hypocrisy

@hypocrisy Do you thing Swedish parties and politicians are ready fro Internet and social media. It's very difficult to figure out how Finnish politiciens would succeed. It's still pretty much the old stuff, TV, radio and print that counts here. A small minority knows how to use social media but it's interesting to see how they move on the learning curve. We've parlamentary election a year from now.

@visualradio social media (sic) is not the message, it is the media. Thus I think that if the message is good, honest and in the long run consistent: It will work in whatever environment it is put in.

To take this a bit further, politics (seem to be) built on deception and with the political parties being more and more streamlines to mimic each other.

It is not so much about having some kind of core line of policies, it is more about fitting the present rhetoric into the winds blowing public opinion-wise.

(end rant)

What would you say are the factors behind how the Finnish political parties / politicians act when it comes to their PR-work, if things are as you say?

And, do you have sites similar to knuff.se, bloggar.se etc + major newspapers either developing their own social/blog-media sites (like Bonniers did with newsmill.se) or buying an existing site like Aftonbladet (Schibsted) did with bloggportalen.se?

@hypocrisy The parties have their own blog platforms. Some use own Nings. There are Uusi Suomi and Kauppalehti. The most popular discussion forum is Suomi24. But lots of them use US based blogging platforms. Most of them don't have a message. They start blogging a few months before the election and then they stop after that. Yeah, media is the message and it has to be a media mix here. The average Finn is not yeat so deep into Facebooking and tweeting. The user numbers are higher than active participants. I dislike the content of most political bloggers. They are still too much "me" centered and they have no real issues, no compelling stories to tell. The best way to get elected is to have a media background or gold medal in skiining. The digital media scene is still very inmature. The personalities are not here yet. Do you've a Swedish Obama clone? I think, we don't.

@hypocrisy @visualradiov Marshal McLuhan's (1911-1980) expressions "the medium is the message" and "global village" are videly known and accepted.

I feel the social media to be more a message than a media when I see someone from a strong hierarchy join open and interactive social media channels and really use his/her brain there (not just the part from his/her box in his/her organization.

..and maybe wise people havent ever been interested in wising, or not, participate to the mediatic wave, and than as a consequence too, when minding only "participative %1" :: innovation | learning (or for others, as quoted above, doing politics) but all, anyway, socially and innovation+market responsibile.. and this is important. an innovative media::wave generator bothers with wrong messages but here the acts/ regulations / and for most::no regulations (e.g. privacy, trade, ..) on the message makes the media a powerful mAssage too. it is all about innovation, so about the message. interesting, but much is wrong, coined like "pervasivepolitik" (so.. wrong messages have a function??)

significantly, magnitude of the massage is perceived in different ways, at angel / engineering level, what really matter to some, appears low, and so "blowing public opinion-wise" gets out of scope. but the wave tale is broad, and broader if a twitt is declared, wrongly and misbehaving globalizen or reflexive to foo

I agree that organization and public environments have different footprints too and having both of them, and mainly at certain level, enlight and is much approciated, but avoid details pls if not by written proposal. beer

With all respect to all of you in this thread: The media is not the message, the message is and always will be superseding the transmission form.

I can speak of my native Sweden, where there are much bigger issues as when it comes to democracy than if parties and candidates use Facebook (sic) or not. To mention one example there is the issue where the so called controlling organ that the parliament is supposed to be (over government) is being controlled by the parties individual group leaders, and thus setting this aspect of governance out of play. Some people I have talked with even go as far as calling this un-constitutional.

The way that the parties and candidates conducts their campaign is secondary as far as how interested, engaged and also clear headed the individual citizen is regarding his / her role as a voter.

Also, we have a representative democracy in all democracies (that I can think of at least). Which means that the initial election is only one step in process. There is a lot to be done, rather than saying that "social media is the answer". I'd even dare to say that it is a bit naive. Sure, using social media sites and services can be a good way for politicians to reach their potential voters, but to say that it will have any effect on the actual political work is.. Well.. Naive. That said with all due respect towards all of you (and even myself). Real political change takes a long time and a dedicated mindset of those wanting it. It takes circumstance, money.. etc

Of course, social media can and do play a role as a discussion platform, though this discussion has to reach the top somehow - it has to avoid and sometimes suppress all the individual interests whom are battling over influence and money.

Not to play the devil's advocate here, as I do enjoy getting in touch with people like yourselves through all these sites and services. (Being an old IRC and email-list user, I know what great connections and friendships can be made through the Internet, and my life feels richer getting to know all these people.)

In any case: A hat tip to those commenting (thanks :))

this is interesting thread, new societal arrangements are really needed,constitution should be revised from a information society angle, tools like linked data, social media, collaboration tools enable completely neeww ways of governanceour suomi2

@hypocrisy @personaleu @oldpolitics @hyvaelama I see several important things in this thread. We've a cross-border discussion about politics and upcoming election issues in Sweden and Finland. I also agree that it's not the media but the message that counts. It would be great to have much more open qaiku collaboration with you folks at the other side of Aland... and European / Global scale.

We've the deepest export dive since 1917 (90 years) and our politicians don't grasp the important issue of industrial transformation at all. The single industry related discussion is about having one to three or the green alternative zero nuclear power plants. I'm not against the nukes but we'd need to elaborate what this country does to get back to business 2010 - 2020.

The Finnish high-tech and mobile miracle isn't innovating as it used to do. We need a ground-breaking remodeling of the industrial landscape. We would need hundreds of SMEs to step forward with own products and systems for the global market. We need to get out of our Europe dependence. And our existing politicians are still thinking about national, regional and municipality issues.

The mental mind-set is over one hundred year old. There is almosto nobody talking about this much needed remodeling. Ok, I'm exaggerating a little... but there is no imaginative talk about how we should finance the well-fare state and the modernization of Finland.

There are small groups in Qaiku #Suomi2 with interesting ideas and innovative apporaches but this is not a platform for power brokers, yet. The single most important re-industrialization issue would be to transform at least one hundred SME's go growth companies through effective globalization of operations. There is a potential for such an expansion but they need to move from sub-supplier status (to Finnish big industries) to independent organizations with world class products. I see how it could happen but there isn't even public talk about how this transformation should be organized.

It'd be nice to know how Sweden is tracking it's way out from the global economical crisis. Do you've a formula that could be applied to Finland as well?

A smaller evolution to improve the productivity of 24/7 society is microworks organization (mikroarbete). We've counted that if every Finn would buy microwork for one euro per day every year, that would lead to an annual business of 2 billion euros.

I didn't bring up social politics or well-fare issues but methods to pay the bill. It's possible that this isn't good politics at all while the average voter isn't motivated about the national cash-flow. But if we don't get this changed, Finland can soon start to advertise itself as the northern Greece. Our debt load is growing with a dramatic speed. If we don't get a change now, the problems will be much deeper 2015 - 2020.

What should we do to make this a milking cash-cow again?