Saskatchewan election campaign serves as a lesson in social media

SASKATOON – Social media users should never feel they have a “carte blanche” when it comes to posting comments online, because someone will always be able to view them, according to a Saskatoon-based social media consultant.

“Anything that you put on social media, or any digital media for that matter, it’s out there for anybody to see at any time,” said Frank Collins, the founder of DangerDynamite, a digital marketing company.

“Once it’s out there, it’s out there, so you have to be very conscious of that.”

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In Saskatchewan’s days-old provincial election campaign, it’s come to light that four Saskatchewan New Democratic Party (NDP) candidates reportedly posted past inappropriate items on social media. Three of the candidates were dismissed, while another resigned for “personal reasons,” according to the party.

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“The internet’s full of bad humour, full of off colour jokes, but there can be a line crossed when it’s about certain issues,” said Saskatchewan NDP Leader Cam Broten to reporters on Monday.

Any person who is attempting to become a public figure of any sort should take action to rid their social media of any past posts that could be viewed as offensive, according to Collins.

“Fortunately everything is on there to see and you can go through a social media profile from day one until the present and do an audit of it,” said Collins.

“There is the chance that somebody may have taken a screenshot of it and it could be still there for somebody to see, but at least it minimizes the possibility of that.”

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Another step is to create a separate “personality” page for all social media activity related to a person’s public position.

“If you are a public personality … you should definitely have a public profile, a page that advertises you as a public figure and no longer using your personal profile as something that the public can see.”

Managing and mending a social media presence is the new normal for politicians, according to University of Saskatchewan political studies Prof. Greg Poelzer. He said parties need to scrutinize their potential candidates under a harsher light than their opponents would.

“The medium is the message, and Twitter and Facebook is the message,” said Poelzer.

“That’s shifted the way we think about these issues and we aren’t going back.”

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