Twitter's Election Highlights

Over the past few days, I've been asking people on twitter about what some of their personal highlights on General Election 2011 were. I've gotten some interesting and varied responses, from people who were both heaving involved in the election, to those who had a passing interest. This is how they responded.

David Gormley: "Has to be the suspense around Ivana Bacik in DL. If the recount doesn't go her way tomorrow, it'll be a travesty."


Nigel Dugdale: "probably today with O'Dea's comments on Power" Broadsheet


Christine Bohan: "Strong campaigns by lots of new candidates. Not much else tbh. Rather dismal overall."


John Anthony Highland: "the total and absolute feeling of freedom I am feeling, If I am elected, I am empowered to fight for my country and my people, enabled to persue what i feel are tangible workable proposals.  If not elected my heart and soul are completely free of whatever happens here, as I tried, and put my heart and ideas forward! Either way, I am a winner."


Shane O'Callaghan: 'Martin Heydon's video. It's crazy." video


Rachael Power: "My highlight would have been being able to vote. Most of my Erasmus friends were shocked when I said I couldnt vote from abroad."


Dave Devery: "My election highlight was [the video 'Enda Kenny's Earpiece'].


Margaret Smith: " I don't know if i could call voting a highlight - more depressing because I didn't like any of the candidates, chose least worst"


Donal Merrick: "Twitter during the 5-way debate on RTE and also the last debate, but Twitter mainly, everyone making jokes about what the leaders were saying."


Sharon Whelton: "to be honest I think whatever party will be in power after this election, it wont make much of a difference in the short term. A serious amount of work will have to be done in order to sort our country out, and its going to take quite some time."


Laura Daly: "The lack of any sort of discussion about social policy, the rise of social media & how the parties used it or not."


Aoife Breen: "my highlight (lowlight, rather) is how disenfranchised I feel and how utter parochial Irish politics is."


What was your highlight of General Election 2011?

Twitter's Election Highlights

Study Abroad - Interesting Characters

You meet all kinds of people when your abroad. I came across a lovely bunch of folk soon after I arrived in St John’s. They’re just about as quirky as my chums in UL and nearly as fond of drink. I knew I’d fallen in with a pretty decent crowd. It’s not until recently that I found out just how quirky they are.

They’re all member of Memorial University Oxfam, which is a society that helps promote women’s rights and global equality. I bumped into them randomly when exploring all the societies that MUN has to offer. I’ve decided that MUN Anarchists (organised chaos?) probably isn’t my thing nor was the Christian Youth society, but the bunch of people I met in the Oxfam office were warm, inviting, energetic and good fun.

During the week, I found out one of my new buddies, Meaggy, is in face descended from a piracy and royalty. A gand of pirates kidnapped royalty and made them slaves. Of course, one of the pirates fell in love with a slave. He started a mutiny and escaped with the princess slave. They escaped to Newfoundland and got married. I told her she’s like Johnny Depp and Kiera Knightley. I started calling her Johnny Knightley, before I realised it sounds like a 70s porn star name.

Another new buddy, Jeremy, is a quite the Newfoundland hero. He’s a  human rights champion and came to a lot of people’s attention last year, when he refused to shake hands with Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. Jeremy is no fan of most of Harper’s policies. This was a big deal in St John’s, and Jeremy was declared a local hero.

In other news, I’ve been pretty vocal lately about not being able to vote in the general election. I was in a few newspapers and on TV3. At the time I write this, I’m not sure of the result, but I hope when I return to Ireland, it will be a better place than when I left it.

Study Abroad - Interesting Characters

The most popular candidate?

Sinn Fein Leader, Gerry Adams is the most popular candidate on thejournal.ie’s General Election section, according to the website’s visitors., but is also ranked the second most unpopular The website contains a full list of candidates and allows visitors to learn more about each candidate and to either ‘like’ them or ‘unlike’ them. Below are top five most popular and most unpopular, with Mr Adams ranking in both.

Popular


Gerry Adams
Mick Wallace
Luke Ming Flanagan
Dylan Haskins
Dessie Shields



Unpopular

John Boland
Gerry Adams
Mary Coughlan
Micheal Martin
John Dillon

70
68
55
52
44





151
59
51
46
45

Blogged with permission from thejournal.ie

The most popular candidate?

The most popular political party on Facebook is...

With three days to go until Election Day, it’s time to see which party has the most Facebook fans.

Although Fine Gael are ahead in the polls, if it were all about social media, Labour would clinch it.

Fianna Fail
Fine Gael
Labour
Green Party
Sinn Fein

2,618
4,007
4,949
425
1,064

The most popular political party on Facebook is...

Facebook relationships allow 'civil partnerships'

Facebook have today allowed people to change they're relationship status to 'in a civil partnership'. In Ireland, this comes after the Civil Partnership Act came into action. It will be interesting to note how many same-sex couples will choose 'civil partnership' to 'married'.

Facebook relationships allow 'civil partnerships'

Campaign songs. Are they a bad idea?

At this stage, people have already heard some of our political candidates' attempts at campaign songs. We have Mannix Flynn and his Dublin rap song, but since then I've come across these two beauties. Independent candidate for Limerick, John Dillon has one, while Maman Poulet discovered Dublin South Central candidate, Michael Conaghan, was ripping off the Rubberbandits' hit 'Horse Outside'.





Although most of the campaign songs haven't been met well, especially in Conaghan's case, could they do serious damage to a campaign? Once a dodgy tune comes into the equation, does policy and enthusiasm go out the window?
Perhaps candidates would have been better off to adopt the American style of campaign song and use an already popular song, with the artist's consent, of course.

Campaign songs. Are they a bad idea?

Airing voting frustrations on TV3

I was on the main evening news on TV3 today talking about being denied the right to vote from Newfoundland. If you missed it or would like to see it, it's available to view here.

Airing voting frustrations on TV3