The Irish General Election is really using social media

The campaign is now well underway for the Irish general election which will take place on 25th of February. One thing that has struck me about the campaign so far is how almost all candidates have finally appreciated the importance of leveraging the internet and social media tools.

I suppose much has changed in the four years since the last election. This report from the RTÉ Drivetime program reviews how the various candidates are engaging with social media - while some candidates are clearly more successful than others, all of them are trying to win the on-line battle.

The election reports on the nightly TV news is typically started with a summary of the political Twitterings of the day. Most of the relevant Tweets are tagged with #ge11 so it is easy to follow the conversation.