On Monday, president Jacob Zuma was interviewed on live radio by Talk Radio 702's Redi Thlabi, with simultaneous participation in a Google+ Hangout.
A Hangout is the video chat feature of Google's social platform, Google+. Hangouts can be broadcast directly on YouTube, to allow for a larger audience.
South Africans could watch Thlabi interview the president live, while also submitting questions via Twitter, Facebook and SMS. The full Google Hangout can be viewed on YouTube.
On Monday, Google's head of new products for Sub-Sahara, Brett StClair, posted on his Google+ profile that the live Google Hangout with Zuma was a “super proud moment”.
“The only other president I know of who has done a Google+ Hangout Air is president Barak Obama,” wrote StClair.
Obama became the first president to do a Google+ Hangout in January, when he took questions from the American public. Amid the controversy surrounding the denial of the Dalai Lama's visa for archbishop Desmond Tutu's 80th birthday, a Google+ Hangout was used to let the Dalai Lama participate in the celebrations.
The hangout with Zuma was facilitated by 702 and Google, with a camera set up in the radio studio to capture the interview - making it slightly less direct than a straight forward Google+ Hangout.
The different social media channels were, however, monitored by 702 prior to and during the interview, in order to inform Thlabi's questions. Before the interview, Thlabi acknowledged the influx of tweets regarding the “administrative error” that resulted in the official Twitter account of the office of the presidency tweeting about missing the latest episode of Idols. Thlabi opened the interview joking that she was concerned Zuma may have been preoccupied watching the repeat broadcast.
“New technologies and social media are giving a new 'face' to governments across the globe and are increasingly being used by leaders to engage their citizens. Traditionally, politicians in democratic societies have simply broadcast information to citizens who then vote for their chosen leader every few years, but these old models of governance are changing rapidly,” says Google SA.
“A more participatory democracy, spurred on the ideals of Web 2.0 and social media, is the next step in how states are governed.”
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