Social Media, Politics and the General Election

During my final year at university, after months of teasing, Gordon Brown finally announced the general election was to be held on 6^th may 2010. This statement from Mr. Brown injected panic, excitement and inspiration into my life in equal measure for I was almost half way through a dissertation based upon political participation through social media. Carefully laid plans and weeks of careful facts and figures crumbled beneath me in the time it takes a newsreader to read the day’s headlines. Fortunately the panic I had initially felt quickly melted away leaving me with a head full of ideas and a blank canvas.

Within a few days the social media platforms I was tracking had exploded in all directions with election related content. Facebook forums were overflowing with questions and predictions; Twitter was brimming with policy rumours and sightings of panicked politicians whilst election themed YouTube videos (some nasty, some nice) littered the site’s ‘most viewed today’ section.

As the weeks went on the level of social media noise regarding the election grew louder and louder until it was being shouted at you from every direction. The culmination of this barrage came on the election night itself when sleep deprived politicians, journalists and Tweeters became increasingly estranged from their senses as their tweets, blogs and status updates became progressively stranger. On seeing the exits polls conservative blogger Ian Dale blogged: “It seems too incredible to be true that the Lib-Dems are only predicted to get 59 seats. I’ll run naked down Whitehall if that turns out to be true.” Unfortunately for Dale, and perhaps us, the Lib-Dems only won 57 seats. Although, in a victory for decency everywhere, Dale backed out of this impulsive declaration when questioned about it on a live news broadcast. However rash his claim may seem in hindsight it was certainly backed up by the evidence online pre-election.

The unprecedented live Leaders Debates, particularly the first, were watched by millions around the country, many of whom watched live online whilst many tweeted, blogged and expressed their opinions through social media as it happened. It was immediately apparent that Lib-Dem Leader Nick Clegg’s profile had been catapulted sky-high; up until the election this new found popularity continued to grow across the social media platforms, albeit not at the same rate as it had started. On Facebook Clegg’s fan page was growing a great deal faster than his rivals Brown and Cameron and on Twitter Clegg was gaining followers by the bagful. YouTube ran a series of videos in which selected user questions were put to the three leaders on various topics with the best in each category being voted for by the users, Clegg’s responses won all but one of the ten votes. There were even Facebook groups set up to try and organise a mass Lib-Dem vote in order to install Nick Clegg as our unlikely leader. Despite the furore, when it came to voting day the rise of the Lib-Dems, orchestrated by the mighty Nick Clegg, never came to pass as they only managed a 1% increase in votes from the previous election.

Was it that the online community had not turned out to vote, was it that they had bottled it at the polling booths, or was it that what seemed like a huge online presence had just been a bubble? The reality is it was a combination of all three, the ‘digital election’ which had been predicted by many had simply not transpired.

There are certainly lessons to be learned from the election. Given the successful use of social media in other political campaigns across the world, most notably Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign, it cannot be said that politics and social media do not mix. The shortfall experienced in this election seems to have come from the failure to harness the potential social media provides, consequently the people and parties who come to understand and utilize it first will certainly have the jump on their counterparts.