Social media comes of age
ONLINE RECRUITMENT: Both coalitions are reaching out to voters
IN May last year, Shamsul Fariz was one of the first 10 to respond when Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin tweeted for volunteers in his Rembau parliamentary constituency. Khairy tweeted back with his thanks.
A week later, Shamsul was one of the members of the core batch who met Khairy at his personal office. And today, he is one of 10,000 Barisan Nasional Youth Volunteers (BNYV) across the country — of whom an estimated 80 per cent were recruited through social media.
Since the 2008 General Election, both the BN and the opposition have used social media not only to get their message across to voters, but to persuade them to commit their time and efforts to the cause.
Both have been cautious, however, and have learned some lessons. Lesson number one might be: never rely on the kindness of strangers.
In Singapore’s 2011 polls, the opposition Singapore Democratic Alliance went online to appeal for proposers, seconders and assenters for its bid to stand in the Tanjung Pagar Group Representation Constituency against Lee Kuan Yew’s People’s Action Party team.
Residents volunteered — but the team of candidates was disqualified in the end because their seconder did not show up and they missed the deadline. It was the only walkover on nomination day.
“This year, under the rules and conditions for nomination day here, if a candidate’s proposer says he or she didn’t sign in front of the candidate, the nomination is rejected,” says a PKR campaigner. “So we were afraid to ask people we didn’t know, whether via social media or other channels.”
BNYV national command centre director Zaidel Baharuddin is equally firm on this point: “No one dares to get proposers and seconders for nomination day via social media.”
However, some candidates are signing up polling and counting agents online for the 13th General Election (GE13). Fahmi Fadzil, political secretary to former Lembah Pantai member of parliament Nurul Izzah Anwar, says she has found between 400 and 500 agents via Facebook, her website, leaflets and phone calls.
BNYV’s Zaidel says social media is neither an effective nor an efficient way to recruit agents: “The best way is the local machinery in each division, which has a list of ‘white’ supporters — party members and those who join BN programmes. The local leaders know them….”
Both coalitions also recognise that social media works best through constant, two-way engagement. “It’s no longer top down,” points out communications strategist Tan Sri Lim Kok Wing. “It is an interactive audience now. They respond. Today, they have a voice.”
Tun Faisal Ismail, Umno Youth’s new media unit chairman and chairman of the BN Youth Cyber team, says new media has helped politicians to engage voters and bring them into the process. Their favoured tool is Twitter, “the easiest for politicians to use and for people to access in comparison with Facebook”.
“Nurul Izzah’s team engages constantly through her blog and Facebook,” notes Praba Ganesan, PKR’s social media strategist. “They don’t just announce a date, venue and event. When they wanted to turn the Lucky Garden roundabout into a garden of flags, they asked for comments on social media and, when people responded positively, asked them to help. At least 30 to 50 people came to plant the flags.”
BNYV’s Shamsul recalls that at their first meeting with Khairy, “we shared our opinions. Most of our ideas were used in the programmes”. But, stresses Zaidel, “for social media, we need to give a general idea of what we want to do and what we can do. If it’s purely bottom-up, it gets messy.”
The major difference between the coalition’s social media strategies relates to fund-raising. Basically, the opposition does it and the BN doesn’t.
Back in 2008, PKR de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had no online donation feature although offline donations were welcome via bank-in, says Ganesan. The blogs just provided a bank account number.
In the run-up to GE13, the party’s “Demi Rakyat” website had iPay88 payment features, but the credit card feature was disabled in early April. The bank-in information is still there, however.
But for the BN, says Tun Faisal, raising money through social media is “not in our job description”.
So far, reckons PKR’s Ganesan, political parties are not fully utilising social media to engage voters.
“We’ve trod very carefully along the lines of what worked before, to add value,” he says. “I believe we will see the full impact in GE14.”
