After just a couple of days, 2,000 people have joined a Facebook group set up by CBC. The project is a partnership with Facebook.com and the Canadian youth organization Student Vote, dubbed the Great Canadian Wish List.
It is aimed at providing a forum for Canadians to express their top wish, tapping into the social networking functions of Facebook to rally members behind their ideas.
CBC News chief Tony Burman has described it as “a ground-breaking experiment in civic engagement and journalistic partnership.”
As Darren Barefoot says, it’s a good idea, but CBC are a little too self-congratulatory about it.
CBC should be applauded for seeking to strength its ties with its viewers, listeners and readers. And I can understand why it has adopted Facebook to do this. After all, two million Canadians, 10% of its members, are on Facebook. But it also means that to take part, you have to sign up for a Facebook (free) account.
And it looks like the Wish List is in danger of being hijacked by interest groups in favour and against abortion. At the time of this posting, 121 people had backed a wish to end abortion in Canada.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out and whether the Wish List turns into a battleground over abortion. If so, should CBC intervene?
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The problem with democracy and “engaging” the population has always been the wish of the Citizen to use their democratic rights to choose. Pun intended. If CBC wants to know what’s on the minds of the Canadian public, how can it limit either the focus or the participants? And how is it possible to “hijack” an open forum? This country, according to every Opinion Poll on the topic, breaks down into thirds: a third want abortion as is, a third want a ban and a third want some limits. Why should this “forum” be any different?
[...] were signs that this was going to happen just days after the Great Canadian Wishlist was [...]
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Tom S