reportage

Twitter = Trouble

Yes, it does. And as party central offices scramble around trying to realise how to use twitter it is the Tories who have been the first to deem it more trouble than it is worth for their PPCs.

This decision will not have been a hair trigger response, but will have come from a careful study of metrics and the cost/benefit analysis in terms of who the messages reach and whether or not those numbers can be achieved with less risk than traditional methods.

• 1. Do you really want to have a fight on the internet?

Campaigning for a political party gives users a purpose and they will take it upon themselves to stick their oar in. Many of those people you deem normal, friendly types on your list of Followers/Followed will quickly become shills for their party or ideology, and you’re going to have to listen to it. You respond and you’ve got a fight on your hands and everyone is watching you. Fights are not exclusively between two people, when it comes to politics, people love sticking their nose in. Most importantly of all, it draws attention.

Yes, it is going to happen regardless of your presence, but to be on the outside of a fight looking in is less bloody than being in it.

• 2. Risk Assessment

A quick and easy method is as follows. Take a piece of paper and write in one column the number of benefits from having twitter than you can think of, and in the other column write the potential problems. Assign those in the left column with a numerical value one quarter of those on the right. Benefits will not always win you votes but may point you towards them. The right column’s potential problems will almost certainly cost you votes if they come to fruition. The highest number is the one you go with, a higher score on the problem side and don’t even think about it. 

It’s not scientific but it makes you think twice about the glittering landscape of voter engagement that so many people are telling you about.

• 3. Cost/Benefit Analysis.

Campaigns, especially local, have a finite level of resources which must be split between paying staff and campaigning. The cost/benefit analysis of traditional campaigning vs e-campaigning is clear. Local people vote for local candidates, sending leaflets to constituents has a higher take up rate than emails so there is a case to be made that the internet is Fool’s Gold. In certain constituencies the money you spend on the staffer who spends a couple of hours a day maintaining a heavy web presence could be better spent on stuffing envelopes.

• 4. The Feeding Frenzy

Almost every Journalist working to a daily target of stories has a twitter account, those who don’t will undoubtedly have someone at a neighbouring desk who does. Hacks shouldn’t write to feed the beast, but they do, so any possibility of a story is followed up. Therein lies the problem, those up for election with a twitter account can now be relentlessly barraged by questions from Journos who aren’t getting a response from Press Officers, who, often seek to deny their own existence.

All of those questions will be in the public domain and if only one voter takes umbrage at the lack of answers, and they will, the cascading effect could be disastrous. An hour later an enterprising hack is writing a process story on how a twitter revolt is taking place when a PPC is refusing to answer questions on twitter. One tweet and you can move from playing offence to being on the defensive, and you can’t deny any of it.

Remember the wall scene from In The Loop? That constituent is on twitter now.

• 5. It’s a numbers game

Each constituency contains roughly 100,000 people. The problem here is that social relationships on the internet do not adhere to traditional geography. Users are spread out and take no notice of the distance between those they interact with. For many constituencies there will simply not be enough people on twitter that you can connect with in your area. Getting your message out is useless if you’re only being read by people who can’t vote for you.

You also run the risk of alienating voters in other constituencies. A defence of the Glasgow Airport Rail Link is going to piss off everyone outside Glasgow.

• 6. Marginals

This is where you reverse traditional thinking. Every votes counts, every single one of them. You will have an army of young netizens clued up on social networking and twitter pulling every imaginable trick to get voters to believe you are a direct descendant of Satan himself.

There is no other option but to fight fire with fire, to get involved and run your fight back on your own terms, rather than let your own supporters fight a pitched battle. For most candidates, twitter will only cost them votes.

• 7. Defamation

They’re going to say unimaginably horrible things about you on the internets, much worse than the press who you have a relationship with. If you sue for anything less than an allegation that you beat your own family your campaign is over. If you try to stop any kind of rumour with force, your campaign is over, for you will suddenly become a national poster boy for civil liberties groups.

• In conclusion

The Conservatives, flush with millions of unspent pounds, have made the careful deduction that they do not want to have a fight on the internet in an atmosphere where only their mistakes are likely to be picked up on. They have the money and base to physically deliver literature to voters and can knock on their doors. They can afford the robocalls and the cars to take voters to polls. Why pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel?

Twitter is an organisational tool that will allow party workers to communicate with each other on the ground and to spread their propaganda, dirty tricks and sound bites of the day. It is a curious mix of organisational tool, party rallying tool and voter denial system. It is not to mistaken for a happy place that allows politicians to canvass local support. 

In the run up to the election the noise will increase from all sides. In the atmosphere of a party rally the independents will go along with the chants but will be uncomfortable with just how fervently everyone believes the message without critical thought. It is one thing to say that you support a party, and quite another to go to the ballot box. 

Twitter is like all mediums, if you manage it well it will be beneficial. But if you attempt to use it in anything campaign related you open yourself up to the consequences of fighting on the internet, with a massive audience where the results are displayed in real time. 

Can twitter get you elected? No

Can you win with it? Maybe.

Can it cost you an election? Yes