Paul's posts
11 March 2010
Social media in the General Election - missing a trick?
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Last night I attended a Social Media Summit, organised by Lewis PR, focusing on whether social media can make or break the next general election? I was intrigued because one of the panel was Dan Burton, the SVP, Global Public Policy of Salesforce.com, the company that supplied Barrack Obama's election campaign with the software to spread the word and raise donations online.
I had high hopes for the summit - thinking that the mainstream political parties and the media would have come up with innovative and practical ways to engage with the electorate though the various social media channels. However it wasn't to be and the panel seemed resigned to the fact that the highly controlled and media-managed TV debates would have far more influence over the election than any social media channel.
Here's a brief summary of what each panel member said
Dan Burton gave an early sales pitch for Salesforce.com, explaining how the company helped the Obama election campaign and stating some very impressive results. I would have liked to have heard more from Dan because it was interesting subject matter and he could have added much more to the debate in terms of making the most out of existing technologies to reach your audience. Unfortunately he had to hot foot to Paris half way through the debate without giving any real insight.
Paul Waugh, the Deputy Political Editor of the Evening Standard, said blogging was a good thing...yada yada yada...something about transparency...yada yada yada....and interaction...yada yada yada...quicker news cycles.
The main thrust of his argument was that the general public still needs the all-important journalist to translate a news story that breaks on a social media channel. I'm not sure why - perhaps so that it can be translated into bite-sized chunks of bias?
He also wanted us to know that news cycles were a lot faster nowadays thanks to social media, making journalists jobs much harder. Stating. The. Bleeding. Obvious.
Jeremy Hunt MP, the Shadow Culture Secretary, came across as a reserved character but made a couple of pertinent points. He made analogies between the use of social media and how email radicalised the way we communicated in the 1990s. He thought the internet and the access to information that stems from it made the electorate far more knowledgeable than MPs (on certain subjects) which could be harnessed through social media by asking Joe Public to validate certain information.
And he was the only member of the panel to link his use of social media directly back to engaging with a constituent (surely the most important audience for an MP?) and having a conversation with your local community.
Tom Watson MP, former Minister for Transformation, was also interesting and in a bullish mood, stating that having been forced to resign as a minister twice, he was in the position ‘to tell it as it is' (take from that what you will). He thought that social media would help with the organisation of campaigns, help reach new people and increase donations to the parties, but wouldn't make or break the election.
A by-product of social media would be a reduction in spin (a pretty redundant claim as spin doctors already operate on the net), an increase in news cycles (yet again), amplification of mistakes by MPs, a reduction in political billboard advertising (thanks to the latest hijacked Tory campaign) and the demise of some political journalists (their careers that is, not literally).
The take away
As the evening progressed it became apparent that social media was seen in very narrow terms. Namely that it was all about blogs and Twitter and that from the panel's point of view the only two parties active in this relationship were the journalist and the MP (political party). As someone who uses social media everyday and (more importantly) a voter, there was nothing from the panel that really inspired me and I felt completely overlooked as a participant. Hello!!!
There was no discussion of how political parties are listening and engaging in social media with the electorate, how the parties are using social media as a call to arms for their supporters, whether a social media campaign could force a party to alter its policies, whether the politicians could use social media to regain trust after the expenses scandal, not to mention other social media channels...
Facebook anyone? Ah yes, Facebook with over 400,000,000 registered users worldwide and with an estimated half of those eligible to vote in the next General Election using it. Surely there's potential for Facebook in the election? And YouTube might be useful with over 1,000,000,000 views per day and the potential for viral campaigning. But neither was discussed.
Unfortunately, the whole thing was pretty lacklustre - hopefully not a portent of things to come in the election. Though I imagine if Dan Burton had been able to stick around, he would have shed a little light and provided some insight on the future of social media campaigning.
Posted by Eoghan at 12 March 2010
I think you might have been the only person listening to Dan Burton - even one of the other panellists (who will remain nameless) found his sales pitch boring!
The panel got as far as agreeing that social media will have a part to play - it was a shame that there wasn't much light shed on actual methods of targetting voters through social media (although Jeremy Hunt's comparison with email databases was interesting: it's probably just a case of slowly building up a database of local bloggers, Twitter and so on, broken down in a database).
I thought it was a bold statement to say that TV will be more important - it would have been very easy to turn up at a social media conference and pander to the audience by saying "social media is the be all and end all" - interesting counter arguments.
Reply from Paul at 12 March 2010
Hi Eoghan,
Thanks for your comment. Oh dear, I seemed to have turned into my dad if I was the only one who found Dan Burton interesting.
But for me Dan could have added a lot more to the debate - describing in detail how Obama's team joined-up both traditional media and social media (which is the key) to produce an impressively coherent and ultimately decisive strategy. I'm sure he could have talked about what social media can do now in campaigning...live web chats with your local MPs, rating policy ideas or even contributing to policy, mobilizing your supporters, more collaboration with electorate generally...these are the ways to get an apathetic electorate involved and engaged.
But the rest of the panel didn't discuss any of the above and seemed unable to break out from the Westminster bubble - discussing social media couched solely in terms of the political party and the press. So it's really a mindset problem as none of the panel come from the 'Internet Generation'.
As for TV, it has always played a role in all elections (mainly through the news or party political broadcasts). Yes, the debates will add a new dynamic to the election but stating that it will be more important than social media isn't a bold statement - it's a fairly safe one from those who:
1) don't really want to engage meaningfully with the electorate
2) do not understand how significant a role social media can play if deployed correctly
3) who wish to keep control of the agenda (politicians and traditional media types)
Thanks again!
Paul
Posted by Eoghan at 12 March 2010
I think your last point about wanting to stay in control is important.
As for the TV debates, they WILL be important, but I suppose it's a question of numbers to a certain extent. If (say) BBC get 10m views, ITV 8m and Sky 3m (I'm not a media analyst, those might be miles off!) thus, say, a captive audience of maybe 12m unique viewers. Can any social media compete with that sheer power of numbers? I appreciate that it's not a question of one vs another: one obvious "social" aspect of it will be the success of the parties selecting favourable clips from the debate and spreading them virally on Youtube. That's the kind of thing that will be measurable - will Cameron picking his nose be more popular than Brown making a gaffe or Clegg not knowing the answer to a question?
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