A presenter on the BBC recently opened a piece about new media and the general election by saying: “President Obama used Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to ride to victory in the US presidential election.” New media campaigning is certainly getting more news coverage – but, as with this BBC presenter, too often the wrong lessons are drawn.
The Obama campaign, for which my company, Blue State Digital, provided technology, was groundbreaking in many ways – an email list of 13 million people, $500 million raised online from three million donors, countless doors knocked on and telephone calls made by hundreds of thousands of volunteers mobilised online.
But that side of the story is too often ignored in favour of “bright shiny objects” such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. These are useful tools, but not ends in themselves. Too often, pundits are blinded by tactics and ignore strategy. In the current election campaign, journalists tend to focus on three phenomena.
First, this is a “gotcha” election. Candidates will say the wrong thing online or be caught by new technology saying it offline and social networks will help to spread the word faster than ever before to a grateful traditional media.
Second, politicians can now speak directly to constituents. Blogs, twitterfeeds and good online video can serve as a direct conduit between candidates and voters. Only small numbers will engage, but even 100 viewings on YouTube is more than the audience at many public meetings.
Third, bloggers and, increasingly, twitterers will affect what journalists write and how they write it. Spin-doctors no longer need brief on their mobile phones outside Westminster’s Red Lion pub – they can send a direct message from inside.
But this impact will be limited. Voters care less how they receive a message and much more about what that message is. New technology is less useful as a means to move beyond traditional grassroots organisation as one to make it easier and better.
Barack Obama’s campaign was so successful because it took its lead from the candidate. As a community organiser, Obama learned to work with people and empower them. The real lesson of Obama’s use of the internet is not that you can tweet or go on YouTube, but that you can organise – by engaging people and turning them into advocates for a cause. It is not technology that wins elections, it is people. And new media allows campaigns, candidates and causes to organise people like never before.
All elections are different, but core elements remain the same: the need for money and mobilisation. Further, while the internet has changed the economics of campaigning, it has not changed the fundamentals. Political parties have always invested in high-touch, high-value fundraising. But the economics of email make it viable for you to spend just as much time cultivating the donor who donates £5 as the donor who donates £5,000. This changes the relationship between the parties and their members and supporters – now almost everyone can afford to be a donor.
Take the fantastic anti-fascist campaign Hope not Hate, with which BSD is proud to work. Starting with a handful of staff and an email list of 6,000 people, Hope not Hate used compelling and timely email campaigns to encourage people to take action against the British National Party – from letter-writing campaigns to stop planned far-right fundraising events, to pressuring advertising firms to drop BNP adverts, or raising funds to publish more and better anti-BNP leaflets. They also used their activity to attract new supporters – and now have a list of 140,000.
The fact that an organisation with just a handful of staff was able to distribute three million pieces of anti-BNP publicity in four weeks, using just the enthusiasm of supporters and some simple new media tools to organise it, speaks for itself. This happened because Hope not Hate invested in a strategy to build, cultivate and empower its supporters. It happened by offering leadership – and giving supporters the chance to lead the campaign themselves.
Hope not Hate’s efforts showed the potential for using new online tools to support traditional campaigning methods.
They are organising tools – and that is important. However, the best technology in the world doesn’t create a great campaign. In this country, many of the advantages of opposition have been squandered by the Conservatives, who have focused too much on presentation and talking to themselves on blogs. Labour’s online tools are clunkier, but are being used for campaigning and organising by enthusiastic supporters.
This campaign matters because the election result is likely to be close. The last time we had a truly competitive general election, the internet was in its infancy. This election is seeing the first use of the internet as a tool to organise and win votes for a more progressive Britain – and give every Labour supporter a role to play. l
