Fishburn Hedges

04.03.2010

I attended an event this week which looked at the impact new media will have on the upcoming election.  It was chaired by Evan Davis, and there were surprisingly high levels of scepticism from the panel and most of the audience about just how important tools such as twitter, YouTube and Facebook will actually be.

Google’s DJ Collins did argue that the online world means that political slogans and posters campaigns can quickly backfire on parties – see the recent Tory posters for an example of this – and Matthew McGregor from Blue State Digital (who advised Obama’s campaign) stressed the role of online tools in developing, motivating and equipping activists.  Evan Davis pointedly added that political journalists will almost certainly be turning to twitter to get ‘the public’s reaction’ to the TV debates.

However, the tone started to turn when the impressive Rishi Saha (head of new media at CCHQ) correctly pointed out that most of the money Obama raised online went into spending on TV adverts.  It got even more stark when Nick Robinson, who dashed in between filming his 10 o’clock news report on the TV debates, was very dismissive about twitter: “I was the first UK political blogger, but twitter is full of self-important narcissistic tosh.”

The were audible gasps when he confessed that he’s given up on reading, let alone engaging with, the comments on his blog which he says are nearly always rants rather than worthwhile debate.

So is all the talk about new media just hype?  Not quite.  Robinson admitted that the power of the web to organise coalitions around single issues was immeasurable, and I came out thinking that even if twitter and Flip phones won’t win the election for anyone, they could certainly lose it.

Posted by Paul Raeburn