The Tyee’s blog The Hook released an interesting article on the dilemma of regulating campaign ads in social media. What rules will political parties need to follow when they campaign on twitter and Facebook? What ethical issues will arise when they work with online ad agencies? This is quite the kettle of fish!
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
A kettle of fish? Then Bennet should be able to manage it…(former fishing guide -ha,ha?)
But really, how will they ever make regulations that can keep up with technology…
Good questions.
What are some of your answers/predictions/thinking about this topic, Rob?
This is an interesting article. SM is becoming more popular in political campaigns, but how and who do you regulate? And if they are taking about making sure the public knows who is paying for the ads and websites how removed does an ad or website have to be before regulations do not apply.
This seems like a huge issues and I think Deirdre is right when she questions how they can write legislation that will stay up to date with changing technology.
I agree these issues appear huge, Erin! Especially what you said about the public being aware of who is paying for the advertising.
Dean, regarding my predictions about this, I think it will be much harder in the future to have such certainty about who is sponsoring the ads. Does anyone remember the All I Want for Christmas is a PSP ad campaign that was launched for Sony? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipatoni
I think if that much confusion can happen over a handheld video game system, much much more can occur over multi million dollar political campaigns.
I think regulating political capmaigns for honest advertising is important, but I don’t see how it can be policed perfectly. That would involve deep and potentially privacy invading investigation.
One thing about social media I’ve noticed especially is that we have to be critical of the sources we review. Endorsements of political candidates should always be especially well critiqued. A great way to do this is to bounce the ideas off others, especially trusted friends who are open to good discussion. Social media reaches all sorts of people, so it can relieve as much confusion as it can cause. Ad agencies can pour millions of dollars into possibly shady marketing, but we can also use free resources to counter their arguments. I think we will see a lot more viral campaigning as time goes on and as people use less centralized and focus news sources, but because of this people will exercise critical thinking about that kind of marketing more often.
Dean, is this kind of idea what you meant when you suggested that the fix for information overload is more information?