I was reading an interesting article about the role of social media in the context of political campaigning in the lead up to the 2010 election. With the advent of social media, political parties – like businesses, and celebrities – are increasingly engaging with their audience using social media like Facebook and Twitter. In terms of coverage it appears that the Labor Party is streets ahead of the opposition, with a 77 to 23 per cent domination of the social media landscape in terms of volume of conversation (based on data from 25th July 2010). On the day that Julia Gillard joined Twitter and the day that the election was called, there was a huge spike in volume on Twitter. So clearly people are listening and excited about engaging with politicians and political discourse online.
Is this shift from political coverage in traditional media to digital media improving the way political parties interact with the public? Or just providing a simplified version of policy and debate to attract otherwise uninterested voters? In her article, Tiphereth Gloria argues that:
“There’s poor form overall from both Liberal and Labor. They’ve both set up social channels but use them to broadcast messages just like they do in traditional media channels, and they let the emergent community monitor itself.”
Looking at the numbers in the lead up to this election, it would appear that the big winner in terms of popularity is Twitter.
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