In the words of Dan Rather the US veteran TV news anchor “Candidates do hate, genuinely hate, audience participation, because they like to control the environment,” When faced with the idea that voters will ask them questions via a YouTube video, he says, and “they get the shivers.”
The long-term effects of using generated content and other aspects of the social web on our political systems will be fascinating to observe. There is no walk of life where messages have been more tightly controlled than in the political arena. As brands and corporate bodies begin to learn that they are operating in world where the customer talks back, politicians will come to learn that they need to do far more than pay lip service to their promises of listening to and respecting the opinions of their electorate.
The level of scrutiny that they will face will continue to increase and there will be greater availability of physical records in terms of audio visual recordings of what they do and what they say. These records will be searchable and will exist for very long time making politicians ever more accountable for their promises.
PR and the Social Web 