Today is Blog Action Day and I am joining millions of bloggers around the world to write under the theme the #powerofwe where all bloggers will be writing on issues around the world which can be resolved through the collaborative power of WE! I chose to write on the above blog title as Ghana prepares herself for Election 2012, actually its 52 days more to go ( December 7).

Like I blogged earlier, I don’t like politics but I totally stand for the cause of ensuring a peaceful election in anyway that I can. So are many groups and associations being formed towards the achievement of this cause and social media is not exempt from this formation. I checked Facebook and many pages have been created in support of peace during the December elections such as this one. One blogging project which i greatly admire is #GhanaDecides which describes itself as,

‘ A BloGh Election Project funded by STAR-GHANA and aims at fostering a better informed electorate for free, fair and safe 2012 Elections using online social media tools.
The non-partisan project also aims to educate the youth, civil society organizations and public institutions on the effective use of social media for social change. ‘

With well over 7,000 Likes, this project initiated by Blogging Ghana has been working hard at communicating the message of peace, and covering the run up to the upcoming elections. They undertake various projects such as offline social media training for young people, civil society organisations and public institutions. Their blogsite GhanaDecides has various posts on activities of the group as well as notable activities by the various political parties. A voter survey is also currently being run to get some statistics and analysis on what voters think about the voting process. I think there should be a print survey as well for the many Ghanaians who do not have access to the internet or aren’t social media savvy. On Twitter, GhanaDecides tweets @GhanaDecides with well over 2K followers. You can join the already growing team by following them and getting the necessary details. I am joining although I know my time at work will not give me much freedom to go around town. Weekends are there \0/

Social media as a platform to preach the message of peace shouldn’t be taken lightly neither should it be abused to post up negative political messages. If you are on Twitter/Facebook or any other social media platform, use the tool wisely to promote peace. Stay away from posting heresay when you haven’t witnessed anything with your own eyes or when you don’t have evidence. Someone said, ‘we shouldn’t wait for Al-Jazeera and CNN to come and cover our elections, we will do our own thing!’ Then if we must, we must do so excellently and fairly (and with great vim!)

Personally, I think anyone who abuses social media to post up anything to cause ‘fear and panic’ should be dealt with. Severely…and then banned from social media of all sorts. Forever!!

Here is to a peaceful Ghana Elections 2012! Ossayyy Ghana! #MoreVim!