Campaign ’08: A Turning Point For Digital Media is a slim volume by Kate Kaye, senior news editor at ClickZ, taking an in-depth look at the online advertising used in the 2008 Presidential contest for the primaries and then the general election.
Though the book touches on other aspects of internet campaigning, what makes it stand out from the crowd of competing volumes is its focus on advertising.
It starts with a reminder that there is only one John McCain: the McCain mocked in 2008 for not getting online campaigning is the same McCain who was feted in 2000 for getting online campaigning. Indeed, in many ways it was his 2000 campaign that put online political fundraising on the agenda in the US, just as Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign put online organising on the agenda.
Like many former Liberals of a certain vintage, I was wooed to the cause of electoral reform by the diminutive but formidable figure of Enid Lakeman, who even at an advanced age could spear opponents with her logic and conviction. I wish she were around today to add her appraisal of whether Gordon Brown’s referendum on AV is a step forwards or a step backwards in the long march to Fair Votes.
As virtually everyone seems to be talking about ‘fairness’ these days, surely it is time that LibDems seized the moment and trumpeted our belief in STV? Moreover, we should …
Like something you’ve read or watched on the internet? Sharing it with others is a good idea because:
1. It helps get the content to a wider audience. Whether it is to share the interest and enjoyment that you got from the piece, or whether it is for publicity purposes because you think it should be seen by more people, sharing the content via sources such as Digg or Facebook is a good way to achieve that.
2. Using one or more of these routes builds up a history for your own future use of what you’ve found and liked.
There are many reasons people have for posting comments on this site or others: because they’ve got something to add to the conversation, because they want to correct an error, because they like taking part in a debate, because they’ve got a question to ask or a myriad of other reasons.
For those seeking public office, judicious commenting on other people’s sites can also be rather like going to events and meetings in the area; it’s a way of getting to know people, getting known by them and discussing relevant issues. Reaching out to other people’s sites, particularly if they aren’t …
Councillors in Salford will be banned from using Twitter in meetings.
Gatherings of the full council at Salford’s town hall have been covered live by councillors via their micro-blogging profiles.
The debates have attracted hundreds of followers, but town hall bosses have now banned members from using the site during meetings.
I have to admit to being rather confused by this opposition to Twitter that’s creeping across a few Town Halls.
The argument is that councillors who are twittering can’t be paying attention, but how can you report on a meeting if you’re not paying attention to it?
The Hansard Society has a new report out which asks the public what they want out of politicians and the political system online.
Although many studies have looked at what politicians do or don’t do online, those looking at what the public actually wants are rather rarer. That makes this a particularly welcome report and is based on:
Two samples, the first is a national survey of individuals who are already online and the second a group of ‘digital leaders’; individuals with a strong interest in social media and politics. The first group is representative of digital Britain and the second group are the ‘early adopters’ of social media and digital technologies.
In many ways the report paints a positive picture, concluding that the country has:
An online population who are actively involved in civic and political life and who see the internet as beneficial for this.
However, this optimism should be tempered with the knowledge that other research has often seen people draw a distinction between being interested in issues and seeing the connection between them and voting, political parties or election results. Although the report has apparently very healthy figures for the proportion of people who have got engaged with the political system, this includes registering to vote – an important and welcome step, but one whose inclusion boosts the headline figures.
OK, if you’re going to really insist on thinking that Obama is the Holy Grail of Campaigning To Be Transplanted To The UK Because Our System Is Just Like Theirs, then here’s a useful statistic for you.
The Obama for President campaign raised around $500 million online.
Two-thirds of it came from people clicking a “donate now” link in an email.
The proportion of people giving and the sums people gave on average was low. But with an email list in the millions (10-13 million depending on whose figures you believe) and 1.3 billion email messages being sent out, that added up to …
The fast-moving story that sweeps round the world may catch the headlines, but the reality of most internet campaigning is very different: it’s the gradual, consistent and sustained effort that reaps the reward. Unless you’re very lucky, it’s a commitment to building up email lists, web visitors and so on over time which brings results.
2. Don’t expect people automatically to come to you
It’s easy to stick something online – a Facebook page, a blog, a simple website or whatever. But that won’t make people come to it. Just as there’s no point printing a …
We’ve covered before the campaign by Jo Swinson and others to change the antiquated Parliamentary rules which ban MPs (and in theory other people too) from placing footage from Parliament on YouTube.
Candidates who make extensive use of social media will receive a boost to their election campaigns, courtesy of Sky News’s plans to feature such material in a set of special constituency pages being created for the election.
Each constituency will have its own page and those pages will pull in feeds from candidates. Sky is asking for information on candidate blogs, Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts, In addition, Sky will also pull in photos from Flickr and films from YouTube if they are tagged with the names of both the constituency and the candidate. (Let’s hope Sky are remember to …
Alistair Carmichael – http://alistaircarmichael.wordpress.com – the MP for Orkney and Shetland is a very welcome addition to the ranks of blogging Lib Dem Parliamentarians.
Welcome to the concluding part of a two-part series about the real impact social media (or social networking) is having on politics in Britain. Last week I looked at the groups which face extinction; today it’s why pundits searching for the impact of social media on politics in 2010 are looking in the wrong place.
For the third general election in a row, people are lining up to debate whether or not this one will be the internet election; the election when politics radically changes in the face of the technological change that has already swept the world.
Clifford Singer of MyDavidCameron, the site which lets you produce spoofs of the Conservative billboard posters such as mine, has written an excellent piece about the lessons he draws from the site’s success.
His points about humour, the role of Twitter but the much greater importance of the concept, the ups and downs of letting people create their own content and why being jolly worthy isn’t enough are all very well made. They are also widely applicable to other internet campaigning. So go and read his post.
The January edition of Total Politics had the third in a series from me on councils and communicating. The first part, Yes, council websites can, looked at lessons from the Obama campaign for local council use of the internet. The second part, Adding some colour to council emails, looked at ways to make better use of email. Now it’s the turn of blogging.
“Councils should get blogging” – that was one of the headlines generated by a report from the local e-Democracy National e-Government project – back in February 2005.
Yet since then, although internet usage and tools have …
Although as I’ve said before I’m very sceptical of lists which rate users of Twitter by the number of followers they have, there is some merit in some of the more complex Twitter rating schemes. A good example of these is TweetLevel which, as you can see from the details on its site, includes factors such as how well people are using Twitter and how much other people on Twitter respond to them.
votewise.co.uk is an independent website which lists forthcoming by-elections and candidates. It geto a decent audience, making it well worth using – but not all by-election campaigns make use of it.
The site displays page view figures on the biography pages for each by-election candidate and the numbers (even allowing for being page views rather than absolute unique visitors) are generally impressive, with a candidate’s page typically viewed several hundred times. This traffic is driven from respectable and relevant sources, such as the Electoral Commission and search traffic from people hunting for by-election information.
Cast your world-weary, battle-hardened, politico and political eyes over this disgusting filth spewing from the keyboard of swivel-eyed maniacs working through the night on behalf of some disreputable campaign to send vile messes to hard working Tory PPCs:
Can you clarify that:
You accept that climate change is caused by human activity?
Do you support the target to achieve 15% renewable energy by 2020?
Do you support the EU imposing tougher regulation to combat climate change?
Hardly the worst questions a campaigner will receive.
In my brief time working in politics both as an elected representative myself and for MEPs and MPs, I have seen some …
Welcome to a two-part series about the real impact social media (or social networking) is having on politics in Britain. In part one I look at the groups which face extinction, whilst in part two I will look at why pundits searching for the impact of social media on politics in 2010 are looking in the wrong place.
What impact has the introduction of cheap colouring printing technology had on British politics? Almost none. Certainly many more leaflets are colour than used to be the case, more target letters contain colour inserts and a generation of amateur designers have had the …
Chris Wiggin – http://chriswiggin.blogspot.com (Strap line: I’m young. I live in York. I’m a Liberal Democrat. I run my own business. I finish too many sentences with exclamation marks!)
Philip Peake – http://upinforesthill.wordpress.com (Great example of how a local councillor can use a blog to campaign whilst also providing useful local information.)
That’s the question posed by the actions Lib Dem candidate for Bishop Auckland:
One of the contenders for the Bishop Auckland seat, sitting MP Helen Goodman, accused Liberal Democrat opponent Mark Wilkes of aggression after he bought the rights to use helengoodman.org.uk as a website address.
Mr Wilkes, a Durham county councillor, also bought two domain names relating to independent liberal Sam Zair and on Friday added one for Tory Barbara Harrison.
Mr Wilkes said he had not decided how to use the site names, and added: “We have bought four names. They cost next to nothing – two or three pounds a
Nigel Jackson (University of Plymouth) and Darren Lilleker (University of Bournemouth) have carried out a useful little piece of research into what prospective Parliamentary candidates get up to on Twitter.
Size of Twitter audience
Although size isn’t everything on Twitter, the number of followers a candidate can build up is relevant to the question of whether Twitter can be a useful medium for direct communication with voters (as opposed to indirect communication, i.e. reaching journalists and helpers on Twitter who then in turn reach the public).
This survey found PPCs with followers often numbering in the thousands which leaves open the possibility that some, at least, are reaching significant local audiences directly.
What sort of messages do PPCs send out?
Around 78% of PPCs use Twitter to send out messages discussing local issues and the same proportion also use it to promote their party, with these two groups of messages being the most popular.
Sharing information is also common: 69% promote their own campaigns but also 67% share non-news links, 53% share news stories and 35% provide local information directly in their tweets. That last figure suggest that, whatever the possibilities, many PPCs do not view Twitter as being useful to them for a direct local audience – or perhaps (very wrongly!) think a local audience is not interested in local information.
Personal touches are common with nearly 60% sending tweets about their personal life, just under half expressing personal preferences and 29% sending jokes.
Using Twitter to listen
Directly asking for views is fairly rare though, with less than one in ten asking for views on local or national issues. However, many PPCs are aware that by putting views or links on Twitter they are likely to get feedback, so the number of explicit requests for views understates the degree to which Twitter is used to solicit feedback.
The report also found that:
The number are following varies from 6 to 2,751. To give these figures some meaning we created a follows/following ratio, which compares the number of followers they have as opposed to the number they follow. Thirty six PPCs have a negative rating meaning that they follow more than follow them, so that for them Twitter seems largely about listening to the views of others. Ninety one have a follower/following ratio of 10 or under, suggesting that they use Twitter as a means of promoting their views, but do look at what others have to say. Only 2 have a higher ratio than this implying that for them Twitter is primarily a broadcast channel.
It’s all related
Number of followers, number of people being followed and frequency of tweets are all strongly correlated in the survey results. With the usual caveat about correlation not being the same as causation, it looks as if the more people use Twitter, the more they get out of it – which in turn of course encourages them in turn to use it more.
First up, there’s a report from the Hansard Society which has surveyed MPs and their use of the internet (“A study into how MPs use digital media to communicate with their constituents”):
There was no little schadenfreude, especially amongst LGBT folks, when news of Iris Robinson’s indiscretions broke last week.
Back in June 2008, in the same week as a particularly nasty homophobic attack, she declared that homosexuality was an abomination, and that homosexuals could – with help – be turned around. Stonewall voted her the UK Bigot of the Year 2008.
So the reaction to her fall from grace is hardly surprising – a woman who was only too happy to attack what she saw as the moral lapses of others turned out to have sizeable feet of clay herself – in …
In the run-up to Christmas, Lib Dem Voice ran a series of articles from bloggers giving advice on how to start a blog, what to write about, where to find readers and many more. All written from direct personal experience from a range of (very different!) bloggers, the pieces provide a handy guide to anyone who is thinking of starting a blog or is already blogging but wants to get more from their blog.
I’ve now collated the articles into one pdf booklet, including some updates to individual pieces. You can read the guide below or view and download it from Scribd (the download option is to the top left of the document window).
The Independent today asks “Could the next election finally provide a reason for the microblogging service?”
There are many reasons for Twitter, some better than others, but if today’s Independent article is anything to go by, the General Election won’t be one of them.
“It’s Twitter that will make this election unique.”, the Indy proclaims, before going on to show why that claim is almost certainly not true.
The paper lists the political twitterati, a mixture – it turns out – of established figures doing a bit of tweeting and political bloggers.
Here’s your starter for ten as we experiment with a new Saturday slot posing a view for debate:
Online discussion and interactivity works best when it is amongst people of common outlooks and shared assumptions, as that is what protects against it drowning in flames, drive-by verbal graffiti and point scoring rather than point development. But that means it works best when people are huddling together in communities of the like-minded. Such groups of like-minded don’t make for good political discussion or debate as they all agree on too much and don’t pay much attention to the occasional dissenting interloper.
It’s snowing. It’s cold. Much of Britain is housebound.
Here are some top tips to keep your constituency campaigning in the snow.
Telephone canvass!
Get your photos for next year’s Christmas card now!
Use time trapped indoors to review your plans. Have you ordered your ink, sourced your suppliers and got a name next to every action point?
How’s that to-do list looking?
Are you practicing Inbox Zero? What better time to start!
How snowy are your neighbours’ roofs? If some houses in your street / ward / constituency have the snow and ice melting faster than others, then it’s a clear indication they don’t
Each day this week I’m giving a tip related to computers and campaigning. The exact details of how you follow each tip will vary depending on your own situation, so if you’re not quite sure what to do by all means pop up a question in the comments.
Today’s tip: stop thinking that just sticking a web address on a leaflet is a good way to promote the local Liberal Democratwebsite.
Yup, you read that right. Certainly, leafleting can be a crucial tool for generating more traffic to Liberal Democrat websites. But simply sticking a web address somewhere in the masthead is …
Kira Collins Disappointed. The most obvious means of reducing energy bills is to remove VAT. Relatively straightforward to do and does not adversely impact on the attractive...
Nonconformistradical "As a party we are aware of the absolute disaster our country’s current benefits system has become, where so many sticking plasters have been added by well-me...
Tom Bailey I cannot believe this is a serious policy proposal. This is just amateur scribblings on the back of a fag packet....
Katharine Pindar Competence and hard work do certainly win us council seats, I suppose, David Evans, and I would suggest 'stability' and 'reliability' as partner virtues we can ...
paul barker @David Evans
In London we ran on Competence & Hard Work, we made gains in places where we already ran The Council, everywhere else we went backward or went...
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The shame of Liverpool Labour councillors taking their allowances but not turning up to do the work
Should Labour reconsider the Brexit red lines?
Raising a flap about letterboxes
Arriving at one of East Finchley's ghost platforms
Restrained
Chase Park fair photos
Kira Collins 
Nonconformistradical 
Tom Bailey 
Katharine Pindar 
paul barker 