Politics and Facebook

Last week, Marine presented us an article from the BBC website entitled "Queen to launch British Monarchy page on Facebook". As she said, this page was created by Buckingham Palace. However, this is not a personal page but this is a new means to keep us up-to-date on royal events. This is not the first time British Monarchy resorted to the use of Internet.        
 
 To widen the subject, Marine refers to politicians using a social network as Facebook. She hinted at our beloved President Sarkozy, Jacques Chirac and Ségolène Royal having a Facebook page. This phenomenon sheds light on the fact that it is more and more necessary to politicians to have visibility on social networks. It is a new trend to make politics, a new place to gather votes. Marine asked us two relevant questions:
 

 
She first asked us what we thought about the use of Facebook by British Monarchy.
 
On that issue, I will agree with one of my classmates who said that we couldn't care less what is doing Queen Elisabeth and her so conventional family. Nevertheless, I am bound to recognize that having a Facebook page might be a means for British Monarchy to appear as being "in" and not utterly old-fashioned as I am used to thinking…
 

 
Then she wondered why politicians use social networks as Facebook.
 
Blatantly, politicians use Facebook in order to convey the image of connected, trendy individuals close to young people. But it is only a new way to shape their public image. As one of my classmates said, contrary to the medias, Facebook enables politicians to choose "how" they want to appear. And they will likely show us how "honest", how "concerned", how "genius" they are...
 

 
I sincerely think that for a politician, having a network activity could be a great idea. However, it really depends on how it is done. As far as I am concerned, I think that politicians should resort to Facebook in order to democratize politics, that is to say showing that it is not as boring as we firstly could think. Facebook could be a place of concrete debate with politicians, with no pompous speeches or boring platforms. On the other hand, I am not interested at all in reading a politician's Facebook page telling us what he is doing in his private life. I don't want to know if Nicolas Sarkozy drinks his coffee with sugar or not, or if he prefers cannelloni or spaghetti…