British Government Uses Facebook To Affect Public Policy and Fix Deficit

These days, politicians are no strangers to using social media to reach voters, but now actual governments are embracing this form of communication and taking it one step further. The British government has teamed up with Facebook to probe for ideas from the public on how to tackle their large deficit.

Approximately, 26 million British citizens use Facebook and the goal of the British government is to tap every one of them for feedback and ideas in what they are calling “The Spending Challenge,” through the Democracy UK Facebook Page.

“The Spending Challenge” is divided into two phases. The first phase involves obtaining feedback from the public sector. This phase received 60,000 ideas in two weeks. The second phase is open to all British citizens.

Individuals will be able to not only provide their own ideas, but comment on the suggestions from others.

The British government is making a giant step for the social media revolution — can social media change public policy?

Check out the web conference between Prime Minister David Cameron and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

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