We hope we’re on to a (vote) winner with this week’s digital download as we take a look at how the social web will play a central role in the General Election.

All the main parties have seen how Barack Obama mobilised US voters through social media, integrating Facebook groups and Twitter alerts with mass media set piece broadcasts and milestone policy statements. His campaign successfully activated a groundswell of activists, bringing them together in each other’s homes and at local events, who in turn went on to get out the Democratic vote.  

Here, the social web will play a similar role if the parties can successfully integrate it into their campaigns, and use it to augment what is happening via the established mass media. And the audience they’re particularly hoping to engage this way is first- or second time voters: research from Lightspeed published this week suggests 46% of 18-21-year-olds and 41% of 22-25-year-olds are now more interested in the election because of increased political activity online.

Each of the three main parties have staffed up with social media insiders: according to the FT the Conservatives have nine digital specialists in-house, to Labour’s six, with an unspecified number of additional advisers and agencies. Expect these to be increasingly active both proactively and reactively as the campaign continues.

Social media is an opportunity to lend a running commentary on the 2010 campaign, with Twitter proving the channel of choice. John Prescott’s streetfighting style makes him a feisty Tweeter, while Alastair Campbell casts a weary comms guru’s eye over how the story is being delivered. Former Tory leader William Hague provides upbeat updates from his tour of the nation via his mobile phone and the Lib Dems’ Vince Cable dispenses pithy observations on the economy, attacking Labour and Tory alike.

Comedians too – who unsurprisingly have taken to Twitter like ducks to water – are finding the election a source of entertainment. The Thick of It’s Chris Addison has taken to acidly Tweeting along to the BBC 10 O’Clock News while Phill Jupitus has been sharing some Viz-style voting top tips.

Politico bloggers are enjoying the spotlight, with mainstream journalists closely following them for breaking or leftfield news – and it’s a win-win as the mass exposure that follows gives the blogger a hugely increased profile. Five sites that are worth watching over the next few weeks either as opinion-makers or as aggregators of party news and views:

• Iain Dale (Cons)        http://www.iaindale.blogspot.com/
• Labour List                  http://www.labourlist.org/
• Lib Dem blogs            http://www.libdemblogs.co.uk
• Labour Home             http://labourhome.org/
• Guido Fawkes           http://order-order.com/

Despite this, all the parties are still looking to control the message, and the Tories most notably have a direct-to-consumer brand in Webcameron  that’s been regularly updated over the last couple of years. We’ve already seen though that the social web becomes national news when people are subverting the top-down message, as with the multiple spoofs of the David Cameron posters via a dedicated website. (The politicians themselves aren’t above taking the same approach – this week’s Labour effort, portraying Cameron as  DCI Gene Hunt was rapidly respun in a positive light by Conservative Central Office.) Expect more web-to-news crossovers in the next few weeks, particularly if politicians use the web to create their own banana  skins – the unguarded Tweet or rash comment on a website will be this year’s Prescott Punch…

If you’re still undecided on who to choose, there’s a few new web tools to help you choose. Vote For Policies a pro-bono non-partisan tool, asks a series of questions relating to issues that matter to you to reveal which party you’re most aligned to. After 60,000 surveys it appears the UK is a nation of Greens…meanwhile the Vote Match tool from Telegraph.co.uk is now on Facebook’s UK Democracy group (a central focus for debate on the network) where voters click through 30 questions to see which party most closely echoes their views.

Finally, a Facebook fact: if the election was decided by Facebook friends the Tories would be romping to victory with 34,723 fans compared with Labour’s 14,971 and Lib Dems on 13,589… compare and contrast Kate Moss’s 276,493 and Lady Gaga’s 6 million…

(As ever, my vote of thanks goes to the Shiny team especially Matt, Lewis, Gill, Alex, Nina and Kate for contributing to this week’s update.)

Update: Twitter…banana skin…prospective Parliamentary candidate Stuart MacLennan has just  been sacked by Labour after some extraordinary Tweets (some about bananas funnily enough), Paul Waugh at the Standard has the story.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 9th, 2010 at 11:40 am by Helen Nowicka and is filed under Digital download, Election 2010, Facebook, Social Networking, Traditional Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.