The General Election is unlikely to be dominated by social media, as it was in the 2008 American presidential election. It will, however, be the first in this country to be influenced by its presence.
One only has point to Barack Obama’s success to see the benefits of using social media as a grassroots support tool. While millions of dollars were raised and on-the-ground activists united behind Obama, I did not detect much political discourse permeating through the official channels of his social media platforms.
Arguably, the opposite is the case in the UK – little political online activity in this country is aimed at recruitment and fundraising. There are, however, a number of politicians and commentators who seek to communicate with voters and influence the political agenda through social media – @kerrymp, @torybear, and @campbellclaret, to name just three.
Indeed, both the major party leaders, David Cameron and Gordon Brown, have sought to harness social media with their own viral video efforts – Webcameron and the Number 10 YouTube channel – with debatable degrees of success.
It’s fair to say that politics and social media in the UK is still the preserve of a comparatively small group of people either inside the Westminster bubble itself, or those with a strong interest in what’s going on in the corridors of power.
However, discourse within that small group is having an impact on a wider scale – and much of that conversation is generated through social media. For example, many people will have seen the numerous parodies of the David Cameron ‘We can’t go on like this’ Tory posters generated by @mydavidcameron and documented in the wider press.
Even at this early stage of electioneering, political capital has been gained and lost by the major parties’ presence on social media and other users’ reactions to the parties.
This is only likely to intensify as the number of people interacting with politics via the Internet increases. Moving forward, social media avenues such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube will be vital to engaging with the electorate as a whole and in particular youth voters, a highly apathetic generation, according to a Guardian article.
So while we probably won’t see Gordon and David ditching their despatch boxes any time soon, it’s certainly worth noting that their stance and success are going to be increasingly influenced by online activity, starting with this year’s election.
