Commentary

One Out of Five Voters Talks Politics Online in Canada

With national elections looming on May 2, 21% of registered Canadian voters are using social media to politely talk about politics at least once a week, according to a new poll of 1,001 Canadian adults by Ipsos Reid carried out March 22-24. Meanwhile a hard core of 6% say they talk about politics daily on social media.

Canadians have plenty to talk about, with well-mannered debates about transparency in government, immigration, taxation, military spending, the state of the national healthcare system, and Internet wiretapping by law enforcement. No surprise, the top forums for online debates include Facebook, Twitter, blogs and traditional news Web sites; in fact, the CBC Web site is the second-most-popular forum after Facebook.

Young adults are more likely to use social media overall, but when it comes to political discussion middle-aged adults were the heaviest users, Ipsos Reid found. Where a mere 4% of voters ages 18-34 use social media to talk about politics on a daily basis, that proportion more than doubles among adults 34-54, where 9% are daily debaters.

I'm curious to know how political social media use stacks up in Canada versus the U.S., especially given the fact that the U.S. campaign season is so much longer. This time around the campaign season began March 30, so the survey was actually taken a week before the election began, meaning that many Canadians might not have been fully engaged yet, according to Ipsos Reid exec Mike Colledge, who described the 21% weekly figure as a "baseline" in an interview with the Vancouver Sun.

With relatively high Internet penetration (74% of the Canadian population had broadband access in 2009, versus 63% in the U.S.) Canada is a good proving ground and test case for social media trends, both good and bad. In August 2010 I wrote about a survey of 1,022 Canadian business execs by Leger Marketing, which found that 90% of Canadian businesses are using social media to communicate with the public.

On the less positive side, I also wrote about a report from Criminal Intelligence Service Canada, which found that 38% of Canadians had been approached with a come-on for a fraudulent investment scheme in 2009. The CISC attributed this in part to the rise of social networks, which allow scammers to issue professional-looking press releases and promotional material, recruit accomplices, and exchange lists of victims (according to the report, many individuals are susceptible to repeat victimization). The report named popular sites like MySpace, Facebook, Craigslist, Kijiji and YouTube.

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