To share or not to share - Facebook

To share or not to share

Posted on 24 August 2011 - 08:08pm
Last updated on 24 August 2011 - 09:44pm

Yap Mun Ching

FACEBOOK claimed another political scalp last week. A bemused Germany, sobered by lower than expected growth figures and soaring summer temperatures, watched as a sex scandal demolished the career of a young hopeful of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union Party.

Christian von Boetticher, 40, resigned as the head of his party in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein after news emerged that he had a relationship with a 16-year-old girl that he met on the social networking site.

Boetticher, who was then in his late 30s, exchanged copious Facebook and text messages with the teenager before meeting her in a hotel where they spent two days together with the apparent approval of her parents.

The problem for most Germans, however, is not the age gap between the two or the fact that the girl was just over the legal age of consent but that "a grown man with more important things to do would spend so much time playing around on this network, with nothing to do than trade messages with a young girl," Rudolf-Kötter, director of the Centre for Advanced Ethics and Science Communications at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg was quoted as saying.

Boetticher had also upset his conservative colleagues with postings about polo parties and boredom over government meetings.

Boetticher is not the first politicians whose career was destroyed by oversharing. Between 2009 and 2010, former Indian Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor was also embroiled in controversies over inappropriate postings which, among others, mocked the less privileged. He was later forced to resign over an unrelated affair.

These scandals bring to bear the question of how much we really want politicians to be visible on social networks. It is one thing when US President Barack Obama used it during his phenomenal presidential campaign to connect with the cyber generation but it is another when every Tom, Dick and Harry politico tries the same trick to win over disenchanted young voters.

None of the copycats seem to appreciate that what made Obama's method successful was that he embraced social media, was knowledgeable about what worked and what didn't.

Unfortunately, although Obama sparked the craze for Facebook and Twitter to enter the political sphere, he did not influence many to emulate his use of these channels to convey the message of change and regeneration.

Rather, social media networks are used much the same way as state/party-owned propaganda channels. If not to run down opponents, then postings often contain boring entries about politicians attending one meaningless event after another.

If there is one thing Boetticher and Tharoor's experiences have shown, it is that those who have no flair for social networking should just leave things as they are. Put your time and funds to running the party and country well and the results will show.

Over in rational Germany, the successor picked to replace Boetticher is Jost de Jager, another young politician who is less flamboyant perhaps but also less likely to cause a headache for Merkel whose attention is much needed now to salvage the European and by extension, world economy. De Jager, incidentally, does not have a Facebook page and intends to keep things that way.

Mun Ching enjoys travelling off the beaten path. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com