Observations on social media and political issues

There’s an interesting political issue in my home province that is seeing some use of social media. It’s making an interesting case study. Given the overlap between a relevant political issue and the use of social technology, I think that this is a case study worth following.

Background

The event that I referred to in my previous post became official last Thursday. In summary, my province (New Brunswick) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding to sell the vast majority of its power utility to another province (Quebec) in exchange for debt relief and a five year guarantee on electrical power rates. The two governments largely negotiated the deal in secret and announced it as noted above, launching a new website about the deal at the same time. There are reports that some mainstream media outlets caught wind of the deal about six weeks ago but it only leaked to local media within the past couple of weeks.

New Brunswick’s power utility (NB Power) has accumulated a lot of debt over the decades, currently pegged at $ 4.7 billion (Canadian), with fluctuating profitability. Our nuclear power plant is currently undergoing a refurbishment (the first of its kind for this kind of nuclear reactor) that’s over budget and considerably behind schedule – there’s a multi-billion dollar bill coming up for this, although part of it is in the $4.7 billion that I mentioned earlier. Our main hydroelectric dam has structural problems due to an alkali-aggregate reaction and probably will need at least $1.0 billion in repairs EDIT: a currently unknown amount of repairs at an unknown cost within the next 10 years. the projected lifespan of the dam is shorter than original estimates as a result of the reaction (EDIT: sorry, I got costs and lifespan wrong on this one. Some estimates say the dam has 30 more years of power generating life; other estimates are shorter, so I don’t know what the lifespan and costs actually are. My apologies, this could be more of a long term issue than a short term issue). Power rates are relatively high in New Brunswick compared to the rest of Canada.

EDIT: Nov. 3/09 – OK, things continue to be interesting with regards to the Mactaquac Hydro Dam: in a CBC Radio question and answer session held today, Premier Shawn Graham stated that Mactaquac may have to be refurbished within the next 10 years and the price tag could be up to $3.0 billion. Man, I wish my psychic powers were more reliable. ;-)

Many aspects of the sale of NB Power certainly seem to contradict the election platform of the current provincial government, especially the statements that NB Power would not be sold. We have an election scheduled next year, so there’s a lot riding on this deal. The deadline for turning the MOU into an actual deal is March 31, 2010.

The government’s use of social media

Various politicians have Twitter accounts and Facebook accounts, but they don’t seem to matter too much in this campaign. As I mentioned earlier, the main focus of the campaign is the government’s own website about the deal. It includes:

a YouTube video made by Shawn Graham, the Premier (equivalent to a state governor) of New Brunswick, about the sale of NB Power
links to key documents (i.e. the Memorandum of Understanding or MOU)
a “blog” to which Premier Graham has made two posts since Oct. 29/09
a section for NB citizens to write what they think about the deal – this section is moderated and apparently posts are disappearing at times, although this is unconfirmed
contact names, phone numbers, and E-Mail addresses for several government officials

Clearly, the NB government wants this website to be the “conversation destination”. By the way, I’m about 90% sure that it’s a hosted Wordpress blog.

The public’s use of social media

Despite the government’s intentions, the real conversation hub appears to be Facebook. A Facebook Group called NO to Sale of NB Power now has over 11,600 members and is very active (note: the population of New Brunswick is less than 800,000.) There’s a lot of emotional posts on the group’s Wall, many of them quite angry. There are 22 Discussion threads at this moment and over 200 posts in the threads. I haven’t seen any government participation in this Facebook Group, but there’s a lot of posts to sift through there.

There are some signs of activity beyond angry Wall and discussion posts. The members of the group are organizing a protest for November 17 via the group. They are working on selecting a spokesperson through the Facebook Group. There is also a discussion thread about creating a lawsuit to block the sale.

There’s a Twitter hashtag #nbpower4sale that’s being used to track conversation about the sale. There still seems to be several Tweets an hour on the topic three days after the announcement.

The future remains to be seen (will any or all of these plans come to fruition), but there’s definitely lots of communication and signs of organization via social media, just not in the place that the NB government created for discussion.

EDIT (Nov. 2/09) - Lower Rates NB is another Facebook Group about the NB Power sale. After looking at the members list, the Wall posts, and the website for this group, I have to conclude that this Facebook group is either directly maintained by someone affiliated with the government of New Brunswick or someone who is a fan of the Premier and/or his political party. Directly or indirectly, it does appear that the NB government and/or the political party that is the governing party is engaging on Facebook.

What am I doing during this political/social media event?

First and foremost, I’m trying to remain neutral while I educate myself on the deal and the underlying economic situation in my province. I’ll admit that I’m skeptical, nervous, and suspicious about this deal, but I really want to understand it better. I can’t rule out the possibility that this deal is actually the best alternative we have.

There are three main activities that I’m engaging in with regards to these events:

I created a Facebook Group called NB Power and Hydro-Quebec: You Read, You Decide. I’ve positioned it as an information resource and try to keep things neutral. I invited a number of my own Facebook contacts to join it. The group currently has 103 members. Most of the Wall activity are links to related material about the sale that I’ve posted. There have been a few Wall posts by other people but, for the most part, it’s quite tame. There are four Discussion threads but they don’t have a huge amount of activity.
I created a Wordpress.com blog about the NB Power sale. It’s only got a few entries that are links to other information or restatements of parts of the MOU.
I’ve used the #nbpower4sale hashtags to post links, thoughts, etc. about the deal on Twitter. I’ve also used the hashtag to track other conversations.

What’s next?

This is a weird situation. The sale of NB Power will have a profound long term impact on my family’s life, so I can’t realistically stay neutral about this situation. For the time being, I’m just trying to learn more about what’s going on so I can draw some rational conclusions about this whole situation.

It’s a very emotional topic. Many people could lose their jobs over time if this deal goes through. It sure looks like there’s some significant short term economic gain to be had from this experience. However, there are some significant risks and uncertainties that are scaring a lot of people. The entire political process has made many people very angry at the government for their handling of this planned sale, especially when it looks like the Premier and his government have contradicted themselves in numerous ways.

If there’s any role that I want to play in this, it’s to help education people or, more appropriately, help them educate themselves. Social media tools are well suited to doing this. I think this political issue can be a useful case study and so I’ll periodically post updates.

This political event is NOT going to take over Broadcasting Brain, but it will be featured within. It’s still relevant to a lot of the other subject matter that I discuss here.

As a final comment, if anyone has links to how social media have been used in similar situations, I’d welcome your comments and feedback (just like always!)

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