Social Media and the Federal Government

Here is an article that students will find interesting, via student Brenda Le on Twitter:

(you can read the entire article here)

Simons: Federal government catches up to social media

 

Will repeal 1938 law that banned ‘premature transmission’ of election results

 

BY PAULA SIMONS, EDMONTONJOURNAL.COM JANUARY 13, 2012

 

 

• STORY
• PHOTOS ( 3 )

 

 

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MP Tim Uppal’s twitter feed referring to his proposed legislation to relax the rules on Internet broadcast of election results in Canada.

Photograph by: Twitter, edmontonjournal.com

EDMONTON - Friday morning, Tim Uppal, MP for Edmonton-Sherwood Park, and the Harper government’s Minister of State for Democratic Reform made history.

Live, on Twitter.

Shortly after 10:30 a.m., EST, Uppal took to the Twitterverse to announce that Ottawa intends to repeal the 1938 ban on “premature transmission” of federal election results. If the bill passes, it will no longer be a criminal offence for a Canadians to discuss live election returns on Twitter or Facebook. Nor will it be a crime for newspapers, broadcasters or independent bloggers to use their websites to report election numbers across the country in real time.

“Canadians should have freedom to communicate about election results without fear of heavy penalty,” he said, from his account, @MinTimUppal.

Only after issuing the good news in a series of 10 pithy tweets — five in English, five in French — did Uppal hold a formal press conference with Ottawa reporters.

Uppal says breaking his own story on Twitter seemed like the right thing to do — symbolically speaking. And if his cute social media tactics encouraged more people to start following him on Twitter? Well, he’s good with that, too.

“This is about us saying, as a government, that Canadians should not be penalized for using modern technology,” says Uppal. “We’ve seen the way that people use Facebook and Twitter that this ban is unenforceable. It’s out of date. The use of this technology is important to Canadians. It’s become normal and we should not be punishing people for doing that.”