2007/November/Boot-Camp-for-Internet-Addicts.aspx). We can be clicking around an electronic cave as much as we’re addressing and being addressed by others online. Similarly, books often get cast as “solitary” and “single-minded,” but can equally been seen in terms of “deep engagement” and being “other-minded.” In The Company We Keep, Wayne Booth set forth an underused but highly heuristic image of the book as a conversational friend, given the medium’s ability to put one in dialogue with the extended and carefully chosen thoughts of another human being.

In other words, much current talk presumes the Internet necessarily opens discursive space for others while books provide a minimal mode of civic engagement. It strikes me that thinking a bit more about reverse assumptions would help Shirky better theorize the counterintuitive constraints under which creative efforts always operate (see Csikszentmihalyi’s Creativity) and help Carr frame his efforts in terms more conducive to where he seems to want to go: rather than focusing on others’ absence/presence, it may be that one’s way of being with others matters most.

Crossposted on rhizomicon

Notes from north of 49ºN

Last month, the Toronto Star ran an article on the use of social media in Toronto’s mayoral race. This fall’s election will be the first since the proliferation of social media and the wake of Obama’s campaign 2.0. A CTVGlobemedia poll released this week shows that the race is tightening up, as heir apparent George Smitherman {15.9%} was leapfrogged by Rob Ford {17.8} with a 3.1% margin of error and 37.9% undecided.

Now, most of the candidates have embraced social media with various “chiclets”::

for sites like Twitter and YouTube. The “downside” of social media is that it can be hard or impossible to control. This clip of a documentary where Rob Ford gets on the case of a reporter for calling him a “fat f*ck” was making the rounds on YouTube::

Well, first off, this dispels the irksome myth that all Canadians are mild-mannered and polite. How does this video play in the court of public opinion? It’s hard to say. Some might be turned off by Ford’s confrontational style, but it might be “on code” with his feisty approach and accountability stance. Smitherman is no shrinking violet, so it may be interesting if Smitherman and Ford go after each other and voters can see it on YouTube.

I think Twitter offers an interesting mode for engagement. Provincially, here in the Toronto Centre riding, Liberal MPP Glen Murray does a great job of using Twitter to have conversations with constituents. The mayoral candidates should look to Twitter to both engage voters and mobilize supporters, as well as crowdsource ideas to help round-out platforms. A breakdown of the candidates’ Twitter presence follows, in their order in the CTVGlobemedia poll with following/followers/Tweets::

1. Rob Ford {17.8%} 151/663/256
2. George Smitherman {15.9%} 1,540/1,609/119
3. Joe Pantalone {10.1%} 508/591/245
4. Rocco Rossi {9.1%} 1,019/1,432/732
5. Sarah Thomson {5.8%} 1,017/1,082/1,066
6. Giorgio Mammoliti {2.5%} 618/474/ 274

I think it’s important for candidates to follow their followers in order to get the most out of Twitter and the conversations it can foster. Rossi and Thomson are Tweeting frequently and it would be interesting for their campaigns to gauge and analyze how Twitter affects metrics for the various functional areas of the campaign, e.g., volunteering, fundraising, attendance at events, etc.

Song:: XTC-‘Mayor of Simpleton’

Twitterversion:: [blog] Can #Twitter be a gamechanger in #Toronto mayoral race, offering conversations & engagement? #ThickCulture #VoteTO @Prof_K

Just a Friday diversion here on ThickCulture.

Song:: The Clash-‘City of the Dead’

Twitterversion:: [blog-#thickculture] “Empire Urban Regeneration Program” via Geekpr0n. #StarWars @Prof_K