Sudbury byelection candidates tweet, post to attract voters

Morning North9:45Sudbury byelection candidates and social media

Staking their turf in the digital world... How well have candidates in the Sudbury byelection used social media to spread their message? The numbers have been compiled and the CBC's Kate Rutherford joined us in studio with some results.A CBC Radio-Canada analysis of Twitter and Facebook shows how Sudbury byelection candidates use social media differently.

We looked at the number of tweets, re-tweets, mentions, likes, posts and language to create a profile of each candidate.

NDP candidate Suzanne Shawbonquit uses French much more than any other candidate, even though she doesn't speak it. Fully half her Facebook posts are bilingual.

Shawbonquit's social media interactions are handled by Sydney Wingender.

I've been interacting with a lot of people in French and so that really gave us the idea of doing as many bilingual posts as we can, she said.

Independent Andrew Olivier has, by far, the most activity on Facebook.

As for Liberal Glenn Thibeault, if you combine followers and friends, he has the most of all Sudbury, Ontario byelection candidates.

Thibeault has 4,500 followers on Twitter and 3,000 friends on Facebook.

Clare Graham helps Thibeaultsend out tweets and messages, but she said heanswers emails himself.

There's also direct messages on Twitter and private messages on Facebook and Glenn replies to those directly, she said.

As for PC candidate Paula Peroni, she said she is the one typing each tweet and post, and is using social media in the hope of reaching younger voters.

Green David Robinson also does his own social media, and publishes about one Facebook post and five tweets a day, on average.

A digital public affairs strategist in Ottawa said the candidates can raise their profiles on social media, and they can also use it as a tool to keep up with public opinion.

They can get essentially real-time guidance into how their campaign should be engaging with the public in person and online, Mark Blevis said.

It used to be that, and it still is to a certain extent, there'll be phone polls at 6 p.m.. Well you have don't have the results until the next day.