Parties Seek Rules On Social Media

[Lite Beer]

Parties seek rules on social media

By Kornchanok Raksaseri

The Nation on Sunday

Lack of clarity about new form of poll campaign raises worries of overstepping

Participants at N Forum yesterday urged the Election Commission to issue clear guidelines on how political parties are allowed to use social media, as two major parties are making use of social media as part of their election campaign.

At the second N Forum, organised by The Nation on "Election Campaign and Social Media", representatives from Pheu Thai and Democrat parties as well as social media gurus were the panellists.

Over a hundred participants, mostly Twitter and Facebook users, attended the forum. Pheu Thai's top party-list candidate Yingluck Shinawatra (@pouyingluck) also sent her Twitter greeting to participants at the forum.

Clarifying on the legal use of social media during the election period, EC inspector Cholaraj Jittanaitham (@Cholban15) as the EC's representative told the forum that online "violations" of electoral laws would be looked into on a case-by-case basis.

He said the use of social media is allowed but political parties and MP candidates must report costs associated with such use. He added that the five EC members are discussing about the election rules and the use of this new media but have not yet reached any conclusions.

Speaking on the issue of the law prohibiting anyone from promoting a political party or MP candidates after 6pm on the eve of the election day, Cholaraj said online campaign content would not be blocked on the eve of the election, but there must be no additions after 6pm.

His answers did not relieve the worries of politicians. Political parties are still unclear about how to calculate such spending.

Nevertheless, Cholaraj promised to reactivate the EC's twitter account @ECT_Thailand as a way to communicate with voters.

Opening the forum, Nation Group editor-in-chief Suthichai Yoon (@suthichai) said he believed the role of social media in Thai politics would increase drastically, referring to the phenomenon in the United States and Singapore. "I dream of seeing a political party that exists online and does most of its work like policy formulation online," he said.

Pheu Thai deputy leader Kanawat Wasinsungworn (@kanawat_) said he realised that the rising perception of political campaign through social media in the United States, which rose from 9 per cent in 2000 to 25 per cent in 2008.

"What happened in the Middle East, Singapore etc underscores the importance of social media in politics," he said, "It looks like we have prepared little. But actually Pheu Thai has been leery of social media because we've been dissolved twice."

Kanawat, who stressed that he "tweets" (posts messages on Twitter) himself, said his party has dozens of people making up Pheu Thai's social media team. It has not released a lot of such media findings out of fear of legal problems.

He said Pheu Thai does not use social media as the main channel for election campaigning. "Social can backfire. Popularity can rise and drop fast on social media," he said, referring to the negative use of propaganda that contains both truth and lies.

"The more attempts to silence social media, the louder it will sound. What happens in social media will balance itself out. No need for state regulation".

Democrat director of their Bangkok election centre, Apirak Kosayodhin (@Apirak_Bangkok), said the Democrats are using social media as the main tool for two-way communication. With thousands of members, the Democrats are using social media to encourage both first-time voters and the politics-weary middle class to exercise their political rights, he said.

He said the Democrats let their young social media staff take initiatives on online strategy.

"Social media will benefit small, low-budget political parties if they know how to utilise it," said Apirak, who used social network website Hi5 to communicate to voters in 2008.

All the panellists agreed that good culture and ethics must be reinforced among social media users to really make use of them. They decried spammers, abusers and trolls and asked how the EC has prepared to deal with them.

Both Apirak and Kanawat cautioned that overwhelming social cynicism against politicians could be counter-productive.

Poramate Minsiri, webmaster of Kapook.com and vice president of Thai Webmaster Association, (@iWhale), said "People's policies" should be formulated through social media."

Poramate has been successful in gathering aid for flood victims by putting #ThaiFlood to sort out and manage information. He has also created a Facebook page "WeLoveThai", where people with different political attitudes can share ideas peacefully. Over 50,000 people have become its members.

Meanwhile, Thawatchai Kerdpradub - or @AjBomb - an IT expert from Rajamangala University of Technology Lanna and author of "Marketing on Twitter", said the use of Twitter by the Democrats and Pheu Thai is largely one-way and spoon-feeding while political parties can utilise social media as their two-way fan base instead of one-way propaganda. Many forum participants urged political parties' leaders to tweet by themselves and have separate accounts for staffs.

Thawatchai said Yingluck has done better with the use of social media, especially when pictures are posted. Meanwhile, people have an impression that @Abhisit_DP, Democrat leader Abhisit Vejjajiva's account on Twitter, has been run by his staff, not himself. Abhisit might have to post his videos speaking to the audience to reinforce people's sentiments of him using social media.

-- The Nation 2011-05-29