Last week there was a discussion in the Twitterverse around webinars and a local politician using the webinar concept as a component within his political campaign. I was immediately shocked when I read that there is an a webinar within the works for a future date and I know others are also.
So what exactly is a webinar? Google’s definition of a webinar is:
An interactive seminar conducted via the world-wide web. Usually a live presentation, it happens in real time as users participate through chats, file share, or ask questions with a built in microphone.
Taking the concept and idea of a webinar while using it as a component within one’s business is great. But as a political campaign component, no it is not. I highly discourage the use of webinars within political campaigns for a variety of reasons and I hope that others agree.
- Webinars are not personal enough for encouraging voters and receiving support. There is no real “face time” within ones webinar to become more friendly or personal with an individual.
- Webinars are strictly another medium which allows a politician (and or a business) to simply shove their message down our throats and not give a crap about what we (the citizens) have to say.
- Taking questions or comments from the audience (the viewers) simply sucks. Fact is that our questions or comments will get filtered and the ones that we are most curious about, which may cause various disruptions, create an uncomfortable feeling or even disprove ones message, will not be answered and simply filtered out as if it wasn’t asked or said.
A somewhat effective strategy for using a webinar within a political campaign would be to invite citizens to join the audience and be present within the webinar broadcasting. Citizens would then be responsible for taking questions and directing them to the host. With this, politicians are still somewhat still put on the spot but most importantly – they cannot filter the questions or comments being asked.
I also hope that local politicians stumble upon this article and my previously published one as he may learn a thing or two.
I disagree and believe that webinars can have a place in a campaign. Face to face isn’t always possible, and to engage the disengaged you need to offer as many options as possible. I assume Mr. Fontana is using webinars as a part of his engagement strategy as opposed this being his only method.
While your concerns are valid there are clearly better vehicles to ask questions and voice concerns.
I believe we (all of us) need to suppress the urge to ask everything in a public forum in an attempt to force the candidate to answer our specific concern – especially when the topic is controversial. When you go this route, you expect the candidate to have a well thought-out response to every single topic imaginable – and if they do – then we critique them for having a “canned” response.