Social Media and Political Authenticity in the Calgary Mayoral Election

The final speaker in this panel at AoIR 2012 is Delia Dumitrica, whose interest is in how citizens conceptualise the use of social media in political communication. Her premise is that this can be understood as an attempt to discursively articulate wider issues of trust in politicians. Articulations mobilise people, and tell us something about what we expect of politics; young people, for example, long for democracy and want to be heard – they are far from disengaged (but misplaced faith in the role of technology in communication with politics can also disappoint).

Inn the recent Calgary mayoral campaign, candidate Naheed Nenshi was praised for his use of social media. Calgary is a young, vibrant, but also conservative city; it has experienced a considerable influx of young voters, and there was going to be a changeover in the mayorship in the 2010 as the previous mayor did not recontest the election. Nenshi eventually won, and social media was credited as an important key to his success.

Part of this was driven by a perception of his authenticity which social media enabled. Authenticity is generally used as a lens for assessing the 'real' character of politicians, but there is also a growing sense of inauthenticity in politics, and a growing cynicism towards political campaigning. Social media are positioned as an antidote for the inauthenticity of mainstream media campaigning, in particular.

Nenshi's social media campaign itself became a newsworthy topic, as it was preoccupied with portraying authenticity; it was claimed that nobody but Nenshi himself had the password for his Facebook and Twitter profiles – contrary to the well-run profiles of many other politicians. More recently, Nenshi has also been in trouble over a potentially offensive message on social media, however, which he defended by pointing to the authentic perspective on his personality which his social media activities revealed.

This positions social media as a guarantor of 'authenticity', in contrast to the mainstream media. They are seen as unmediated, immediate – as making it harder for politicians to lie or to hide their real selves. This defines the problem of democracy as a communication all problem; and such assumptions are highly problematic, of course. There is a longer history here as well: television, too, was once seen as more immediate in its presentation of politicians and their personas. Television as well as social media remain a delivery system for simulated intimacy.

Social media, then, force politicians to be 'authentic', in order to gain a level of trust and make a direct connection with their voters. This ignores the fact that politicians still ultimately need to convince voters to vote for them, and that social media may also serve as a vehicle for populism. How do social media legitimise the placement of trust, and how sensible is this? What about those people who are left out because they are not on social media?