Goodbye from Ger_Watch

The last post about German politicians, trying to use web 2.0. How can I summarize the last eleven entries? At first, I want to apologize if we have have affronted anybody, but actually we had no other choice. If you want to see boring politics, you can watch the German "Bundestag", but we wanted to entertain you.
Obviously, not everything's bad about German politicians on Facebook, Twitter or Youtube. Maybe, the German mentality does not even want blogging politicians and an enthusiasm towards politicians as it could be seen during Obama's election. But I personally think that it is important to improve the online performance as there are less and less young voters.

Now, enough from this theoretical thinking. In the end, I'll show you some online statistics and articles which weren't included on the last eleven posts, but are worth mentioning.

1) Welt Online has just written yesterday about a current study of the university Ilmenau. Therefore, only one third of all politicians, which have a Facebook-account, is communicating several times a week, only a fifth is reacting on other users.

2) On this link, you can see, the ten politicians with the most followers. Number one is Kristina Schröder (simply scroll back to the post), numer two is Jörg Tauss (former SPD-politician, on whose server were found child-pornography for "research" as he says) an number three is young Julia Klöckner (CDU), who wants to become state premier of Rheinland-Pfalz.

3) An interesting article: Author Tobias Moorstedt argues that German politicians should not try to copy the Obama style and that he can't understand the tone of German newspapers who make fun of the online performance.

4) We have made fun of politicians of Twitter, but of course, there are also people making fun of Twitter. Watch "Klaas" from MTV home.

5) And if you don't know what Facebook is, watch this video.Don't be scared of the creepy voice;)

By Ger_Watch

Last words...

I could start this last post with some nice words. Words, that we all probably heard too often, but that still give us a little peace of mind when saying them. I could start by saying: All good things have to come to an end. I could say: It was my pleasure, but it had to end eventually. But as I have learned sometimes it is better to say nothing at all. I wish someone would have given this piece of advice to the following lady. She’s as pretty as she is dumb. Check this out! 

This doesn’t look like it would have something to do with this blog? Well, I just wanted to show you how much more intelligent every single one of you is out there. I bet this young lady would know how to use facebook or other social networks. But I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know a lot about politics. As these two might seem to be two totally different things, I hope we could show you how much intertwined politics and social media really are. I, personally, found it very interesting to dig down deep in this topic. I enjoyed it to really look at it and compare it to Germany. And for the most part it was very entertaining as well. I had some good laughs and I hope you did too. If you want to know how it looks like to be a facebook-addict in real life, click here. Want some more?

 My personal résumé about how American politicians use the internet for their purpose is fairly positive. I found that most of them are doing a fine job. Especially president Obama seems to have a competent staff to keep his facebook profile up to date.

 Another finding was that the time of blogging politicians seems to come to an end. They tend to concentrate more on facebook or twitter as those aren’t as time-consuming. Though some politicians do better than others, there’s one thing that unites them all. It appears to me that they don’t grasp the spirit of web 2.0. To them the internet is a one-way street. A channel to call out to the world and their voters, but when it comes to virtually interact with them, most of them don’t seem to be that interested anymore.

That’s why I’d like to end my US-part of the blog with a plea to all politicians out there. Talk less, listen more and the explore the fine chances that you have not taken so far.

It was my pleasure. Good night and good luck.

By US_watch

Dirk Niebel and his "Edelprofil" on MeinVZ

MeinVZ is a German version of Facebook. Every famous politician has an “Edelprofil”, which does not mean, he or she is a better person. By the way: The person with most of the friends is the "politician" Horst Schlämmer, the invention of comedy star Hape Kerkeling. Horst Schlämmer is a little bit liberal, but also left-sided, and, not to forget, conservative as well.

But let's come to Dirk Niebel. At first, who is Dirk Niebel. Good question: Dirk Niebel is the secretary for development. The funny thing is, Dirk Niebel actually wanted to close this ministry, unless he became the secretary for development. As he is therefore listed  as an “Edelprofil”, he can use some more features. And of course Dirk Niebel makes use of it.

I can watch a “youtube”-video. Awesome, I mean, that is so nice for those people who forget the URL of youtube all the time, now they can watch the videos on MeinVZ. But that’s not the end of innovation. There is also a very very special webside: a link to the homepage of his dog. And for everybody, who is not impressed enough, I can also recommend his pictures: Dirk Niebel behind a speaker’s desk, Dirk Niebel behind a microphone and Dirk Niebel in front of a TV camera.

And on his “Pinnwand” are mainly insults and no controversial discussions. I don’t think there is a big benefit for German democracy, if people write on his wall about issues as Dirk Niebel’s “bedraggled fingernails”, or suits, which are too narrow. But as his profile hasn’t been updated for more than six months, and as there are no reactions on serious issues raised on his wall, the chaos on his wall is not such a big surprise.
Obviously, politicians as Dirk Niebel only care about their profile during election time.

P.S.: Only Guido Westerwelle and Christian Lindner have more fans than any other FDP-politician. But honestly, do you know any other FDP-politician? 

By Ger_Watch

Ken Salazar on Facebook *yawn*

Kenneth Lee Salazar - Secretary of the Interior

Let’s take a look at another politician’s facebook account: Ken Salazar. The 56-year old Democrat is Secretary of the Interior. He was one of the first Hispanic U.S. Senators. Other than Hilda Solis he does not emphasize his origins. There’s no mention of it on facebook. One of the interesting things you can find there is that he is Catholic. But that’s no huge revelation either.

 

Most of his status posts start with “Today” or once in a while “Yesterday”. As I scrolled down the page I read “Today I did this”, “today I announced that”, “today I promised to do this and that”. It seemed to be a very very serious facebook account. I got the impression that updating his facebook profile is a dull duty to him. But then I found something that I did no longer expect after all the dull posts. Something, that didn’t seem to fit in there. Either someone hacked his account or he had a good day: “Check out some photos from today's Panda event at the National Zoo.” Well isn’t that something?

 

Anyway, more than 2,700 people like this page. It didn’t take me long to find that Salazar has one special “friend”. There’s one person that comments every post. He is all over the page. And his comments are not nice. He criticizes everything Salazar says or does. One of the comments was: “Fire Ken Salazar.” Salazar does not respond to that.

 

The photo section is pretty dull as well. Six pictures – that’s it. One with Schwarzenegger, but other than that. Nothing special. But you should take a look at his profile picture: a crowd of kids cheering as Salazar shakes their hands. What it means to make such a picture your profile pic?! No comments – decide for yourselves…! But at least it's one of the few pictures, where he actually smiles.

I’ll just leave you with a short youtube video about the oil spill. Salazar looks astonishingly unimpressed during a woman’s protest. Judging from his online presence he doesn’t seem to be the most cheerful dude in Washington D.C. But hey, you should always consider his age. To actually HAVE a facebook account at his age, should count for s o m e t h i n g.

by US_watch

Kristina Schröder: German secretary on Twitter

Kristina Schröder is one of the few secretaries, who use twitter for their reputation. Nearly 15.000 people are following her – although she is still twittering under her maiden name “Kristina Köhler”. And so she writes on New Year’s Day: “My intention for the new year is to find a new twitter name, as Kristina Schroeder is too long”. A few hours later she posts: “Thank you for your proposals, apart from the one with the new marriage.” This little anecdote shows, that she does not only repeat political statements of her party, but also gives her followers the opportunity to follow her personal development.

She often tweets, what she is at the moment doing at which place. I think that’s quite important, as not many people now what a secretary is actually doing the whole day.

A second plus point is her transparency. When she is not twittering, but someone from her office, they introduce themselves (“account of secretary is captured") and sign every tweet.

But as most of the other famous twitterer, she engages not much with her followers. One time she answers to a tweet – but that came from a journalist of the famous BILD-Zeitung. What does he have, that all the other do not have? In an interview with “Spiegel Online” she admits that she does not often react on tweets from others – because of her lack of time.
Maybe she’ll learn, that she better does not fight with Twitter-users, because her social-media-life has had some serious consequences in “real” politics.


P.S.: A little disappointment that she has not tweeted a single detail about her baby. Not even, that she's pregnant.

By Ger_Watch

Hilda Solis: American woman in cabinet on twitter

Hilda L. Solis: Secretary of Labor

There are few women in the United States Cabinet. One of them is Hilda Solis, the Secretary of Labor. But she knows how to be heard. She has an active and verified twitter profile with more than 7.700 followers, where she tweets regularly. 

 Every once in a while she tweets in Spanish. This came quite as a surprise to me. But it makes sense: Solis’ parents came from Nicaragua and Mexico. Considering the high number of people in the U.S. whose native tongue is Spanish, this comes in handy. Solis tries to build a bridge between those two languages and both ethnic groups.

She has two main topics: immigration and women. She stands up for successful immigration: “#Immigration has been kicked dn the rd for far 2 long. Partisan obstructionism can't be allowed to derail change that is right & necessary”  Other than that she’s encouraging women and points to topics related to women and work-life. Like in this tweet: “Shared stories of our journeys, common theme to success = hard work, drive, education and passion. Our message to girls: go for it!”

 

Solis also seems to have a passion for shiny cars. It was one of her latest tweets that kind of looked funny to me: “Personal faves were the @FordMustang, @Chevrolet Equinox and @Chrysler 300. @WashAutoShow“  How much money did she get for all the tweets about Ford and new cars? Do I smell the scent of advertisement here?! Or is it just the enthusiasm of a woman for nice cars?

I can’t tell. But what I can tell is that this Secretary has done her twitter-homework. Or what do you think?

by US_watch

German parties on youtube: Which performance is most embarassing?

Everyone loves seeing politicians on youtube. My personal favorite is this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icOO7Ut1P4Y. German EU-commissar Günter Oettinger speaks English (better: tries to speak, even better: fails in doing so). Maybe he went to the same school as Guido Westerwelle (watch out for our post about the fake profile "Westerwave"). The video has been posted in blogs, on Twitter on Facebook and nearly every German knows it. Sometimes some politicians wish, youtube wouldn’t be the memory of every embarrassing performance.

But parties do also love youtube. They can upload videos of their greatest speeches, funniest slogans and most embarrassing performances of political enemies. Honestly, they concentrate on their greatest speeches, or what they think to be the greatest speeches. And sometimes it seems as if they'd simply upload every speech. The question is, do the voters love the parties who  love youtube?

Two years ago, the famous German magazine “Focus” has analyzed the youtube-situation on three pages with examples of awful youtube-performances. They come to the conclusion: Only printed election-programs are more boring. But what has changed since then?

Simple answer: It can be even more embarrassing. Believe it or not.

Just one example: election-songs. The CDU has called their song for the parliament in NRW: “NRW in guten Händen”. Honestly, I am not sure, whether they have asked Dieter Bohlen or Ralph Siegel to write the song, but the melody consists of not more than three different notes. The performer obviously failed in one of the first rounds of any of the hundred casting shows. Okay, it is not easy to write a song which includes words like “Nordrhein-Westfalen”. But rhyming “mehr” und “fair” in a political song is as cool as rhyming “Herz” und “Schmerz” in a love song.

But take a look on your own, here are the links for CDU, SPD, Green Party , FDP, Linke.

P.S.: Watch a Netherland's journalist becoming a youtube-star with the help of German chancellor Angela Merkel. He asked, how the hell she could give the job of the finance minister to Wolfgang Schäuble who has once forgotten 100.000 DM in his drawer. And please, if you watch it, look for Horst Seehofer, who is sitting at the left side, how he is actually smiling and then trying to have a serious glance.

By Ger_Watch

YouTube and U.S. politics

There’s something about YouTube. It’s a phenomenon. You intend to look for one thing and find yourself an hour later watching more or less topic-related videos. Today it was just the same. But what I found is too good to keep it to myself. My original intention was to see how U.S. parties and politicians use YouTube. I will still write about it, but more than that I will give you a sample of good links that I found today researching my topic. I had a good laugh or two that I wouldn’t want you to miss.

But let me start with videos broadcasted by politicians intentionally. There’s, of course, the weekly republican address. I couldn’t tell you more about the video I found than you can read in the headline. I was too distracted by the representative’s eyes. He was obviously reading from a teleprompter. But it made him look so nervous that I got totally distracted. Poor performance. Next I found an election ad. Though, those are surprisingly hard to find among all the funny clips related. This one is from Massachusetts and I find it representative for American election campaign commercials. Some music in the background, a populist message, then the face of the guy who is going to save the country and finally a ridiculous remark like: “Enough is enough.”

But let’s come to the fun part. Not that those weren’t funny, because they DID have a humorous tone. YouTube comes in handy, when you want to have some insight to crazy stuff happening in a politician’s everyday life. Of course you can see them on the news as well, because most of them are taken from news shows. But on YouTube they live on for everyone to see. For example: Did you know that President Obama got called a liar by a politician while speaking? Or did you see of one of his funniest speeches ever? Where he actually opened his address by saying that he really doesn’t want to be there?! Where else would you see a fan-made video about upcoming elections that refers to Hillary Clinton as “Monica Lewinsky’s ex-boyfriend’s wife”?! And where else would you find all the hesitating answers of politicians when being asked questions about war, comfortably cut together?! 

Some videos are really just funny, some might be offending. Some are totally made up, but they get you thinking about incidents. Just like the funny clip about the Florida voting machine.

YouTube is a channel that is extremely connected with politics. It’s used by politicians themselves (more or less successfully) or used to make fun of speeches. And in this way it’s a way to shape and contribute to debates about politics. And it’s an entertaining way to do so. Of course one cannot take everything at face value. A lot is exaggerated or even made up. But still…!

There’s one last video that really left a lasting impression. It’s a campaign video for Barack Obama. It was created with the help of a lot of celebrities. You see, there are some out there who know how to use the internet. There are some that actually can.

by US_watch

Konrad Adenauer: The first German chancellor on Facebook

Their pictures can be found at the walls of party-offices, their names are used in many speeches. Not unusual, even when the politician is dead. But on Facebook or on Twitter?

Most prominent is the profile of “DerFuehrer” , who is followed by about 25.000 people. Some examples of his last tweets: “Jätzt, wo där Papst Komdomä ärlaobt hat, kann ich Eva nächt mehr längär hinhalten. Das wird mir die Kirche bößen!“ or „ Wänn jätzt allä nor noch öbär Fäisbock kommonizierän, solltä ich da wohl zögigäst einmarschierän.“Sometimes they just want to be funny, but most times you can also read a political message between the lines.

But let’s come to an „ordinary“ profile of a dead politician: Konrad Adenauer. He has, believe me, an own Facebook profile. But this time, no one pretends to be the politician (as done at many other fake profiles” but it is always spoken from “Konrad” instead of “I”. I’d call it an ode to Konrad Adenauer. There are posted many famous quotations, but there also questions posted similar to “What would Konrad say about the rescue of Opel?”. At that point, there seems to be a bigger possibility for participation that at the “active” profiles of politicians.

Unfortunately, the good old Konrad Adenauer died a second death, At the end of 2009, the last entry was posted. But his fans haven’t stopped commenting and haven’t stopped posting at his wall. Goodbye, and maybe we will see you on Twitter nex time. Everything's possible.

P.S.: If you are actually not interested in dead politicians, check out this link and you’ll find a list of other dead celebrities on Facebook.

by Ger_watch

Connect with a dead president via fb

It’s not unusual for a president to have a facebook account. What is surprising, is that a dead president of the United States has a facebook page that totally resembles a normal profile. Richard Nixon, a very controversial president seems to have a huge fan community. Though he died in 1994, his page is updated daily, sometimes several times a day. People post videos and photos of the 37^th president of the U.S.

At first glance it’s make-believe all over the place. The visitor gets the impression it’s a totally usual profile. I caught myself thinking “Wait, isn’t he dead?” for a second as well. This goes on at the information tab. Birthday, hobbies, political view…the usual. It’s not until the middle of the page when the person behind the page reveals that this is a tribute to Nixon. It’s stated that everyone is welcome to contribute positively or negatively, but with due respect. I’m wondering how they would know what his favorite quote was. I hardly doubt he wrote it down in his diary. “A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.” The dead president further reveals that he was a Quaker and likes politics and pianos. That he was conservative is not hard to guess, though.

The page’s goodies are the photos of Nixon. Only 13 wall photos, but 73 photos contributed by others. At first it’s the usual: Nixon in Egypt, Nixon with other politicians, Nixon and Dr. King, Nixon and his family. This is a very cute picture of him with his spouse, two children and a dog taking a walk along the beach. There’s also an old photo showing a young Nixon at the College football team. My favorite photo of him has been taken in China. Nixon tried to eat with chopsticks – the look on his face is priceless.

It’s true: Facebook connects people all over the world – and far beyond that. “Until death do us part” may refer to wedding vows, but it is not valid for a president’s relationship to his facebook account.

by US_watch

Tweets of the German party "SPD"

The Twitter-account of the German party “SPD” is quite active. At some days they tweet more than ten times. But that’s is not such a big miracle, as tweeting the links to your own webside is not the biggest exercise. I guess that twittering is a popular duty for trainees. Probably they copy & paste the sentence “*… in an interview with *” and then they complete with names as Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Andreas Nahles or anyone else and the medium “FAS” “spiegel online” or “SZ”.


Unfortunately, the account stays quite anonymous, it is not clearly to see, who is actually twittering. From my point of view, you have to see some faces behind the account to be able to communicate and participate.

To be fair, the SPD also tweets articles from their followers, but mainly from their own members or local organizations. What is missing, is the participation of followers. Why don’t they ask their followers for their opinion on the subjects they tweet? Only one time the last few days they asked if any follower has blogged something about an SPD-subject.


At least they use some hashtags for popular subjects as #zensursula, #Dioxin or #HartzIV.

“Pr-Blogger” has also published his impression of the SPD-Twitter-Account. He criticizes that the party responds too seldom to followers.


Another useful link: www.parteigefluester.de gives a live-overview of current tweets of every party and also of their politicians. At the moment Sven Kindler of the Green party tweets: “Nice interview in the Spiegel-magazine about Castor, protests and democracy”. And on the other hand you can see the reaction of an FDP-member directly to Sven Kindler: “For this stuff, the Spiegel is always good”. 

By Ger_Watch

Democrats on twitter

Twitter: some use it to tell all their followers that they need to go to the bathroom, are riding the bus or are bored. It’s used vastly by individuals in very different ways. But not only individual persons use twitter to shout out to the world without raising their voice. Whole groups can have a common twitter account. And of course parties wouldn’t miss to use this way of communication.

I took a closer look at the Democrat’s twitter profile. They have nearly 2700 tweets. They tweed several times a day, sometimes every hour and make it to more than 12 tweets a day. I guess you could describe the Democrats as active twitter users. They provide their followers with links and very often they link to their news blog.

Last week they tweeted a lot about president Obama’s State of the Union Address. They provide information and news. But sometimes they can be very entertaining. For example this tweet: “Exercise your right to vote—for our newest State of the Union T-shirt design.” Apart from trying to sell some merchandise and getting everyone to watch the address, they also thought of new and fresh ways to approach this issue. I found the following too funny to be true: Find out who's sitting with First Lady Michelle Obama at the State of the Union. The link that followed led the reader to the website of the White House, where everyone could click on little chairs to find out who will be sitting where. A little window with a picture and a description of the person popped up. The who is who of the white house.  

So now it’s your turn. Tell us what you think about the Democrats twitter profile. Is it a good way to bring politics to everyone’s cell phone or just a ridiculous attempt to be up-to-date?! #Judge now#

by US_watch

A German blogging politician

Unfortunately, only a few well-known politicians have an own weblog. Therefore, I will examine the blog of a local politician: Rainer Zeimentz, mayor of the town “Koblenz”. According to the “Rheinzeitung”, he invests several hours per day for updating his weblog.

One of his latest post comments on the reactions of media on the subject: “How to cope with muslim children at school.” The SPD calls for separated swimming lessons or thoughtfulness during the “Ramadan”. The mayor now criticizes a newspaper article about the reaction of the CDU and thinks, that media is only copying the opinion of the CDU. From his point of view, this reaction shows racist tendencies. As a “real” blogger, he posts the newspaper article, but also the original material, which is object of the debate.

Surprisingly, he also adds some multimedia-material, which seems to be self-made. Some photos and a video with a summary of the photos show a local parking problem. This blog posts give the impression that he actually cares about local problems and also does some research.

He shows a big variety in subjects, the next post is about the revolution in Tunisia, so Rainer Zeimentz has published a post from “ReadWriteWeb”. But unfortunately, the next post is also from another blogger about the political winners in the election year 2011. That’s legitimate, but he could possibly comment it with some of his own words.

The older blog posts show his power: He blogs about social media and its use in local politics. That’s what local politicians should concentrate about and that’s how they reach the people in their region. And if they really want to start some opportunities for participation, they should do it like Rainer Zeimentz and invite the people for a discussion.

By Ger_Watch

Blogging politicians in the US – a long gone trend?!

Our idea for today was to write about blogging politicians. We wanted to focus on rather unknown people. We know about quite a number of blogging politicians in Germany. So I went online and tried to find American politicians who blog. I’ve got to say, what I found came to me quite as a surprise. It’s not that I did not find someone. I found a lot of articles about blogging politicians. But whenever I clicked a link the address was no longer available or the last blog post was more than 5 years ago. I tried very hard. But my efforts bore no fruit. If any of you has other information, or knows about an American politician, who still bloggs on a regular basis, please let me know.

Though I haven’t found what I was looking for, I still think my findings very interesting. It seems to me that blogging (at least for American politicians) is a long gone trend. I found the answer to the question why that is, in Representative John Fritchey’s last blog entry. He quit blogging in August of 2010 after 5 years of keeping his blog updated with the following words: “And while the response and readership were great, I eventually realized that there simply weren't enough hours in the day for me to take care of everything else that I needed to and to continue to do this blog in the way that it deserved to be done. The ability to use Facebook and Twitter to reach an even wider audience essentially sealed the deal.” It’s a bit sad, because I think he obtained a decent blog.

Of course president Barack Obama has a blog. But this is not maintained by himself, so I don’t count it here.

A French guy by the name of Loic Le Meur has put together a nice list why politicians should blog. I recommend this as obligatory reading material to every politician out there. Facebook and twitter are nice, but nothing gives you the in-depth views and conversations like a hand-made blog does. #blog is not dead#

by US_watch