Social media and politics. Obama and Sarah Silverman

I'm not a huge Silverman fan, but this whole campaign for The Great Schlep is just fantastic.

For someone whose work revolves around behaviour-changing campaigns utilising digital communications, this is right up there at the top.

The brief: Get retired Jewish people to turn up to vote - for Obama - in Florida.

The result: The Great Schlep site. If you can't be bothered to schlepp over there, then here's her video - you'll get the picture.

It was boing-boinged a while ago - which undoubtedly generated traffic. But it is also - apparently - working. Class. (hat tip to a future colleague on this one)


The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

UK MPs who use Twitter

I also had a bit of twitterchat with @lfeatherstone this week, who's almost my local MP - good to see her using Twitter well too (she claims to be the first MP on there). For some reason I do get the feeling that the Lib Dems "get" it, @brianpaddick aside. Though you've got to give him points for trying.

I tweeted a request to find other blogging MPs before my interview with Torin - there weren't that many out there - apart from everyone's favourite @tom_watson. Who totally gets it?

So far I've got a few from various wikis which are around, but who else is there? I feel like making a list... suggestions welcome.

Tom Watson

Jo Swinson
10 Downing St
Lynne Featherstone

Grant Shapps (thanks Will Howells) - update

A week of Politics, Social Media, the BBC and Twitter

Given the meteoric take up of social media in the US Elections, I wonder how much we'll see in the UK for our general election?

This was broadly the theme of Torin Douglas' piece for The World Tonight this week, which he interviewed me for. It's seven minutes long, but if you're into politics, and social media, it's well worth a listen.



Torin approached social media seriously - as do US politicians.

Compare that to John Humphrys interview of @ruskin147, @cybersoc and @katebevan about Twitter, prompted by "that" article in Wired.