The proposed internet filter has people talking in the lead up to the Federal Election. Well, people on Twitter at least.
The Social Election reports that the #nocleanfeed and #openinternet hashtags went wild on Twitter after Joe Hockey announced that the Liberals will scrap the proposed filter if they prevail on August 21. Hockey called the policy ‘flawed’ and indicated that parents should take more responsibility for their children’s net navigation, rather than relying on government censorship. He said ‘we believe it’s a flawed policy. It’s not going to capture a whole lot of images and chatter that we all find offensive that are going through email.’
Hockey capitalised on the anti-filter conversations occurring on Twitter, saying:
@JoeHockey confirmed on @triplej last night that the Coalition will not support Labor’s internet filtering plan #nocleanfeed #openinternet #ausvotes
12:38 PM Aug 6th Retweeted by 35 people
Going by Twitter chatter, it would seem that sentiment around the net filter issue is overwhelmingly opposed. I couldn’t find a single tweet in either feed that supported it – the closest thing to a pro-filter sentiment I could see was:
@jburger @paulstovell while I support #nocleanfeed and #nbn Im more interested in health, education, climate change & tax reforms. Nobody has my vote
More par for the course were:
@texinick Greens support R18+ games & no internet censorship… they’ve got my vote! #ausvotes #nocleanfeed #r18au
2:14 PM Aug 7th Retweeted by 1 person
@themr4nderson The net filter is Labor’s workchoices.. Ask them to Kill, bury and cremate it#ausvotes #openinternet #nocleanfeed
10:15 AM Aug 7th Retweeted by 20 people
@djshaneday can aged Australian’s can be employed to filter the Internet? They’d know more about what’s happening than Conroy.#ausvotes #nocleanfeed
And lots of people are involved in this conversation – the filter was one of the top five election Twitter trends during the first week of the campaign, along with boat people, the mining tax, refugees and climate change – yet the filter was not mentioned in the Gillard-Abbott televised debate. Why is this? Is it because it’s truly not a big issue outside the twitterati enclave or are the major parties failing to respond to community sentiment, despite their forays into social media? Twitter provides a fantastic real time barometer of public sentiment but it seems the politicians aren’t listening, only broadcasting.
It all may be a moot point anyway, with the Sydney Morning Herald reporting that even if Labor wins the election, the filter could be impossible to pass into legislation as Gillard does not have the numbers. Do you think the clean feed is flawed? Will the issue affect how you vote? Do you think it’s an issue for the majority of Australians that don’t know their way around a hashtag?
