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Election 2013 media panel

What we shared: Diaz confused

Yawn. Scratch.

The joys of our own curation during this election mean we can shun the mainstream media doing its usual thing of picking sides for us.

And pick our own.

For years mainstream media has manipulated readership numbers and circulation figures but now we get to see exactly how many shares, how many likes and how many views.

So while the Daily Telegraph and the Australian Financial review can’t even wait for the usual practice of at least pretending to wait until the week of the election, we are sharing our own content which highlights the inadequacies of the candidates. And it’s a Liberal this time but it won’t be long before it’s a Labor candidate. A Green candidate. A Katter candidate.

Are those edicts from legacy media having the same effect as they used to?

Not if the glories of the Share button have anything to do with it.

Most viral video of the day (is that even a measure?) was definitely John Hill’s gotcha moment when he asked Jaymes Diaz, the Liberal candidate for the seat of Sydney’s most marginal electorate, Greenway, for more information about the Liberal Party’s policies.

Paul Patrick, Channel Ten’s news director in Sydney, couldn’t disguise his delight.

“This is a crucial electorate,” he told The Conversation. “And it was a pretty raw interview. You rarely get to see a politician stumped.”

Patrick says that measuring the impact is difficult because it changes for every single election.

“There is no template because of the explosion of social media.”

One measure he does have is this - there were 40,000 Youtube hits on this clip from 7pm to 1pm today - and he hasn’t even looked at shares on Facebook or Twitter.

Yet. Wonder if we can measure as transparently the impact of front pages.

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