Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind, George Orwell once wrote. That might have been true of politicians of his time. These days, our politicians are flakier than that.
Gone is the wit or their knowledge or even the artful lying, all replaced by inane attributes. And there’s nothing like social media to bring their qualities to surface. Here’s what a quick Facebook scan reveals: Five of our politicians have started the day with a status reading “Good Day to All!!!!” under a photo of a fake, stock-photo of a cappuccino.
Surely, politicians do not believe their Facebook friends are their real friends?
Why do I get palpitations when I read statuses like this? Firstly, those exclamation marks.
As Lynn Truss dictates in Eats, Shoots and Leaves, the exclamation mark is to be used very sparingly and only when saying something like, “I found a €100 bill note in my cappuccino!” (it’s never to be used twice unless you’re writing a story about superheroes all the time going Poww!!).
Secondly: In English, we simply say ‘Good morning’, never ‘Good day’, (Maltese for ‘Il-ġurnata t-tajba’) unless you’re Australian, in which case you’d drawl something sounding like ‘g’day’.
Thirdly: You are not a teenager, so why on earth such a shouty, look-at-me status? It won’t really get you votes, but a plethora of comments reading: “Gud dey 2 u 2 hiii!!!”
Twitter is not any better. While writing this, Aaron Farrugia, Labour politician and Malta Freeport CEO, tweeted: “Good morning to all! Good morning #Malta”.
Labour Party MEP Marlene Mizzi tweeted a photo with a caption reading: “During current meeting with Eurogroup president Dijsselbloem”, which she clearly took halfway through the debate, and made me cringe no end. While everyone was attentively following the debate, our MEP remembered the party instructions to be active on social media and whipped out her mobile phone to upload a ‘Coo-ee look what I’m doing’ bit of information.
Perhaps we should just be grateful that PL politicians make an effort; PN politicians are even worse. They have absolutely no clue what social media is all about and are still starstruck when using these platforms.
So here’s some tips. Politicians should not use social media to: upload their holiday pictures (unless they’ve been on a voluntary mission); upload pictures of their bedrooms, especially if at age 27 they still sleep with a cuddly teddy; upload the latest set of studio-taken photos posing with their wives/gf/pet dog.
Whatever happened to boundaries? Surely, politicians do not believe that their Facebook friends are their real friends?
Another thing: politicians should not use social media as a minute-by-minute/day-to-daydiary. Which is why the Opposition leader’s weekly uploading photos of his visits to village feasts did not work.
Almost all politicians in Malta have so far missed the point of social media. They use it as a tool to show how cute and busy they are. They are not to provide the public with more insight or better connection to their party. Or if they do, it’s being lost amid photos of fireworks, parrots and coffees and shoes.
Social media is a vehicle to reach people who otherwise would not hear you.
Consider Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats in the 1930s. Already a popular president, Roosevelt took the advice of his speech writer and adopted a new technology to reach his public: radio. In his masterfully crafted ‘chats’ he explained to the public how he would lead them out of the worst economic depression. And social media is today’s radio.
Perhaps the politician who has more or less grasped the function of social media as an information source is Prime Minister Joseph Muscat. Although he overdoes it at times, sounding a bit too chummy for a PM, he is consistent in his Twitter usage, posts comments and links on political issues.
Politicians have to realise that the days where people will queue to their office to tell them what’s bothering them will soon be gone.
Social media is fast becoming the real-time information source on what people are thinking about issues and legislation.
Look at Beppe Grillo in Italy. Grillo has, by an enormous margin, the largest social media following of any politician in Europe: he has more than one million Facebook friends, and a similar number of Twitter followers. (For comparisons’ sake, David Cameron has only about a quarter of that).
He spurned mainstream media and talked directly to politically frustrated Italians through Twitter and Facebook.
Perhaps this was just a tiny glimmer of hope that a new generation of politicians is about to emerge. Politicians who are more like the people they represent, more open, more democratic – and more truthful. The problem is that ours are lost in exclamation marks.
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti