Since 2010’s general elections, Iraqi politicians have been online, and in particular, on websites like Facebook. Yet many are barely aware of social media or what it is. Some of them, critics say, don’t even know how to use a computer.
Statistics indicate that in Iraq, a country with a population of over 30 million, there are around 2.1 million Facebook users and they’re rapidly increasing - this number grew by almost half a million over the past six months. Around three quarters of the Iraqi Facebook users are male and most are younger, aged between 18 and 34.
Additionally according to a survey by global media research firm, Intermedia, in 2010, around 21 percent of Iraqi adults use the Internet to gather news.
And Iraq’s ruling elite are desperately trying to communicate with those individuals.
But as some witty critics have pointed out Iraq’s politicians seem to be as good at utilising social media as they are at politics.
Before the 2010 elections, Iraqi politicians were using newspapers and Iraqi television to promote their policies and ideas – this is clear because of the dates at which the various political personalities joined Facebook.
Now everyone from the lowest ranking MP to the current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has a Facebook page and even a Twitter account. Mostly these are not run by the politicians themselves.
But then again this is hardly surprising. While it’s true that US President Barack Obama has a Facebook page, his party’s members hardly expect him to be running it and responding to their questions in person.
And Iraqi Facebook users don’t expect their leaders to be running their own pages either – but they are shocked at the lack of skills their senior politicians demonstrate when it comes to online media.
As one Baghdad local notes: “when the Iraqi public realise that someone else is managing the Facebook or Twitter account, it just further increases the already rampant distrust between the public and the politicians. It’s particularly surprising when politicians, who’ve lived in the West for many years, don’t know about social media.”
At the end of 2009, Iraqi civil society organisations and journalists did a survey of the level of knowledge Iraqi parliamentarians have about computing and the Internet. Out of a total of 275 MPs surveyed, 170 did not know how to use the Internet.
“They know nothing about Facebook other than its name,” says Haider Hamzouz, a young Iraqi blogger, who mobilizes Internet opinions for human rights, and general coordinator of the Iraqi Network for Social Media.“Iraqi politicians are so busy fighting amongst one another and organising partisan conflicts for their own gains, that they don’t have any time to spend communicating with the ordinary people of Iraq in a modern and civilised manner.”
Former journalist Rahim al-Shammari, who used to cover politics before he became a bureaucrat, works at the offices of the major opposition bloc, Iraqiya, inside Iraq’s Parliament and he says that, from what he has seen firsthand, “most of Iraq’s officials, ministers and MPs are not very good with computers.
Our conviction is that they really don’t know much about Facebook at all or about how to use it to communicate with people.”
Internet activist Hamzouz agrees: “our own research suggests that between 50 and 60 percent of current MPs are ignorant of modern communication methods.”
Al-Shammari says that politicians get around their online ineptitude or inexperience by employing younger Iraqis or journalists to manage their online presence on sites like Facebook.
Iraqi politicians argue that this is not because they don’t know how to use the Internet but because they don’t have time.
NIQASH called 16 MPs from different political blocs and they all said they had too many official duties to spend much time on the Internet.
Al-Shammari provides the example of Ayed Allawi, leader of Iraq’s major opposition bloc, Iraqiya. “Ayed Allawi’s web page and his Facebook page are administered by his close relatives, advisers or friends,” al-Shammari explains.
“He heads a major parliamentary bloc and he’s very well known political figure. So he simply doesn’t have the time to spend on the Internet. However,” al-Shammari adds, “after midnight Dr Allawi will browse his own Facebook page and he may well personally answer some of the questions he receives there.”
Some politicians also argued that spending too much time online was a waste. Often the MPs opposed to too much time on the Web were members of political parties with a religious base. They saw online interaction as “too worldly” and “a waste of time” that prevented individuals from more scared pursuits like prayer, they said.
They told NIQASSH that they preferred to communicate with their followers on a face-to-face basis and to keep those meetings private.
Independent Kurdish MP, Mahmoud Othman, is one of the most successful Iraqi politicians when it comes to an online presence. His Facebook page has about 17,000 “Likes” and he spends around two hours day reading and interacting with people on that page.
“Social media sites like Facebook are useful because they allow people to express their ideas, to disseminate them and to communicate with others,” Othman argues. “They also allow people to read about issues and topics that are often ignored by the traditional media outlets.”
For the time being though, the Iraqi voters – and especially the younger Internet-savvy voters - may have to continue to feel exasperated at what they read online while Iraqi politicians themselves will continue to boast about the number of Likes and Followers they have, while never really paying attention to this area or really knowing what it is actually all about.
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