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UK elections of recent vintage have been fought largely through terrestrial media. Tony Blair won his first election with the backing of Rupert Murdoch, and has continued in power with the support of the same media. The Murdoch press had earlier played a significant part in swinging the 1992 election away from Neil Kinnock, with the famous ‘head in a light bulb’ front page in The Sun, next to the headline: ‘…Will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights’.

But those days of simple powerful mass market communications are gone. Politicians the world over are constantly lamenting the lack of interest shown by the electorate in general and younger voters in particular in the political process. What’s more most of them don’t read newspapers and spend less and less time in front of the TV. So all of a sudden the broadcast tradition of political campaigning where the politician uses the media to send out consistent one way messages has come into question. No-one is listening any more! (see Danah Boyd’s essay on politics and social networking.

So where have all the potential voters gone? The simple answer is that many of them – particularly the younger ones - are going online. They are spending more and more time on social networking sites like My Space and Facebook, and these channels are rapidly becoming politicised – for example MySpace already has 7,400 discussion groups related to politics. But Facebook, with its mainly educated, graduate and professional audience, is the one that politicians really want to court. Chris Kelly, Facebook’s V-P believes the site created a spike in the youth turn-out for US mid-term elections. 24% of those aged 18 to 29 voted in 2006, the highest in 20 years.

So what is going on politically in these emerging channels, and how will they influence the future shape of the political process?

The Obama girl phenomenon
As usual, to track the next wave of online developments, we need to look first to the States, and to a burgeoning political bandwagon, epitomised by the much debated ‘Obama girl’ music video. This was shot in just 6 hours in New York City and features shapely model Amber Lee Ettinger lip-synching her heart out about her undying affection for Democratic Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, in a series of skimpy branded outfits (available from online retailer Urban Pueblo).

The video is viewable at BarelyPolitical.com - a newly launched independent satirical website, with aspirations to be the online version of Saturday Night Live, as well as on YouTube. It received 1million hits in just four days, and then got picked up by most of the US broadcast media.  The first video was quickly followed by a clever sequel: Obama girl takes on Republican rival Giuliani girl, in a dance/ music face-off, with echoes of West Side Story. It’s also doing the viral rounds right now.

An example of how user generated content can be used for negative impact involves Hillary Clinton in the ‘Vote Different’ You Tube ad. This was created by politically minded computer nerd Phil de Vellis. It features Hillary as Big Brother in an updated version of Ridley Scott’s Orwell inspired Apple Macintosh ad. He claimed to be protesting at the way politicians are treating video ‘just like they treat TV’ He wanted to make the point that ‘you have to actually interact with your audience out there, a pretend conversation is not enough.’

On a more positive note, Hillary has turned to Yahoo Answers, the collaborative online Q&A experience, to look for ideas on how normal Americans would improve health care in the United States. In the first 24 hours she received over 24,000 responses.  If she can make it through that number of responses, this should give her a better index of what is really happening in healthcare than any telephone poll.

These and other examples mean that the 2008 US presidential race is rapidly becoming known as the ‘YouTube election’. The trend was confirmed in the recent YouTube/CNN televised debate amongst Democratic Presidential election candidates. Members of the public submitted 3,000 video questions via YouTube. From these 40 were chosen to be submitted to the panel – including tricky questions on lesbian marriage and healthcare/ cancer treatment.

Progress so far in the UK
On becoming Prime Minister, Gordon Brown has been quick to recognise the potential of the web and has challenged his colleagues to use social networking to reach out to these missing voters. The Cabinet Office has just published a report calling on UK government to engage more with grassroots web activism – The Power of Information

However, at the moment the government’s strategy remains largely theoretical, (although the Labour Party does have its own YouTube channel (mainly videos of set-piece speeches). But we can expect a lot more action over the coming months and years. David Milliband, the new Foreign Secretary, looks to be at the forefront of this thinking and has already indicated his enthusiasm for social media. He is building on earlier initiatives where the Foreign Office has successfully invited user generated comments on EU enlargement from visitors to the Britain in the EU section of the main FCO website.

The recent campaign for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party has started to embrace social networks as part of the selection process. Most of the leading candidates set up Facebook pages in an effort to collect ‘friends’. But the best connected still only amassed 230 fans vs 146,000 for Barack Obama. Alan Johnson was brave enough to launch his own Twitter posting, but there is no indication so far of what impact it had.

The younger generation Conservatives are also keen not to be left behind. Leader of the Opposition David Cameron now has his own video blog and George Osbourne (Tory Shadow Chancellor) openly endorsed the use of social networks in a speech called Politics and Media in the Internet Age, and Open Source Government to the Royal Academy of Arts.

How politicians need to change
So what do politicians need to do if they want to win their next election? Here are a few pointers for electoral success in the digital age…

• Have policies and ideas which appeal to younger audiences – there is a natural bias here towards left of centre/ idealistic policies, although niche pressure groups can also be very effective lobbyists online

• Hire people who understand the medium and the audience – harness ideas, creativity, energy and enthusiasm from your supporters as well as just looking for donations – Barack Obama has hired Chris Hughes, 23 year old co-founder of Face-book to run his online campaign. Stephen Coleman, Politics Professor at Leeds University, goes a stage further – ‘I think they need to find 15 or 16 year old advisers. Or maybe even 14. They need to be asking: ‘How are debates about issues occurring these days?’

• Take yourself less seriously – but beware looking ridiculous; don’t fake digital knowledge you don’t have and use other more clued-up supporters to interpret your message, if you don’t want to look like your dad trying to dance at the disco!

• Show self-awareness – admit when you have got it wrong – or others will do it for you. Google CEO George Schmidt is advising politicians to ‘self-out’ if they have engaged in indiscretions – advice recently taken by new Home Secretary Jacqui Smith (and other Cabinet members), who owned up to smoking marijuana, before announcing a crack down on drug taking.

• Accept you cannot control all messaging – Forget briefing journalists ‘off the record’ and beware opposition supporters with webcams or camera phones – cf damning footage of Virginia Senator George Allen calling a black cameraman a ‘macaca’ (racial slur); it was posted on YouTube and is widely thought to have cost him his seat.

• Redirect resources to deal with specific communities with real questions rather than one size fits all messaging; when you get there spend time engaging with real people – a few real responses to burning voter issues expressed online can achieve far more than generic responses via traditional broadcast media, which often sound superficial

• Entertain as well as inform – cf Obama girl and Barely Political; use social networking to create a PR buzz which can be amplified via conventional media (and don’t forget the T-shirts!)

What’s going to happen next?
Can social networking and online democracy play a decisive role in winning the next election? The short term answer is possibly, the long term answer is ‘definitely’.

In the next UK election social networking and user generated content will certainly play an interesting supporting role, but recent news reports suggest it may come too soon to dominate the political agenda (ie, the election could happen this year!). Also it seems unlikely that UK political parties will adapt quickly enough to take full advantage by then.

But I will confidently predict that four-five years from now it will be absolutely key to the political process in the UK. It will become as important as press and TV coverage and fundamental in connecting with all voters under 30. Watch out for a whole new category of political lobbyists and ghost writers specialising in online, and a dramatic expansion in the definition of political instinct!

 

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