{"id":18920,"date":"2017-11-08T16:50:52","date_gmt":"2017-11-08T21:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=18920"},"modified":"2017-11-08T16:50:52","modified_gmt":"2017-11-08T21:50:52","slug":"politics-as-usual-atwitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/politics-as-usual-atwitter\/","title":{"rendered":"POLITICS AS USUAL: Atwitter"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas<\/strong><\/p>\n

Social media has been an important part of the political landscape for arguably a decade or more; not just for getting your message out, but for how that message is shaped, how it is viewed, even by whom it is viewed.
\nMedia presence in all its forms is an integral part of the get- out-the-vote process. But being important to a campaign is one thing, having a critical impact on how democracy functions? Well. That\u2019s another.
\nAnd we seemed to have arrived at that place today.
\nLast week, the global media was all aflutter that President Trump\u2019s twitter account went dark for 11 minutes. For a whopping 11 minutes, the world was not subjected to the inane or profane \u2013 depending on the topic \u2013 from the tweeter-in-Chief. This made global news. And I mean global \u2013 everyone was covering this \u201cstory.\u201d Breathlessly, and ad nauseum.
\nThink about that. Arguably the most powerful leader in the world uses a \u201cfree\u201d media tool (and we\u2019ll talk about whether it\u2019s \u201cfree\u201d in a minute) to get his message out to his millions of followers. And his ability to do so was stopped by a low level staffer who decided to shut down the account on his way out of his job.
\nTalk about an exit interview.
\nPolicy by tweet is definitely something we have not seen previously, by leaders of any nation, but it is definitely the case now.
\nOther leaders have used other media effectively so it isn\u2019t anything new to manipulate messaging through media in its various forms.
\nWhat is new is the medium itself. And how much control of that message the President, our PM, your local Councillor really has over it.
\nLeaving aside the fact that it is ridiculous to think that complex policy on immigration, or health care or taxation can be communicated in 140 characters (because it can\u2019t!), it is being used for just that function. So, the fact that it was effectively stopped, silenced really, is cause for significant alarm.
\nThose folks laughing about \u201cshutting\u201d up Trump should step back for a minute and think about what really happened.
\nThe ability of the President of the United States to speak to his community was cut off by a temp. Love him or hate him, you have to agree that that\u2019s a pretty shocking state of affairs.
\nWhich gets back to my point about control of the message. Yes, Facebook and twitter are fantastic vehicles for communication. They are accessible communication tools that afford anyone the ability to reach thousands upon thousands of people quickly and easily.
\nBut they are not free.
\nJust like anything, there is definitely a cost. You don\u2019t own your Twitter or Facebook account. By that I mean you don\u2019t really control it. There is a third party that has access to it and can shut it down at any time. Your content, your contacts, all of it \u2013 even the Presidents \u2013 can disappear with the press of a button. That is truly frightening.
\nAnd even if you decide to shut it down yourself, it doesn\u2019t mean it disappears. The content is archived. Just like anything else on the internet. It doesn\u2019t disappear. So those tweets and posts that are deleted are always there, lurking about. There is no reset.
\nSo my point here is that while it may have been funny to laugh about \u201cshutting up\u201d Trump, albeit temporarily, remember what you\u2019re actually laughing about \u2013 that a private corporation can silence a President\u2026Personally, I don\u2019t think that\u2019s funny at all. <\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas Social media has been an important part of the political landscape for arguably a decade or more; not just for getting your message out, but for how that message is shaped, how it is viewed, even by whom it is viewed. Media presence in all its forms is an integral part of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4Va","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-21 20:18:40","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18920\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}