Campaign Emails: A Hung Parliament

When it came to content and design of the newsletters, the Lib Dems again came out on top, as “the most scannable and the only one truly designed for today’s time-pressed readers”. The Tories also did well to include highlighted keywords and stills from linked video clips to break up the text, but the tone and language was pitched slightly too high for the average reader. Worst of all, Labour’s newsletter was “one big wall of gray, undifferentiated text”.

While many of these details may seem minor, Neilsen estimates that the Internet influences around one to two percent of an election’s outcome. “In a close race (such as Bush vs. Kerry), good usability might move the needle enough to determine the winner,” he said. However, he acknowledges that “If Gordon Brown pulls a last-minute rabbit out of his hat or if David Cameron goofs in the last television debate, the outcome could easily be reversed … Old media rules in the end.”

When does new media work?

So if old media rules, what role can new media play in an election such as this? An interesting article by Steve Hewlett, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Media Show, describes his meeting with Thomas Gensemer, managing partner of Blue State Digital – a new media company that played a pivotal role in the Obama campaign.

According to Gensemer, rather than using the Internet to push their political message, the Democratic Party used it to organise the campaign. Forums were set up where supporters could engage in public debate, social networks were used to connect like-minded people, email communications were targeted and personalised using smart technology, and mobile applications sent out telephone numbers of party spokespeople.

It was all built around “notions of membership and loyalty… enabling affinity on the ground, giving people real things to do in their neighbourhoods,” said Gensemer. He argues that while the traditional one-to-many form of communication still plays an important role, dialogue and conversation are at least as important in the world of new media.

And here is where new media finds its niche: creating networks and connections between politicians and the voting public, providing a forum where policies can be discussed and dissected freely. This is were Joe Bloggs can give his opinion on the state of immigration as he sees it, and discuss his ideas with people who feel the same way – whether that is the old lady down the road, a university student at the other end of the country, a polish builder or Nick Clegg.

New politics for new media

But exploiting this medium requires a new kind of political strategy. Everyone knows that a funny email or tweet is far more likely to go viral than an earnest one, just as a clever, witty press release or TV ad is more likely to capture the imagination than a weighty sober one. A perfect example of this is the Lib Dems’ witty spoof site, Labservative.com, which offers a parody of a blended Labour/Conservative party, and has had almost 50,000 views on YouTube.

Politicians need to learn to harness the power of new media, and get to grips with it as a tool for intelligent, interactive communication. They must abandon their feeble attempts to “get down with the kids” on social networks and think outside the box, using the tools they understand in new and creative ways, and learning to communicate with the younger generation of voters without patronising them.