Spinning the Web

The great British election is a funny beast. Set in it’s battleship-grey suit and mismatched tie, it plods onwards with a familiar gait – boring everyone into submission through dire party election broadcasts utterly devoid of creativity (and usually, policy).

2010, however, was going to be different. 2010, it was said by many, ‘will be the first social media election’. ‘We’ll do an Obama’ was the battle-cry of the pallid campaign men.

The thing is – it’s not really been the social media election everyone thought. Parties have not succeeded in engaging thousands of suporters to use their own social networks to promote policies, prompt voting registration and drive positive word-of-mouth about the figurehead of their campaign. The dream was to mirror Obama, but unfortunately the reality was a little too British. Yes, we had iPhone applications, Facebook pages, Twitter streams and even Foursquare updates (a highlight for me was when Vince Cable was declared mayor of 11 Downing Street). But weren’t they dull? As Obama empowered those previously disengaged from politics and forgotten about in traditional electioneering, British politicians chose instead to take the same old and tired formulas online. ‘We have a manifesto. But don’t think we’re not social-whatsitsname savvy – you can read it on your iPhone too. There’s even a video!’

Campaign managers – here’s a quick FYI – helping your supporters to donate their status to your campaign, to organise real-world rallies and to tap into previously unreachable audiences is the big potential of political social media strategy – not changing the slogans on the Conservative posters to make David Cameron look stupid. God knows he needs no help doing that. What we have seen from official channels has, at best, caused a chuckle or raised an eyebrow, at worst it has been embarrassing. As we all looked across the pond glassy-eyed at the social media expertise of Obama’s campaigners in the US elections, they must look back at us with pity. The suits, it seems, just don’t get it.

As such, what I had planned to be a summary of the various parties’ social media policies, will instead focus on what I believe has changed since the last election thanks to social media. Despite official party lines failing to engage the public effectively online, that doesn’t mean social media has failed. Social media has, in fact, allowed the public to become more engaged than ever in an event of national importance. We’ve just had to do it ourselves, that’s all.

It was the traditional media that managed for the first time to secure a leaders’ debate – but anyone who only watched it on TV missed the real indication of how much things have changed. According to @Tweetminster the final TV debate sparked 154,342 tweets (that’s 26.77 tweets per second) – and reading those tweets brought the real-life debate to life. From humorous attacks to level-headed conversation, the ‘Twittersphere’ was alive, for the first time in Britain, with healthy political debate. See some of it here. Whether you were watching the debate or not, if you were on Twitter you were part of a conversation about the future of your country. That was pretty refreshing. I wouldn’t go so far as to say Twitter made politics cool – but it has injected a new lease of life into a dejected electorate. For some reason, when you see so many people engaged in the same conversations as you, impassioned about the changes they want to see, it does make you feel like real change is possible. Obama may have sparked it in the US elections, but evidence from this side of the Atlantic suggests that social media has the capacity to do this on its own – just by providing a platform for easy, immediate interaction. Equally positive was the overall sentiment of tweets. I can only speak for my own network, but discussion over campaign hotspots such as #bigotgate on Twitter, Facebook and blogs was wholly more level-headed and sensible than the ridiculous blockbuster-news approach of the broadcast media.

Twitter offered more balanced debate than other media around 'Bigotgate'

The UK’s number one social network has been pivotal in engaging the general public as well. Facebook’s Democracy UK page has 166,012 members which has led to 14,000 voter registration forms being downloaded directly from Facebook.

The Straight Choice project is providing a visualisation of party collateral that allows users to check for local issues and contradictions. An interactive map mashup allows people to search their location and others for material relevant to them. Why didn’t a campaign manager think of this? It’s pretty simple but would at least give voters access to their local party information at the click of a mouse.

In summary – this has turned from being a blogpost on the social media policy of the political parties in the UK to more of a celebration of the capacity of social networks to drive accessible, sensible (okay, sometimes not so sensible, but always entertaining) and equal debate of what is important. So often we have seen social media and its users belittled as the sharers of rude YouTube clips, providing incessant updates about what they ate for breakfast. This clearly isn’t so – in fact, social networks provide a natural habitat for the important debate to rise to the top and become even more exciting. A world before Twitter would not have seen such intense scrutiny of the Iran elections. It wouldn’t have broken the news about the Hudson River Plane crash so quickly. It would not have had Vince Cable as mayor of 11 Downing Street. That is why they have carved such a critical position at the heart of our society in the time since our last election. And given it’s speed of progress, who knows how the next election will play out online? I for one can’t wait.

Tags: Conservative, David Cameron, facebook, Political party, politics, twitter, Vince Cable, youtube