Message on the hacked Fine Gael website
I must admit, I didn’t think much of the whole Fine Gael website hack story until I heard Chris Donoghue talking to the Evening Herald’s Kevin Doyle on Newstalk Breakfast this morning.
It’s the claim that Fine Gael censored visitors comments that interests me most.
Working as a freelance community manager, I find it flabbergasting that an organisation such as Fine Gael, would make such an error.
Having worked with Newstalk as freelance community manager in the past, my responsibilities included moderating comments and managing social media and other online interaction. The moderation policy was, as a naughties bank regulator’s might have been; ‘light touch’.
The only comments to remain ‘unapproved’ were those directly libelous or defamatory. The only editing of comments was to remove unnecessary bad language – and usually only very bad language!
Why? Well you cannot, in my opinion, adopt an incentive inviting and encouraging comment and interaction from Joe Public and only publish the nice bits.
Now, I appreciate, and indeed have experience of this being very difficult in an organisation managing many different personalities. There were individuals who felt certain comments should be removed and they made their feelings known. But thankfully management agreed that its shows contempt to moderate unnecessarily and illustrates a lack of understanding of what online interaction is all about.
So is the Fine Gael experience another stunning example of ‘online interaction is so hot right now’ marketing box-ticking devoid of understanding and respect for the online community?
I think yes – but am open to your, uncensored, views!
Certainly the party’s response to subscribers who’ve been burned by the ‘sharing’ of their personal information would appear to illustrate just that and is in itself a PR disaster:
with thanks to Stewart @irishstu Curry
And we know hacking is ‘bad’ so do we really need Fine Gael spin to hammer home the point as per today’s Fine Gael home page?
I was unimpressed when the Fine Gael ‘talk to Enda’ website launched and felt it was an empty venture. It appears to be so.
Think you are spot on. Interesting to watch from the sidelines as they make blunder after blunder!
Brilliant article Emily. So true awful PR by Fine Gael can’t believe they’ve censored comments? If anything they didn’t even give their supporters a chance to defend the party which would of probably happened if the comments where left up.
Fair play to FG for trying something new – they have raised the profile of the internet! People who never used twitter, facebook or even email are now asking questions. Brilliant. The easiest option would be to follow the old ways of communication…you want to live in a modern Ireland, then embrace the technologies AND their flaws!
Expect lots more of this as all the political parties rush to get the Obama factor. Thin skin and social media are not good bed fellows. Debate means you need opposing views and trying to do this by committee is invariably a disaster.
How do you know comments were altered or removed in any way?? How do you know the same approach of removing or ammending those comments deemed to be libelous, derogatory or defamatory was not applied here also?
And surely any attempt to invite the public to put forward to their POV and arguments on how the next goverment should run the country should be welcomed? Is that not what we are crying out for since FF have driven this country into the ground and have refused to listen to the Irish people?
Hi Ivan Answer
I don’t know comments were altered or removed, as I said that is the claim of the hackers group according to Kevin Doyle the Evening Herald reporter I was listening to this morning.
I totally agree with you that such an initiative should be welcomed but only if it is a genuine attempt to give people a voice.
Maybe I’m overly cynical about it, but in my opinion, that’s not what this is.
Thanks for the comment.
Hi Emily,
As a once political student I too have become tired and extremely cycnical of Irish politics, however I do welcome this initiative and hopefully more initiatives such as this will follow.FG have put their faith in some youth and maybe this initiative wasnt executed as well as it could have been but who would possibly have expected anyone would be bored enough or even bother to hack into the FG website.
Also does nobody else feel this thing has been blown out of all proportion. How is it getting equal footing in National Press as Cowen and Seanie Fitz love-ins 2 months prior to our Banking collapse, its 2000 email addresses, most of which are prob FG email addresses anyway, its not €200 Billion.
Anyway the fact is FG will form all or part-of the next government and hopefully the backlash over their website being hacked and private information being stolen from them by cyber criminals(unlike certain banks that managed to loose laptops containing 200,000 names and credit card details)will not hinder new and innovative ways to engage the Irish elecorate in the 21st century.
Rant over.
the asking for input and only showing you what they approve of in policy is a bad move…
but we have seen this before…
Your Country Your Call.
4000 unique IDs were leaked to the papers
2000 comments were published
Therefore at least 2000 were not, more if some who were published made multiple comments, yep that is censorship in action and we know thanks to wikileaks
Watching Enda Kenny try to learn the ropes of PR and self promotion and political promotion is painful. Not that it’s a game that I approve of, particularly in the political arena (and also particularly in view of how Fianna Fail and their business buddies have spun things to us through such devices the last decade or two). What a gimp.
BTW actually 4000 unique IDs were NOT collected… it was 2,000 as Kevin Doyle later corrected this statement.
My favourite part is about the emphasis on “professional” hacking; like it’s an industry.
“Hey, IT grad, what was your specialty?”
“Me? Hacking. I got my certification in ’07. Damn, reminds me I need to recertify next year….”