Justice Gomery isn’t the only one wrestling with the impact of digital communications technologies on the workings of public institutions. Elections BC is trying to reconcile that new reality with laws intended to prevent third-party advertisers from swamping referendum and election campaigns.
For what I believe is the first time in Canada, they’re taking on blogs. Declan, posting on the BlogsCanada politics group, reports on his discussions with Elections BC regarding his pro-STV blog. The upshot of his e-mail exchange: he will, in fact, have to officially register with them, as that particular blog was created exclusively to lobby for one particular side.
As Declan suggests,
It seems odd to me that someone can spend their day preaching in the park about voting yes, writing letters to the paper on why to vote yes, writing a vote-yes editorial in the paper and appearing on the radio and on television explaining why to vote yes but only when they get home and decide to start a blog/website explaining why people should vote yes are they forced to register. Especially when they could post all the same stuff on their existing blog and not have to register!
….[W]hile I am flattered that Elections BC would consider the completely unfunded expression of my opinion to be so influential that the public interest requires that I register with the government before expressing it, it feels like an unreasonable intrusion into my right to freedom of speech.
My suspicion is that this issue is not going away. Blogging is becoming more sophisticated as every day passes, and as some of the yelping from the mainstream media suggests, it’s beginning to intrude on their territory. That means growing influence. While I seriously doubt that bloggers will have a significant effect on the referendum vote this time around, that likely won’t hold true for the next one.
Already in the U.S., there have been revelations of supposedly jes’ plain bloggers having actually been paid handsomely by party campaigns to shill on their behalf (and say the kind of things you wouldn’t want traced back to your campaign). In other cases, anonymous bloggers have turned out to party operatives.
If Google and Technorati results are suddenly dominated by well-funded “astroturf” blogs, would that constitute an end-run around the advertising limits provided for in the law?
(And for the record, I’m a New Democrat, I run this site on my own nickel and my own time, and I’m still not sure how I’ll vote in the referendum.)
Update: See also David Schreck’s take on all of this here. And the rabble discussion here.
You’re a New Democrat?!?! ;)
Damn, you’re fast! That was, what, three minutes after I posted?
Saying that they’re ‘taking on blogs’ is a bit hard, given that I took the intitative of emailing elections BC and asked for an interpretation of the law, but the end result remains the same.
I guess the heart of it is that – even though I claim to have no funding – as long as I’m not registered, there is no (easy) way for the government to know for sure that I’m not just an astro-turfer (always nice to make up words on the fly).
The legislation (and less so, the interpretation of it by elections BC) still seems heavy handed and overly broad to me, but, like you say, it’s a tricky area, and likely not one which is going to go away.
To be clear, I didn’t mean “taking on” in the confrontational, care-to-discuss-this-outside, Mr.-Smartypants-Blogger? sense. I meant it in the sense that they’re taking on regulatory authority in this sphere.
And I wish I could claim credit for “astroturf”, but it’s been around for a while. PRWatch has a good history here.
“To be clear, I didn‚Äôt mean ‚Äútaking on‚Äù in the confrontational, care-to-discuss-this-outside, Mr.-Smartypants-Blogger? sense. I meant it in the sense that they‚Äôre taking on regulatory authority in this sphere.”
ah, I misunderstood (and I may have to steal that Mr.-Smartypants-Blogger line someday)
Apparently I wasn’t clear either, my new-word reference was to my own nounification of astroturf into astroturfer. I wasn’t accusing *you* of making up words, just me.
Huh, apparently my ‘-‘ on either side of ‘Smartypants’ was interpreted as a ‘strike’ html code. Where’s that ‘preview’ button when you need it? :)
Sometimes the autoformatting features on this thing are a little too auto for my liking. I’ll see if I can fix it. :)
…Ha! It worked.
Someone unthaw Marshall Macluhan – they’re trying to figure out what “media” is!
Go figure Letters to the Editor are known opinions, and (supposedly) signed by anyone working for the gov’t as such, likewise radio and television. (And if yer on a soapbox in Stanley Park, who gives a rip?) The triky bit is making sure you’ve got a sig for your point of view – knowing you’re you, or some such.
Congratulations, Declan! You’re now a Special Interest Group for folks to complain about!