Will online campaigning make a difference?

It seems there is a received wisdom that the Internet played a crucial role in the 2008 US Presedential campaign - and everyone is asking much the same of every other country's election. In this vein, there is a fascinating article on the Channel 4 news site which asks whether online campaigning will be an important feature of the forthcoming General Election campaign. There are real advocates who proclaim that the Internet could fundamentally shift the style of campaigning. Toby Flux from Labour Matters says in the piece that hits, clicks and tweets really count and that 2010 will be the "first general election of the social network age" he, like Labour's Twitter Tsar, believes news stories which break online will dominate the campaign. Others are more circumspect, Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes suggest much of what happens online will be swamped by the deluge of coverage across mainstream media, and I guess their websites also which can steal the audience away from the parties.

It almost seems that Labour want it to make a difference, though perhaps this is dangerous unless they have an online strategy that is yet to be launched as the Conservatives are massively ahead in terms of the blogosphere and the sophistication of their homepage - not to mention the number of MPs using social networks or microblogs. While Kerry McCarthy may be right in saying that online tools can reach younger voters, she may also contradict herself when observing that too much online political communication is in-fighting. It can, as Fawkes says, mean that bloggers (MPs or not) are simple preaching to the already converted and not really encouraging anyone else to become involved.

The key thing seems to be Obama, everyone wants to emulate him and his success. The Conservatives have already tried to create an Obama-esque social network and many consider his model of campaigning to be something to emulate. This misses the point in a number of ways. Former Liberal Democrat communications manager Olly Grender argues in the piece that the campaign "has to have the charisma and hope and excitement of the Obama campaign to add magic dust and that is nothing to do with new media"; it was the man, his image and what he stood for that drew in the audience not his social network. One must precede the other! Also the campaign organisation was very much a grassroots operation that empowered activists, some of this work could be done online, so it worked, but you cannot contrive that and create an activist base (Shane Greer agrees, he just said so on BBC News 24) - perhaps the Conservatives will garner both the enthusiasm and the will to create an offline and online activist base that will push MyConservatives as an important tool - Perhaps! Labour have a less public network for supporters, perhaps avoiding the fanfares and brickbats such tools can bring you.

It seems the media are playing up the idea of an online because it is new, and it is in many ways as the advances in online technologies have facilitated a higher level of use to make it a way of reaching a lot of people. But you cannot guarantee an audience. Perhaps Iain Dale is right, confirming the Downes and Mui thesis that email is the killer application - if you have a big enough database you can reach a lot of people and mobilise them. Perhaps they can also be pulled to other online campaign tools and drawn into the campaign. The Conservatives are far more organised in using email strategically. I hear from them once a week, I signed up to Labour from three emails and have received nothing - either I am on a blacklist or they just don't want to talk to me, or they are not using their database very well (anyone from Labour know the answer?). Liberal Democrats are less frequent and the e-newsletter is less flashy, but they also seem to have grasped email.

Online campaigning needs a pull - an audience needs to be drawn to the sites of parties, their social networks and their Twitter feeds. Obama provided a pull unique to him it could be argued (I think it was unique to the time and mood); in the context of low trust in politicians generally; when the party leaders have been around for a while; when support is not unequivocal for either party and many may be voting for the least worst option, parties in the UK need a big pull factor if the Internet is going to be a vote winner either as a tool for activists or for voter engagement.

Is Brown really Britain's worst dressed man?

GQ magazine have published their best/worst dressed man list, something which is usually of little interest to someone like me (probably as I would fall into the latter category - before anyone else says it!). It is unclear exactly who all the panel of experts that determine the rankings are but they include fashion designers/gurus/experts. Interestingly Gordon Brown has come out as worst dressed, though he is in interesting company with Boris Johnson, Russell Brand and Peter Stringfellow, and only narrowly beats French President Nicolas Sarkozy into second place. David Cameron, in stark contrast, is eighth and the write up talks of him being Britain's next prime minister - which does make one wonder if the review is politically biased in some way.

The bigger question is though, is Brown really that badly dressed. How could this be given he must have a wealth of staff to advise him on presentation (though admittedly they have had little impact in a number of areas thus far). Is there a lingering perception of him as someone bad presented and badly dressed that overrides our reading of each individual appearance? Is there a bias against him regardless? It is interesting that he emerges bottom, especially when the story on the BBC news site is accompanied by a picture of him looking quite smart - or is that just me? The question is, is it just Gordon who never quite looks right, or does he actually dress badly?

Election, what election

Once again we are given indications that a General Election is due 'early', perhaps in March, as opposed to June 2010. Why is this on the agenda is a question? This benefits the Conservatives in two ways, firstly they want everyone to be thinking about a General Election. They need people to be making choices as early as possible and want to keep sustained pressure on public opinion and, of course, on Gordon Brown. But they might also want to try to re-live that moment a couple of years ago of the election that never was. If they can build up the expectation of an election, and again it fails to materialise, will it further impact on Brown's reputation? Of course we know Brown is waiting for his moment, and is working hard to improve his standing among the public - the first prime minister since Churchill to spend the night in a war zone for example - Cameron's problem is he has to wait and pressure is the only weapon an opposition has in effecting the date of an election.

What have birds and Maude the Cow got in common?

They both Twitter! No really, how successful this has been I do not know. Maude is the Anchor Butter mascot, and has been twittering for a while.

The function is purely brand awareness despite the fact that the tweets rarely mentions the brand it is a way of gaining attention and delivering audiences to the brand homepage. The outcome, they hope, is that next time one of the 1,329 followers, or perhaps friends made aware of the twittering cow, are at the spreads aisle of the supermarket Anchor is front of mind and that purchase maybe even helping that cow survive. The trick is to have the attractive anthropomorphic mascot to front the campaign - think Alexander Orlov who likes comparing his fellow Meerkats - perhaps Tory Bear can do the same in a political context.

You need cheerleaders

It is unknown what impact the blogosphere has. There is some academic discussion of it acting as an echo chamber for ideas; basically that the messages of a brand, politician, political party or journalist become repeated and circulated across weblogs. Thus it can amplify messages or, by amplifying the messages of one party, it can reduce the impact of opponents. While there are active Labour and Liberal Democrat bloggers, it is the Conservatives that have the most organised, most followed and most sophisticated support in the blogosphere. Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes have become pseudo political celebrities as well as reasonably respected commentators (more the former than the latter) and there are a number of others such as Dizzy and Tory Bear with a significant readership. These may well be significant players among those who follow online debates. Guido mainly now seems to attack Labour at every opportunity, this critique of a party election broadcast is a particularly good swipe at the Labour spin machine

I have only seen one Labour blogger doing the same, Recess Monkey (whose amusing response to the video, if not to the criticisms made, is below) in fact left wing bloggers seem to also take a critical stance a lot of the time.

So the Conservatives have a lot of cheerleaders online while Labour, it seems, are failing to make any breakthrough in this respect. This may be symptomatic of the party's standing; it may be a failure to mobilise supportive bloggers, it may be that this simply not done in Labour circles. If there is an impact, and cheerleaders are important in amplifying messages and getting messages across to new audiences then Labour seem to be seriously lacking here.

The power of the viral

The trick with viral campaigning is make it funny, make it something everyone understands and make it something everyone gets (in terms of a joke). While this may not find resonance with everyone, and you can criticise it as nothing more than a cheap joke, it is very quick turnaround for a political party and is nicely current.

Of course this is just the start of the deluge of photo shopped pictures that are going to be circulated by parties and their supporters over the next six months prior to an election so the joke will wear thin after a while; but as a one-off it may well get coverage across the Internet. And of course this is its only function, getting seen, understood and retained as a message; anything that derides Labour is doing the Conservatives a favour!

Online campaigning as collaborative diegesis

If your first thought is 'Huh' bear with me. I was at an interesting research seminar yesterday run here at Bournemouth by colleague Joe Flintham who was talking of the notion of a collaborative diegesis. Diegesis may sound a complex thing but it is something we are all familiar with, it is the world which is created by any narrative, that which involves us and we are transported to when we read a book, watch a film etc. For Joe, his work is on fiction and collaboration in stories using a range of media (see Hauntology for one of his experimental projects which invited people to add sounds while exploring a 'haunted' table with drawers). I was struck by the idea of a collaborative narrative which builds and develops a story and was thinking of its application beyond the world of fiction.

Here was my thought. Social Networking Sites are naturally collaborative, a profile page on Facebook, YouTube etc can be populated by the creator but also by visitors to that profile. Each contributing comment on a post, picture or video adds to the original item and so provides a further dimension that can be experienced by future visitors. Political profiles, be they fan pages, individual MP's pages or party video sites usually allow comments. The similarity with contributions to something like Hauntology is striking. Some are reflective on the original item; some tangential and related to the host, production values, spelling, whatever; some relate to the meta-narrative (big picture) such as a campaign or contest, values or a world view; they are each personal and had meaning at the time of their posting. Of course there is censorship of the contributions, and perhaps this results in a wholly supportive narrative, this is a necessary feature of oppositional politics. However is something like the contributions to the Post shown on the right, something which seems almost a unique feature of Obama's campaign and presidency in terms of the numbers contributing if nothing else, a collaborative diegesis? Is this creating a world constructed by a collaborative narrative which is enveloping Obama as the character at the centre? Is this narrative not only persuasive, in terms of the endorsements of Obama by the members of the Facebook community, but also transportational; does it conjure the image of a world in which Obama has a free hand, or the world he wants to create, and so why he should be supported. It was an idea inspired by Joe's talk and so all feedback and comments welcome.

Co-producing a campaign

There is perhaps nothing more persuasive than a message than comes from someone you feel to be similar to yourself. We are persuaded most often by our friends and loved ones, they have a profound impact upon our attitudes and behaviour on a daily basis; most of the time we are unaware of that impact. Many campaigns attempt to replicate the power of what, I guess, can be called peer pressure. The Conservative party wall of videos, the fan pages on Facebook, all attempt to get the public to endorse a party on the basis that people like them are already doing so.

Barack Obama is doing the same with the issue of Health Care Reform. The campaign ran a competition to make a video that would promote the campaign. The YouTube site claims there have been "nearly 1,000 submissions, 20 amazing finalists, and more than 3 million views" for the call. The have selected a winner: Eric Hurt (the video is below)

The winning video is very simple in its message. It links well to the theme of Organising for Amwerica by offering short future narratives from children on what would happen if they have an accident and need medical care. It is a message to get people to donate to the campaign, to lobby on behalf of the campaign, and so to put pressure on elected representatives to pass the reform bill. The power of this is the people who are backing the campaign, this one video has received 70,404 views and received 135 comments since it was posted eight hours ago; scanning the comments they are all positive about the campaign. The tactics of soliciting people's input and posting on a social network allows the supporting citizens to co-produce the campaign messages and make the camapign belong as much to the people as to Obama. Whether they represent a majority or not it gives the impression of a movement; whether there are any lessons that can be drawn from this and applied elsewhere is difficult to say. Obama has a unique approach to being President, if he wins this campaign he may well be seen to be the ultimate advocate of people power; if not he may be able to shrug this off as a brave attempt to back the people that was thwarted by vested interests on Capitol Hill. It seems that co-production is not just persuasive, but also offers a win-win zone for Obama and the people of the US.

Widget Campaigning

Widgets have become quite important in online campaigning. Widgets are simple little devices that allow brands to be promoted across their supporters web sites and various online presences. The problem with this strategy is motivating supporters, or in fact any web user, to want to place that widget on their site.

The Conservatives may have found a solution. The General Election Countdown (right) is part of a wider campaign, spearheaded by party chairman and de facto (if not in reality) face of their campaigns, Eric Pickles. He wants to ensure that members and supporters keep focus on the election and do not see it as a foregone conclusion whatever public opinion suggests. He is an interesting choice, his down-to-earth and amiable manner, greeting viewers of the latest video with 'Hello Chums' gives the impression of an ordinary guy; the serious message of the mountain the party have to climb to win delivered in a serious but friendly manner encouraging supporters to work for the party. The widget allows you to countdown to the election while also promoting the party slogan 'Now for Change'. The countdown itself is quite cool, well perhaps it is to political nerds like me anyway, time for Labour to find their own widget for supporters.

Politician Endorsement

Odd to see a politician being used in an advertisement as a positive endorser of a message. It seems the power of the 'Yes We Can' slogan, its symbolic meaning, coupled with Obama's reforms is striking a chord in the US and so is being used to back social messages. No idea why this was emailled to me but thought it was interesting enough to share.