K Street Cafe

The state of Maryland, the attorney general of Pennsylvania and a group of researchers are taking on political campaigns using social media platforms.

Maryland’s State Board of Elections is submitting a proposal on June 3 requiring candidates to include standard language on their Facebook pages and their associations with these campaigns. In addition, the proposal would require candidates to create a system of authenticated official Twitter accounts. If this proposal passes, regulation could begin as early as this year.

In Pennsylvania, state Attorney General and Gubernatorial candidate Tom Corbett has subpoenaed Twitter to appear before a Grand Jury, a summons resulting from criticism from two Twitter users who have been anonymously criticizing the candidate on the popular social media platform. The subpoena asks for the IP addresses, names, contact information and creation dates of the two accounts in question. According to Tech Crunch, Twitter’s legal council has stated that they “….do not disclose user information except in limited circumstances.”

At Wellesley College in Massachusetts, researchers claim they found a campaign to push a political message on multiple Twitter accounts to Google’s “real-time web” traffic on the first results page. The researchers contend that people trust search engine results and usually only consult the first page of ranked results in their search.  The stream of these political messages on Twitter combined with the Google’s “real-time web” results could change the perceived popularity of candidates in an election.

To date, the FEC has not regulated political campaigns or organizations using social media, however this could change. And after June 3, Maryland could be the first of many states to start regulating social media usage in political campaigns. The likely next step for states and the FEC would be the regulation of organizations using social media for advocacy campaigns.

The need for legitimate, transparent and honest grassroots campaigns — particularly in the new realm of social media — are imperative to ensure that your organization does not become the first example used by the FEC and other state regulating bodies. I would urge a great deal of caution before embarking on a social media grassroots campaign without fully thinking of the legal and ethical implications and how they might backfire on your organization.

Do political campaigns in social media need to be regulated? Do you worry about social media grassroots campaigns being regulated? Is it possible for grassroots professionals to self police? Are these concerns unwarranted at this time?