When Iain Dale asked if Lib Dem Voice would once again co-sponsor Total Politics’ Best Blog Poll 2010, he also set me some homework: to write c.1,500 words on ‘the State of the LibDem blogosphere’ by the end of the month. As you will see from the date, my deadline is fast approaching.
I’ve got a few ideas of what I intend to write, but I’d greatly appreciate the assistence of Lib Dem Voice readers – as well as Lib Dem bloggers – to ensure my analysis is suitably rounded and informed. I’ve come up with seven questions I want to (try and) answer in my article:
- What have been the greatest successes of the Lib Dem blogosphere in the past year?
- What was the impact of the Lib Dem blogosphere in the general election campaign, and in the formation of the Coalition?
- What are we, collectively as bloggers, failing to achieve?
- How does the Lib Dem blogosphere compare with those of the Labour, Tories and other parties’?
- How helpful is blogging as a campaigning tool?
- Are there local examples of it making a real impact?
- What do you think the next year holds in store for the Lib Dem blogosphere?
How would you answer them? If you have a blog, please feel free to address them there, and leave a link to your article in the comments thread. If you don’t have a blog, please feel free to address them directly in the comments thread.
Much obliged …
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10 Comments
I shan’t blog myself about it, but in my opinion blogging makes no difference to votes at all. The local press got very excited when I was eleted in a local council by-election this year and seemed to attribute the big swing to my blog. Personally, I think it was the three big issues I thought were key to the election, the seven leaflets, two letters, the full canvass and great knock up operation.
Blogging makes us all famous in a backyards, but not beyond it.
I wouldn’t know. I’m very new to the world of Lib Dem blogs!
Nich would appear to be right. Outside that fluffy insulated geekworld where the Westminster Village meets Dr Who, real life carries on without paying a blind bit of difference to LibDem bloggers. I certainly can’t find any instances of where blogging has made any impact on voting intentions, much less on policy (witness the almost total apathy by the parliamentary party with respect to the Digital Economy Bill, again in itself something that wasn’t being talked about that much in The Real World).
Sure, blogs can be useful tools and great entertainment, and blogging is a medium by which I, and others, have found many worthwhile networking opportunities for both business and pleasure, but in an electoral context blogs are no substitute for proven traditional campaigning methods.
http://socialmedia.21st.cc/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/LocalPoliticsSocialMedia.pdf may be worth a read.
For what it’s worth, I can see the advantage in using a blog as a web-based Focus leaflet, sharing content between online and hardcopy, but I don’t see any point as a campaigner in blogging about anything you wouldn’t put in Focus, or in joining the “blogosphere” and blogging about other people’s blogs and the bloggers that blog about them until you disappear up your own blog 😉
Trying to quantify the value of blogging in local campaigning is to miss at least part of the point, if you ask me. Blogging facilitates an internal conversation which is useful for drawing in people who are already pretty strong supporters but maybe aren’t members or maybe aren’t involved in their local party. I should know, since this broadly applies to me – when I started blogging, I was nothing like as connected to the “meatspace” party as I am nowadays, and I probably wouldn’t have become so without the Lib Dem blogosphere. I probably wouldn’t have gone to conference for the first time. I probably wouldn’t have shown my face at the local party AGM where I got conscripted into the position of Data Officer. I probably wouldn’t have played the part I did in fighting the general election. And so on.
As far as the impact of the coalition, I think it’s made many of us fall a bit quiet (not that in my case you’d be able to tell!). We’re biding our time, I think, until we feel we have a better sense of how all this is going to work. The result is that the most vocal contributors right now seem to be the sceptics screaming blue murder like Linda and Nich.
Collective failures: I’m not sure we’re really having an internal conversation that is particularly representative of the wider party. This has always been a problem with the blogosphere: People with an axe to grind will find the energy to post more; for most others it’s tricky.
* What was the impact of the Lib Dem blogosphere in the general election campaign, and in the formation of the Coalition?
Reassuring people that we weren’t going to disappear into the Tory party.
* What are we, collectively as bloggers, failing to achieve?
Listening to anybody who isn’t a self-appointed member of the Top Table of bloggers. Using the opportunities of the internet to reach outside our comfort zone. And (you knew I was going to say this) any semblance of eradicating sexism.
* How does the Lib Dem blogosphere compare with those of the Labour, Tories and other parties’?
Proportionately bigger and more vibrant. Also more tolerant of bloggers from outside the party, IMHO.
* How helpful is blogging as a campaigning tool?
It’s useful in terms of national party networking and stuff like that; not really useful locally, at least not yet.
* Are there local examples of it making a real impact?
No. F’r’instance, my blog has recruited seven new members to the party, but none of them are geographically local to me.
* What do you think the next year holds in store for the Lib Dem blogosphere?
Hand-wringing.
I think it’s totally worth asking what impact blogging has on constituency / local authority election campaigns. There’s a lot of people out there claiming that blogging is the future of campaigning, that there’s no point delivering FOCUS when all your voters can find you on Facebook, and so on. These claims need substantiation.
During election campaigns, we want our campaigners and activists investing their time wisely to maximise their chances of winning elections, which means we need to ask serious questions, and hopefully come up with data, about the effectiveness of online campaigning.
I’ve outlined my personal opinion above, but I’d quite like to see some hard data on this. Perhaps put a different bit.ly-type link in a hardcopy Focus from your own blog, Twitter etc. and see which gets more hits – perhaps they will link to two copies of an online survey which asks for a postcode, so you can see how many responses you get from within your ward / constituency (as well as postal replies natch).
I will agree with Jennie and Andy that Lib Dem blogs can be a valuable way to understand the party’s internal structures, hierarchy and what being a Lib Dem member can involve – something where Cowley Street is failing massively at informing our members and making the most of our talents. This is where I think it’s a real shame that our President broke her electoral promise to keep people informed about goings-on at the top table through blogging – the few sparse entries we’ve had on LDV since her blog was taken down have provided little detail beyond the fact that a meeting happened.
The clearest examples of blogs helping win votes and/or elected representatives do their jobs are at the local level with councillors (though some MPs too, such as Lynne Featherstone).
They tend to be sites not much noticed outside their patch I think, because of their local focus.
What evidence do we have that these peoples’ blogs are helping them win votes, rather than the kind of candidate who will run a blog also being more dedicated to campaigning in general? I’m sure there are blogging candidates who win lots of votes, but that doesn’t imply a causal relationship 🙂
Dave: good point about the direction of causality, but there is supporting evidence in the form of traffic levels, click through rates from emails and so on.