Interesting venture here from the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, promoting their budget cuts and council performance through Youtube in the form of a brief music video. Read the full media release here.
It’s not consultation as such, but the comments on the video have been left open, and in this case they don’t seem to have been used for genuine debate. Initially, the first comments are very positive, and could possibly risk being construed as ‘astroturfing‘ given their fervour and consistency. However, the view then shifts back in exactly the opposite way and becomes pretty hate filled stuff.
I guess the lesson as ever is that it’s not the technology you use as much as how you use it. For a simple message like this, with no intention to collect views, it may have been better to have turned comments off altogether. If the comments at the start are by sock puppets, and they may not be, then that should never have been done. A judicious moderation policy on the comments, with terms and conditions set out next to the video would have been an idea from the start too.
