GE2010 Extended Article. Part iii: The Reason For Online Engagement

"But the real excitement, and progress, has been in Labour's largely unreported grassroots campaigns. "Philosophically they seem to have the right idea" says McGregor [director of London based Blue State Digital, which worked on Barack Obama's 2008 campaign] "getting supporters to make phone calls and knock on doors. A big part of campaigning should be using new media tools to build relationships that help in activating activists..."" (Jemima Kiss, Guardian May 2010)

The Labour doorstep site was the Labour Party's site for organising Labour supporters for action in the election and then used the Labour doorstep hashtag as a means to organise Labour activists on Twitter. This included use of a Flickr photostream and opportunity to upload supporter’s videos and photos for use by the campaign and on the site.

The Liberal Democrats used a similar programme through 'ACT' which was their web based activist organisation. Events - organisation of fundraising, coffee mornings etc. - online groups for conversation and to generate support. The video on 'what is ACT' has been viewed by 2000 people on Youtube (Youtube 24/05/10).

The Conservatives also used similar initiatives on their site myconservatives.com. In an article for ‘Wired’ magazine, James Crabtree of Prospect magazine wrote of the site:

“Built over nine months using Drupal by developers LBi ... it was launched at party conference to give local activists tools to help them organise events, raise money and access a virtual phone bank to call wavering voters. The site won enthusiastic internal reviews, not just from the usual digital boosters but also from the party's hardheaded press chief, Andy Coulson.” (James Crabtree, Wired Magazine, 24th March 2010)

On the 22nd March 2010, The Guardian's Jemima Kiss reported in an article on the 'Cash Gordon' web campaign funded by the Conservative Party. The site which was designed to smear the Labour party for their links with the Unions in Britain, did so through a point system to encourage users to read, comment on and share the campaign through Facebook Connect.

"But if this all seems a little too slick - it is probably because the site is based on an off-the-shelf template developed by a US anti-healthcare lobbyist. In the words of @wdjstraw: "Tory #cashgordon campaign brought to you by the team that tried to scupper US healthcare reform. #ToryFail" (Jemima Kiss, Guardian.co.uk, 22/03/10).

This case, however was not widely reported and had very little noticeable effect on public perception of the party. It can be noted that it was a story commented on and written about by many Labour party members and as such perhaps became a part of the back-and-forth of party politics. It was posted on LabourList, LeftFootForward (a group who 'often find ourselves in agreement with left of centre policies and politicians' ) and Political Scrapbook which is 'a left-leaning political weblog' on 22nd March.

Candidates themselves have taken up online media and used it to better communicate with voters in their constituencies. The Conservative candidate, Charlie Elphicke is one such example of a candidate engaging with voters online:

“Like other candidates, Elphicke uses Facebook, Twitter and the party's newer MyConservatives social-networking platform. Last year he launched a site that allowed people to donate £10 via their mobile phones -- until regulators shut it down. But his most successful innovation has been his own website, Elphicke.com.” (James Crabtree, 24th March, 2010)


YouTube

The video sharing site, ‘Youtube.com’ was set up and has evolved only since the last General Election in the United Kingdom in 2005. Through visits to the site direct and by embedded videos on sites across the Internet, YouTube is used by huge numbers of people. Its use in the election campaigns ranged from each of the parties using their own channels for their own films, to viral homemade films rubbishing policy and personality, through to an alternative prime-ministerial debate.

One of the most watched videos on Youtube during the election was the spoof video entitled ‘Common People’, which poked fun at the history and links of much of the Conservative party. All three parties posted their own videos and were also the butt of jokes at their own expense. These each had their effect in swaying individual voters but overall were in low numbers compared to what might have been expected and what was predicted by some commentators in the run up to the election campaign.

Youtube and Facebook collaborated during the election campaign to run their own ‘Digital Debate’. This allowed users of both sites to submit their questions via text or video. The best of these questions was then put to each of the three main party leaders and they recorded video responses in order to answer them. These were then made available on Youtube for users to comment on and vote. The poll of self selecting Facebook and Youtube users came out overwhelmingly in favour of Nick Clegg.


Advertising

One of the major areas that was paid for by the parties was online advertising. Within the giving to parties by individuals of over £7500 the Conservatives were given the most money, over £7.3 million whilst Labour were given over £5.2 million and the Liberal Democrats only £724,000 in the same bracket. This gave the Conservatives a significant advantage in terms of budget, which undoubtedly had an effect on how much money was available to them to spend advertising online:

“Both the Conservatives and, to a lesser extent, Labour made sophisticated use of Google's AdSense system to place political messages next to search terms. On polling day, the Tories went one step further, buying what they described as the best piece of online real estate you can find, the front page of YouTube, to place an advert telling users to vote Conservative.” (Rory Cellan-Jones 7th May 2010)

As well as making use of Google’s AdSense, the parties were keen to access the market available through Facebook:

"The political parties are creating highly targeted advertisements where they can advertise direct to the voters they need to reach in order to win a marginal seat. It’s highly powerful and much cheaper than full page ads in national newspapers." (Channel 4 News, 21st March 2010)


Traditional Media

As Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign manager David Plouffe puts it below, the ‘traditional’ media voice still has an important part to play in effective election campaign strategies:

“ We tried to be on our target voters’ network TV, cable, satellite and on demand; on their radios; all over the Internet; in their mailboxes; on their landlines and their cell phones, if we could; at their doorsteps; and out in their communities. Balanced communications across all mediums is critical in any messaging effort today.” (David Plouffe, 2008)

Jon Snow of the Channel Four News Programme, wrote the following for The Times:
“The campaign has shown that television, whose power I mistakenly expected to have waned, is as great as ever. So far, the rare campaign “moments” have all been captured by television: from the debates, to the egg attack on David Cameron and the closed white door of Gillian Duffy’s Rochdale home.” (Jon Snow, The Times, May 1st 2010)

The ‘traditional media’, which I am taking to mean television and newspaper coverage were not unaffected by the ‘new media’ usage of both the parties and those consuming content. The voters were engaging with and finding information online as well as through more traditional sources.

“For anyone watching the campaign closely, the blogs and social networks - particularly Twitter - provided a fascinating running commentary from an array of mostly partisan viewpoints. That seemed to make every event, from the TV debates to the "bigoted woman" row, happen at warp speed - so that, after a few hours, it was time to move on to something new.” (Rory Cellan-Jones, 2010)

Another effect of the instant nature of social media was that journalists and amateurs alike were informing their followers instantly of breaking news or of times and places for events. The journalists engaged on sites such as Twitter also benefited from this instant transaction – able to follow news and opinion as they were written and broadcast. This ability to instantly gauge voter reaction (or the tech-savvy, online section of said group) to events or breaking news represents a significant change from previous elections.

In a similar way social media changes the way that politicians themselves can gauge the mood of their electorate and to ‘hear’ better what those people who vote for them think, do and say in response to their policies and what politicians do in the public eye:

“The politicians need to be looking at what the people are saying, and see how their policies are being perceived and what the populous’ topics are” (Andrew Walker, Co-founder of Tweetminster, CNN Video piece, 29th April 2010)


Conclusion

Although this extended article is not comprehensive, there are significant indicators of how and to what extent the three main parties used digital media tools to engage the electorate. As striking as the recent use of the internet and social media by the three main parties is, it has been neither what pundits expected nor a holistic approach. No one party has significantly out-performed the others. There were glaring omissions, with engagement on a handful of the most noticeable platforms.

In an election campaign the real test of any campaign strategy is what happens concerning voters. The votes matter, not necessarily the winning but improving the level of engagement, both for a single party and overall. The Conservatives went into the election as favourites and their use of digital media was respected above that of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties. Holding up the Conservative strategy to the 2008 presidential election campaign however, proved an interesting comparison. James Crabtree reported on an interview with Joe Rospars, the former head of online operations for the 2008 Obama Campaign, for Wired Magazine:

“"For all their databases and search-engine tricks, you have to ask; what is the quality of interaction most people will have with the Tories during your British election? If they're still only getting leaflets, or even emails, and not a knock on the door from a neighbour they know, then they are only halfway to getting what we did." Other knowledgeable observers who have spoken on condition of anonymity have voiced similar doubts.” (Crabtree, 2010)

Jon Snow of the Channel Four News Programme summed up his thoughts in an article for The Times following the election:

“It seemed that in our own elections, all three main parties would follow, adopting their own social media strategies. But intriguingly, the web has not been the master of this election. While Mr Obama appeared the master of the new medium in America, here the new medium appeared more the master of the politicians, frequently running irreverent circles around them — via sites for spoofing posters, witty Twitter asides or viral parodies on YouTube.” (Jon Snow, 2010)

The potential of the Internet to political parties is that it can be used to reach potentially hard to reach voters. The interactive nature of Web 2.0 technologies and sites allows a greater freedom to explore and listen to varied voices individually among the crowd of the electorate. True engagement online needs to be multi-layered, multi-platform and involve the principles of the ‘long-tail’ – reaching down to the smallest and most unapparent groups of people. The Obama campaign succeeded in engaging hugely varied groups of people through social networks, email, online video and many other tools used well. They were effective as part of a wider strategy which was coherent and high-quality as a whole. The emphasis for engagement online was to increase offline engagement.

This election, whilst seeing an increase in the use of digital media tools to engage voters, did not see this done in a novel or innovative way. At times the use of technology was completely ignored in favour of traditional methods such as campaign posters. It is unlikely that there will be another election with opportunities like it, however. The technology being used now is likely to be so common place and become even more pervasive that it will not be treated as a separate or ‘new’ area. The question over how best to engage the electorate, in the unique and intense General Election environment in the United Kingdom through use of this digital media technology, remains unanswered.

GE2010 Extended Article. Part i: The International Social Media 'Climate'

How did the three main political parties engage the electorate through use of digital media tools during the United Kingdom’s 2010 General Election?


Introduction

The General Election in the United Kingdom on 6th May 2010 came at the end of a month of campaigning. This campaign was the first election campaign to include televised Prime Ministerial debates. It was also the first election to be held since Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and other Web 2.0 start-ups became household names and widely used in the United Kingdom. It was widely reported that this election campaign would be the first ‘Social Media Election’ in the United Kingdom. Channel Four News’ article of March 24th 2010 sums up the hype:

“As the election in the UK draws closer, all eyes are on our three major political parties - Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats - to see how they will harness the power of social media and the internet.” (Channel Four News Website, 24th March 2010.)

The Telegraph newspaper ran a similar piece on 6th April 2010 with the headline “Facebook, Twitter and other social media will have an unprecedented impact on the General Election campaign.” (Telegraph, 6th April 2010.)

The aim of this extended article is to explore how the three main parties did in fact use digital media tools during the 2010 General Election Campaign. It will highlight the climate in which the campaigns were conducted, emphasising changes in international usage of social media since the last General Election, ask how and why the three main political parties engaged with potential voters and evaluate critically where they did and did not use social media and digital tools to fully engage voters in the course of the General Election Campaigns.

The International Social Media ‘Climate’

The past 10 years have seen a dramatic increase in the uptake of social media. In fact, the term itself was seldom used even 10 years ago. The Web 2.0 'revolution' which is characterised by the shift from corporately controlled content to massively user-generated content on the Internet has had a dramatic effect on the way that politics and news in general is created and engaged with. There has been an undoubted shift from news controlled almost exclusively by professional reporters and traditional media networks, to widely available user-generated content and the proliferation of non-professional opinion. The individual has seemingly been empowered to affect the mainstream news ‘cycle’ and can now broadcast their own thoughts and ideas, often for free, nearly always without any kind of editorial supervision.

Perhaps the most widely broadcast and written about examples of social media use in political spheres have been the American Presidential Elections of 2004 and 2008. The 'Dean for America' presidential campaign was the first fully to embrace internet campaigning and use social media tools to allow the public to engage with their campaign. Through the use of their own website, 'www.deanforamerica.com' the campaign encouraged online engagement and donations, as well as creating sites such as 'dean.tv' where they posted videos from the campaign and encouraged supporters to post their own videos and engage with the 'community', whilst using all these methods to create new supporters and activists 'on the ground' (This was before YouTube existed). Joe Trippi, the campaign manager, reflects on the campaign at its end:

"Now, here it is at the end of 2003 and we're actually on top, ahead in the polls, raking in more than $50 million, $15.8 million in this fund-raising quarter alone - a record - most of it from small donations of $100 or less. And whose fundraising records are we beating? Our own! From the quarter before." (Joe Trippi, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, 2004.)

The small donations had largely come from supporters on the internet giving what they could afford. The campaign did much to galvanise support from those who could not afford the £2500 giving limits that exist in the US Presidential Races. This was in stark contrast to their Republican opponents who largely received their money through events that were designed to attract the donations of large amounts, often at the limit for each individual.

The ‘Dean for America’ campaign only existed during the Democratic Primary stage of the Election. Governor Dean was eliminated from the race and John Kerry went on challenge George W. Bush in the Presidential Election, but the ‘seed had been sown’ and the 2008 Presidential race built upon the successes seen in the use of the Internet in the 2004 race, particularly on the Democratic side.

David Plouffe, campaign manager on the Obama for America campaign put it like this:
"So many people are living their lives through technology, how can we expect their interaction with politics to be the one exception?" (David Plouffe, The Audacity to Win 2009.)

The nature of the ‘Obama for America’ campaign lent itself to the organising potential of the internet and social networks, where events can be advertised and talked about and friends can easily recommend candidates to others within their networks. The Obama campaign strategy made use of large organisations ‘on the ground’, consisting largely of volunteers: local people talking to local people. The internet enabled early supporters of Obama to engage with the campaign:

“...our grassroots supporters had already been organizing on their own through our social networking site, mybarackobama.com or MyBO. It made easier our decision to send a modest amount of staff into these states- they would not have to start from scratch with only a few assets to call in.” (David Plouffe, 2009.)

The campaign organisation also made use of and attracted huge crowds to rally events which could be advertised and registered for online. The online portion of the campaign had direct relevance to the operations of the Obama campaign across the states that were fiercely contested during the election.

The Obama Campaign broke the Democratic Primary records of the ‘Dean for America’ campaign in terms of fundraising and also engaged large demographics that had either never voted before or were independent voters. Plouffe sums up how important the internet was to the campaign:

“Technology played a key role in our success. Reaching an audience involves more than just figuring out who your audience is; it also means knowing how to find them. Part of the reason our campaign was so successful is that we were able to identify early that many of the people who we wanted to reach were spending more of their time on the Internet. We realized that a smart, and large, Internet presence was the best way to provide people with the opportunity and the tools to get involved in the campaign...We met people where they lived, instead of forcing them to deviate from their habits or lifestyle to seek us out.” (David Plouffe, 2009.)