Should councillors here in the UK take a leaf out of the Donald Trump playbook and be on Twitter? Set up their own Facebook page? Start a YouTube channel? Post pictures to Instagram? Or, like me, write blogs?
The answer to all these questions should be, in my view, a resounding yes. Call me old-fashioned, but democracy, whether it’s national or local, works best when people know what decisions are being made on their behalf. When I first started as a cub reporter on the Reading Chronicle in the early 1980s, local newspapers had healthy circulations and could be relied on to report local government. But now that kind of local journalism has been emasculated, councils – and wider civic society – has to find other ways of keeping people informed. And one of those ways should be via the social web.
That said, doing so is not without risk. A lot of councillors I speak to – especially women – are reluctant to promote themselves and their vital work via Twitter in particular, because of an understandable fear of trolls. And that’s not the only barrier; many elected members are, to put it bluntly, getting on a bit and can find the technological and editorial challenges intimidating. It’s a generational thing!
But I firmly believe the positives outweigh the negatives. And with getting on for 40 million UK users of Facebook, not having anything to do with social media is a crazy as the councillor who decided to have nothing more to do with his local paper (the one I wrote for as it happens) and who lost his seat at the next election.
This presentation was part of a longer social media training session for Guildford Borough Council. I share it freely (with their permission and with the addition of a commentary) in the hope that other councillors or would-be councillors will be encouraged to have a go.
I should add that in the spirit of openness Guildford Borough Council webcast many of their training sessions including the one that this presentation was a part of. I think it’s fair to say that watching it via the web isn’t quite the same as being in the room. But if you fancy a flavour of proceedings you can see them here. And, as you’ll quickly gather, I’m the grey-haired geezer at the front wearing a black shirt.
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