Maybe facebook users just really hate abortion?

They are doing maintenance on my account so I couldn't log on to Facebook and spend half an hour updating my status this morning. So instead I had to read a newspaper article(gasp!):

CBC ‘wish list' experiment dogged by controversy

The CBC decided to try an social media experiment this month, as reported in the Globe and Mail:

— in which Canadians are encouraged to visit a Facebook page to post their hope for the future — comes to a close this weekend with a call to ban abortion as the No. 1 entry as of Wednesday.

Uh, oops. The reporter, in fact, it appears pretty much every person associated with the "botched" experiment, assumes that:

#1/ The poll was taken over by "Special Interest" groups.

#2/ It does not actually express the wishes of the majority of Canadians.

The article explains that:

Controversy has dogged the Great Canadian Wish List since it was launched on May 28, with conservative views on abortion, marriage and religion overtaking calls for better health care and education by Day 2. As of Wednesday afternoon, roughly 18,000 Facebook members had submitted their hopes for the future, with the top five wishes being: 1. ban abortion; 2. continue to allow abortion; 3. have "a spiritual revival in our nation"; 4. restore the traditional definition of marriage; 5. lower or eliminate tuition fees.

That's exactly it - Canadians don't care about our health, we are waiting for the second coming.

As the two sides of the abortion debate pretty much established a dominant paradigm in the poll, the CBC could just have easily re-titled the entire effort: "Hey kids how do you feel about abortion?" and probably the results would have some value as data.

I don't think the problem is the platform. It's the same problem that has dogged people trying to use social tools for meaning production, be they special marketers or editors or guidance counselors. The basic issue being:

If you ask a stupid question, you will get a stupid answer.

The assumption seems to be that audiences can be fed a meaningless line and then will produce the answers the editors or content producers want. This is evidently untrue.

I mean; "The Great Canadian Wishlist?" That just screams hey Opportunistic Jackass why don't you come and tamper with my results.

If the CBC presumes that most Canadians are moderates who support health care and not abortion, and if those were the results that they wanted, then they shouldn't have left their question so open to interpretation/exploitation by people (not just special interest groups) who have their own ideas about what is important public knowledge and debate.

In order to produce directed resulted the CBC should have made a Facebook poll called, "Taking the temperature of the nation", something ponderous and old skule CBC. Then they should have asked a series of carefully crafted questions with respect to people's feelings with regard to health-care, religion, tax-reform etc..

Oh no wait, that's the census isn't it?