Rob Ford needs a reality check

It will be an ecstatic day for Torontonians and a somber day for writers such as myself when Rob Ford decides to finally shut up.

Back in February, while the 2014 Olympic Winter Games were still being held in Sochi, the City of Toronto decided to raise a rainbow flag outside of city hall in support of LGBTQ athletes. This caused a stir in the media since our wonderful mayor yet again put his foot in his mouth by voicing his opinion on the matter.

Ford believes that the flag should be removed and replaced with the Canadian flag because, “This is about the Olympics, this is about being patriotic to your country”. Well Mr. Mayor, did it not occur to you that supporting our oppressed athletes while they are away from home is patriotic? Of course not. It should also be noted that the Canadian flag already flies outside in Nathan Phillips Square.

Ford’s attitude has brought on plenty of speculation from members of the city council as well as from the general public. It is believed that Ford is masking his homophobic beliefs with the claim that, “[He] feels that their Olympic spirit is supposed to be non-politicized” (as expressed by the mayor’s chief of staff, Dan Jacobs).

This is further enforced by Ford’s recent statement claiming that he will not be attending the annual Toronto pride parade due to “personal reasons”. It is absolutely ludicrous that the leader of the largest city in Canada should not be attending a major citywide event, particularly since this year’s Toronto pride parade is also in celebration of World Pride. This celebration will include not only LGBTQ community members and supporters from Canada but also those from around the world.

If Ford believes that stating: “I’ve never gone to a Pride parade. So I’m not going to change the way I am.” excuses him from his duties as mayor and a decent human being, I’d be more than happy to excuse him from his high-paying position. Who’s with me?

 

– Lily Maase

Why we vote: admendium

After my previous ranting post about how people don’t vote even though they should, it has occurred to me that rather than wailing at the unfeeling brick that is our political system I should instead change my stance and instead address the voter-ship. Along that line I have composed this post to make a pseudo-impassioned plea to those active users of social media who are still on the fence about the whole ‘political engagement thing’.

There are several basic facts that need to be state before we processed: firstly; that voting is undeniably and integrally important, secondly; that the federal parties in this country do not care about the youth vote, Thirdly; that we (referring to the youth populace) have a tremendous amount of power in the political system regardless of how we or the political parties regard ourselves. The first is somewhat of a given so I am not going to spend further time elaborating on it. The second fact warrants closer inspection however.  It seems rather bold to state that the federal parties don’t care about the student vote when no politician in their right mind would ever state such a thing. In order to understand this statement you have to take a closer look at the parties behavior. During the last two federal elections all of the big three parties had a multitude of campaign speeches directed at any and all special interest groups that you can think of, with one notable exception; the student population. It seems to be an accepted fact amongst the political figures of this country that the youth just don’t vote and as such can be safely disregarded. During the leadership debates at the last two federal elections education was not even mentioned once. The third point is directly related to the second; political parties regard us as having no significant influence on the system because we don’t vote. If that were to change however, we could have a tremendous and permanent impact on the political architecture of this nation. There are over a million post-secondary students in Canada, that number grows to almost 3 million if you include all of the non students who are in the 18-25 demographic. Youth represent almost a tenth of the Canadian populace. If in the next election students and young people from all corners of this nation voted then the political parties of this country will never disregard us again. That is not the only way to garner attention however, there are other ways to foster political attention.

This is where the prevalence of youth on social media comes in to play. Politicians may have a legendary ability to ignore vast outcries of the populace but even they have begun to pay a degree of attention to social media platforms to gauge their current public standing which provides a wonderful opportunity for young Canadians to get their voice heard. The members of generation Y are, as s generalization, more tech literate than almost any previous generation, we can use this to our advantage by spreading content that is relevant to issues that we find pressing. By getting the conversation going on the teeming multitude of social media platforms that we are well versed in it creates a culture of political engagement. This in turn allows the political figures of our country to come to grips with the fact that the youth of our nation have a voice and are tired of being disregarded by our leaders. This concept of using social media to engage special interest groups is not a new one, back in 2012 to bring awareness to the global issue of child soldiers in third-world countries the Kony 2012 campaign was launched and garnered an unprecedented amount of media notoriety. If we can take those principals and apply them on a considerably smaller scale to the Canadian social landscape then the amount of political attention payed to, for example, debt reduction or tuition costs will drastically increase overnight. By taking basic the basic elements of a social media campaign and having the majority of Canadian youth spread and engage with political issues using social media as a platform we stand to gain no only a voice in the current political climate but also a more engaged populace for years to come as the youth grow older and raise children of their own.

– xoxo Cedar

Why Politicians Should Tweet More

 Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms around, with over 500 million registered users. That’s more than 14 times the population of Canada. Twitter is even phasing out newspapers. I’m not saying that Twitter is the soul reason for the decline in the newspaper business; I’m just saying the rise of social media in general has had an obvious impact on the decline of traditional media forms.

Canadian politics is mostly run by middle-aged males. I would argue that these middle-aged males aren’t exactly avid social media users. However, the younger population of the country makes use of social media eagerly. The middle-aged politicians mostly use traditional forms of media to put out their news and messages, whereas the younger generation mostly uses social media to get their news.

In order for politicians to get young people more interested in voting, they need to improve their social media usage. A great way to do this is through Twitter. Twitter only allows 140 characters per tweet, so this means that attention span isn’t an issue. Twitter also has high spreadibility, with retweets at just the click of a button. 

Emma Zernask

Rob Ford and the (In)Effective use of Social Media

As our readers know, we focus on trying to improve the image of politics in the social media world. Although Toronto Mayor Rob Ford may have failed in the improving of his image, he has definitely made his mark. Rob can take personal credit for putting Toronto on the map.

Many people believe that what he has done is a disgrace to Toronto, and by association also to Canada. As a disclaimer I have to say that I do agree with those people. But I also would like to point out that he has made effective use of social media to promote himself. He has Ford Nation, he was on the Jimmy Kimmel show, and there are hundreds of memes of his face.

Although indirectly, since he did not post most of the social media things himself, the amount of social media attention he has received from his crack stunt has helped him more than hurt him. Rob Ford still holds 33% of the popular vote in Toronto, and that hasn’t showed signs of wavering. People love to see a celebrity train-wreck, and that is what Rob Ford has successfully become. I personally believe that his celebrity status is what is keeping him in the race for mayor, and the fact that he still has a chance isn’t a reflection on him or his judgment, but rather the people who are still supporting him. Toronto needs to take a step back and really think about what they want for their city before they make their vote in the Fall.

 

Emma Zernask

Galifinakis hosts Obama – Funny or Die

Between Two Ferns, a popular web series featured on Funny or Die staring Zach Galifinakis,  recently hosted Barack Obama. One would think that Galifinakis would at least fake some kind of interest towards what the President had to say, but as usual, he maintained his usual straight-face and humorously rude composure.

Obama needed to promote the new health care plan to a younger audience, and he chose to do so through this comedy show. Obama used the media brilliantly, he knew he had to change his marketing strategies if he wanted to reach the younger audience, and what better way to do so than through an online comedy show.

The show not only reached his target audience but has reached audiences who had previously never even heard of the Funny or Die comedy show.

Zach made light of the topic by asking “Is this what they mean by drones?” when Obama began to discuss health care plans. Zach’s uninterested attitude could have easily been mistaken for the often uninterested, younger voters Obama was trying to target. But the fact that they interview was done in such a humorous way was what made it so effective. ‘Hangover’ fans all around America, and the various other countries that viewed this clip are now being informed of America’s Affordable Care Act.

Obama’s potentially risky tactic seems to have paid off!

 

-Kira

Why we vote

The response to the titular question seems fairly self evident, assuming you live in a democratized nation and are in fact literate, we vote because it is our best and only way of ensuring that the way our nation state is run is in the best interests of those who live there. Yes I understand that it is more complicated than that but the core concept is remains. If is so blatantly obvious that voting is an important and necessary part of western culture then the pressing question becomes why in the name of Jesus-Dahli-Lama-Christ do only about two thirds of Canadian youth vote?

This has a much less strait forward question to answer. The main reported reason for youth not voting in the 2011 federal election was recorded as “access issues” (admittedly a somewhat broad category encompassing reasons ranging from not knowing where to vote, to being too busy and much in-between) source. However despite the seemingly broad ranging rationalizations for not voting almost all of them can be filed under the heading “apathy”. Now I acknowledge that apathy is a rather difficult thing to nail down and even more so to attempt to combat. Many people dismiss apathy as simply one of the myriad of problems that accompany the torpid condition that is youth.
It is here that I am going to put forward an idea that may, at first, seem a tad excessive; Compulsory politics. As an idea compulsory voting is not a particularity new one, Australia has had  it in place since the mid 1920’s. The shift I am proposing is a more drastic one than simply implementing a law which makes voting mandatory for all citizens over the voting age (18). What I am proposing is a drastic cultural shift, we have to systematically ingrain in the populace starting from a young age that political changes and elections are not something to ignore, that every person should should have a personal and vested interest in the running of our country. Here in Ontario our public education is mandatory up until the twelfth grade and in that time we cover the Canadian political system in depth in a total of 1/2 of one semester in the tenth grade. I don’t presume to speak for all of you but I find that absolutely deplorable (it brings a tear to my bitter and jaded eye). It is my less than humble opinion that each and every graduate of a Canadian secondary school should graduate with a full understanding of the function, importance, and stance of all levels of the Canadian government. We have mandatory English courses up until grade 12 because we as a culture value the ability to communicate. I see no reason that it could not be the same for political studies courses, understanding how the country functions seems equally as important. I propose that we phase in mandatory political courses into the curriculum. Garnering support for these changes will be no mean feat. In order to create a culture of political involvement we must first change the social norms which will a consorted effort on all fronts. As this is a political-media centric blog I feel obligated to include a comment on the social media aspect; Living in the age of web 2.0 as we all do it is far more possible to engage the masses. The flip side of this is of course that now there are thousands of causes attempting to grab the attention and support of the masses. As for exactly how to provide an effective solution to engage the populace I shall provide an in depth recommendation in the follow up for this article. In the intervening time I only ask that you think about the level of political engagement in your area and if the system could be improved by a social change.

 

– xoxo Cedar