For most of the world, this autumn is not focused on the Norwegian elections for parliament. But in Norway the focus is intensifying as the Election Day is getting closer. What the world is focused on, however, is how social media and the Internet are changing the landscape of citizen influence and participation in the political process. And this is definitely a topic in Norway prior to the election.

Most consultants in marketing and PR are criticizing politicians for not understanding the Internet, or not being honest in their use of Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other social tools. And I mostly agree with them. Most politicians are either acting clumsy and misplaced in their presence in the social media, or they have outsourced their activities to PR-consultants or some information worker in their staff. Both major fail, or should I write #fail. There are some good exceptions, of course. There always are.

For so many years the PR companies and the TV medium have trained politicians to stick to a limited amount of phrases they must repeat on any available occasion – relevant or not. It’s really annoying. But now they need to think differently. They need to start to listen, they need to evoke engagement, and they need to talk to people and share experiences and thoughts. The times are over when the “one phrase strategy” works. Ok, maybe it still works, since they keep on using the strategy, but it is so much more you can do through the social media, and it would be so much less annoying.

But why is social media a revolution in politics? It really shouldn’t be. Politicians all speak of how they are representing the people, and having contact with the grassroots in our society.  Shouldn’t they be there already? After all social media is nothing more than people taking their social behavior online. Of course with significant and sometimes exploding effects, as a result of the Internet’s structure, but still, it’s just you and me being social – on the Internet.

The most surprising about the growth of social media, and the politicians and political party’s lack of skills in using them, is how it reveals the gap between politicians and the public they represent. In my opinion this is the revolution.  It’s all about being in contact with the people, interact with us and letting us into the political process.  The politicians that really understand this and manage to act upon it will be able to get an effect, I’m sure.  I had the pleasure to listen to the people behind myobama.com at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco earlier this year. And it struck me how Obama’s campaign really had understood this and how they in an excellent way exploited its opportunities.

And it’s not only in campaign activities political parties should use social web. Their entire political process should be opened for participation from the public. Their website(s) should be written for social interaction and information sharing, maybe even be built as a social software in itself. The good thing about the Internet, its openness and its social structure is that it makes the society and all its participants exposed and available. There’s really no alternative to try to hide or ignore the so called social media. This strengthens the democracy in my opinion.

I’m open to be surprised, but this year elections in Norway will probably not be remembered for the use of social media by the political parties and politicians, but more likely for it as a start. The public, though, will probably surprise the parties with their engagement and use of social media, and hopefully we will see a continuous development of better use of the Internet and social media by the politicians as a consequence of this.