Yesterday I was in techno-political geek heaven. The Personal Democracy Forum, with the help of Onalytica, had organised ‘General Election Replay’. The e-glitterati panel which had been assembled were ready to be grilled in Question Time style.
It quickly became apparent that the question of whether this was an ‘internet election’ is a redundant one. The internet is a part of the fabric of our society. It is a tool that is inextricably intertwined with the work that politicians and journalists do. As Mark Pack pointed out, if the internet had suddenly disappeared half-way through the election everyone would have had to completely rethink how they operated.
The Conservatives and Labour had two very different approaches to the technological side of campaigning. Craig Elder told us how the Conservatives e-strategy was decide upon over two years ago. It was based on creating a website that was policy-based and easy to navigate. The goal was for floating voters to be directed towards information that CCHQ wanted them to see. This involved buying space on Youtube’s front page and enabling targetted search engine results. If you were looking for political information during April it is more likely than not that you would have come across Tory-friendly messages. Labour, as Mark Hanson explained, concentrated on energising and organising their base. The internet is a place where people gravitate towards themselves. By exploiting this, Labour managed to mobilise activists then target them at key seats. Compared to 2005, Labour employed one-third the number of staff but had three times the amount of activists.
E-influencing is about the size of the network times the power and tools inside the network. If these three parts are not aligned any impact will be significantly lessened. The Lib Dems did not have the capacity to take advantage of the surge in interest that Nick Clegg generated post TV-debate. Onalytica’s research showed that while the buzz around Clegg himself increased rapidly after the first debate the noise around his party was static. If only they had had an equivalent to Myconservatives. This was an impressive tool but unfortunately for the Tories there was no power/buzz to make it the game changer it could have been.
Twitter created the most heated part of the debate. Samuel Coates described Twitter as a giant echo chamber, which generated a huge amount of heat but not a lot of light. While this is spot-on those who think it proves the futility of tweeting have missed the point that Twitter’s power is derived from this analysis. Energising your base and channelling its power is a crucial part of election strategy. This is how Obama successfully used social media; to enthuse then direct supporters. During the campaign I downloaded both parties I-Phone apps. The Conservative one gave me useful information while the Labour app asked me to join in. It had a local news and local events section which encouraged supporters to spread targeted messages to applicable audiences.
Twitter has made spinning a naked art. In Harry Cole’s view twitter gave the parties an extra thousand spinners. Mick Fealty rightly pointed out Twitter radically changed how spinning works. For example, I follow Alastair Campbell. During the leaders debate he tweeted the prepared line that while Brown was losing on style he was wining on substance. Forget the spin room or political operators having a word in correspondences ears; Campbell was directly spinning at me. Both Toryites and Labourites do do their master’s spinning but it is completely transparent that you are being fed biased views. If you are on Twitter and want to get a flavour of the grassroots debate, but don’t want to follow thousands, I can highly recommend @HouseofTwits. It is the best grassroots political aggregator out there.
What about the future? Joe Trippi believes we will end up in a place where it will be impossible to control information. I think we are already half-way there. Anthony Painter suspects that the Internet and social media are helping to create a much more fragmented electorate. If progressive politics is about engagement then the tools we have today make interaction so much easier. Stella Creasey, Labour MP, kept making the strong point that it is not about the forums you use but how you use them. In some ways the Labour Party has a more natural fit with social media. It has always seen itself as a movement and the internet is a Darwinian battle of competing movements all trying to get the maximum momentum. Will Labour be able to regenerate itself through e-debate or will this easier interaction allow the loud shouting loons to dominate sensible instincts? We shall see.
From the coalition government’s perspective how will social media allow supporters to interact with this new politics? On Tuesday politics changed but how we have the political conversation has yet to catch-up.
All the parties had e-successes and e-failures, which I’m sure they all learnt from. This will undoubtedly help to advance e-campaigning BUT if the next election is in five years it is probable that the influential platforms of 2015 have yet to be invented.
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I must confess that during the last two weeks of this kind of particularly unhinged election bike, despite the brief psychological refreshment I experienced with the Restoring Sanity Rally about Saturday, I have once yet again begun to suss out suitable caves from the Northwest Territories of Canada to that we can retire and get rid the intellectual and moral potato sack sprint on the bottom that is some of our national political conversation.