Hope you enjoyed the campaign! So, was it really the social media election? Well here’s why I think not.

 

Social media added a great deal of ‘noise’ to the campaign but very little cut through – and it certainly did not make a great deal

of difference to the outcome. While it was the first election to utilise some aspects of social media, on the whole the day-to-day impact was not much more than candidates using Facebook to organise activity at a level long since grasped by even the most haphazard university football teams. Some blogged - others did campaign videos - but did any actually influence a result? I think not.

 

While both major parties tried, there was no mass mobilisation of previously non-political people who chipped in with canvassing or organising DIY campaign rallies, as in the US campaign. MyBO was a social networking phenomenon – it transformed the landscape and played a crucial role in the election outcome. Was there anything even comparable in this country?

 

Social media in this election was merely another outlet for those already politically aligned and active to debate, organise and irritate.

 

Furthermore, at a ‘brand’ level the social media activity undertaken reflected the same media management and messages of the wider campaign – there were no left-of-field movements that emerged from the public, and no radically different communication channels developed by the politicians. Yes – we had our first Twitter casualties. But gaffes always happen – social media was not the catalyst for that. And arguably the biggest single moment of the campaign, Mrs Duffy’s cameo, was a distinctively old media gaffe and its ramifications were felt not in the tweets of disgust, but the front page of the newspapers the next day.

 

Social media will have its day, but 2010 was certainly not it.

Look forward to your thoughts,

 

Hi Nick,

You made the comparison with the US presidential election. In the US system with primaries followed by a fixed term election, the campaign lasts a year. We have less than four weeks of actual campaigning and that doesn’t allow the level of organisation and time required for a network like MyBO. Nor did we have the level of voter interest that Obama generated. The socialmedia effect in the US was also magnified because it was the first time it played a part in a major election anywhere in the world.

 

We were all led to believe that social media would play a similar role here. Because it didn’t play the same role we were then persuaded that it had very little effect. The effect of social media on the UK general election was very different to that in the US but it was still highly evident and highly influential.

 

The Tory lead was in double digits until mid-January when people began to question Cameron’s authenticity. At exactly that time a site was launched that gave the public a chance to channel and share those concerns. MyDavidCameron.com with its ‘Airbrushed for Change’ posters gained its first big spike in traffic thanks to Twitter, Facebook and blogs like Popbitch over 12-15 January. On January 10th two opinion polls gave the Tories a 16 and 13 point lead, enough for a solid majority. On the 15th the two published polls gave them a 9 point and 4 point lead, the latter being the lowest since 2008. I don’t think this was entirely coincidental. I am convinced many at Conservative Party central office took the same view.

 

“Social networks were where debate was taking place and where people if they chose could take part in that debate. That’s a pretty major change”

 

I think it’s pretty fair to say the election campaign proper started on January 2nd with the NHS poster launch and the overwhelming majority of seats seen as winnable by all the parties (save for the seats where MPs stood down quite late in the day) had candidates in place for several years, so its wrong to suggest the campaign only lasted a few weeks. There was more than enough time to develop blogs, use social media sites and experiment with new campaign techniques: indeed LabourSpace was launched in January 2009, with myconservatives following in October 09.

 

While mydavidcameron.com was an entertaining social media development (as indeed, my personal favourite davefacts on twitter) I think it would be pretty far-fetched to suggest it was the public who were using the site. As with much of the twitter activity,

it was people who were already politically active and motivated using it.

 

As for polls, on the 15 Jan ComRes had a 13 point Tory lead and on 17 Jan the poll of polls had a Tory 11 point lead. I think its pretty ambitious to suggest a spoof site really made any difference to how people voted. Do you think the British people are that fickle? If there was any impact, it was negligible and very short lived.

 

If you look at the data on which issues decided people’s votes, Camerons personality was not up there. If I was going to pick one social media campaign that did resonate (and it’s a short list to choose from) it would be the #ilovetheNHS effort. However, as the

economy became clearly the most important issue the impact of that was weakened. Social media failed to keep up with the public mood, lost in a web of whacka-mole style arguments over who hijacked what. The truth is many candidates did not even grasp the basics, those who did use social media did not win many votes from it and even the national party efforts probably failed to deliver a noticeable difference in the end results.

 

I find it interesting you’ve overlooked the use of social media by candidates (the people we were voting for, after all!) so I am I to take it that your main reasoning for you believing social media did play a major role in this election and changed how people voted - was a spoof poster site?

We can argue about individual polls but the erosion of the Tory lead began when MyDavidCameron.com was launched and continued through to the vote. It was also far from being an isolated example. The Facebook group “We Got ‘Rage Against the Machine’ to #1 We Can Get the LibDems into Office!” garnered over 100,000 online fans. ‘Vote Match’ had over a million unique users. As you hinted, the vast majority of candidates campaigned on-line, the Conservative hierarchy could see the importance and e-mailed their candidates to say “electronic publications such as websites, blogs and Twitter have to be approved before they

are posted”. The mainstream media was forced into providing commentary rather than news because the ‘news’ broke first on social networks. TV news programmes regularly mentioned ‘tweets’ in their bulletins.

 

Social media eroded much of the influence that conventional media has traditionally exerted. Neal Lawson writing in the New Statesman this week says “Facebook, Twitter and satirical sites such as mydavidcameron.com mean that neither a party’s central command nor the Sun can win it any more”. The question is “did social media play a major part?” and the answer must be a resounding “yes”. In fact you pretty much nail it when you say “it was people who were already politically active and motivated using it”. Social networks were where debate was taking place and where people if they chose could take part in that debate. That’s a pretty major change.

 

“Social media added a great deal of ‘noise’ to the campaign but very little cut through – and it certainly did not make a great deal of difference to the outcome”

 

I’d say our campaign had some more fundamental weaknesses than any limited effect of the spoof site! The majority of candidates campaigned online badly – and as I said, it was the politically active debating on social media. The point is that it wasn’t the debate that mattered! It didn’t change any minds and at times it was bore more resemblance to a pitched battle. (and for the record I was never asked or told to have anything approved by CCHQ.)

 

Your point is absolutely right – people could choose to take part in the debate. Social media offered a range of new ways for the public to engage in the election – and yet, on the whole, a tiny fraction of the electorate did so. The effect it did have was to give those already aligned a new platform – which had no impact on the voters ‘on the doorstep’ who decided the outcome of the election.

 

Overlooking the fact this was a poor election for the print press, a 12.5% swing to the Conservatives from the Sun’s readership would suggest that it’s still a very important aspect of winning elections – and all the Rage-themed Facebook groups can’t compete with the million or so extra votes The Sun alone delivered. This election sowed the seeds for 2015, or in my view probably 2020, to be a true social media election – but to conclude, I’d just say this – if no party had any social media activity, and the spoof sites and blogs had not existed, do you think the result would have been any different?

 

The Sun had some effect. From September through to the vote it campaigned tirelessly for the Conservatives culminating in the infamous front page on election day. To get the actual ‘Sun effect’ we must subtract the national swing from the swing amongst Sun voters. The remaining 8.8% as a proportion of circulation would be a little over 250,000 voters or 0.84% of those voting. So for over six months of relentless campaigning the impact was marginal. When it comes to print media I find it fascinating that Lynne Featherstone, the Liberal Democrat MP for Hornsey and Wood Green had a bigger audience on twitter than the local press in her constituency can deliver and she’s not alone by any means.

 

The TV debates brought a new level of intensity and shattered all notions bi-partisan British politics. Yet whatever effect they had dissipated at the polling stations. The share of actual votes was in line with predictions before the first TV debate. Even the BBC’s election correspondent, Laura Kuenssberg is in no doubt that social media has changed the game. Speaking about the election at the ‘Value of Journalism Conference’ at the LSE she acknowledged that social media had stolen a march on TV in news delivery; “Twitter is the fastest way we can break news”. She also said that during the election “the internet and what was happening on line was an integral part of things”. If the BBC’s election correspondent says that the on-line debate was “integral” it can’t be regarded as insignificant.

 

Good luck at the next election Nick and keep up the good work with your digital presence.