The apparent refusal of Prime Minster Gordon Brown to discuss his biscuit preferences, or whether or not he “dunked” in his tea, was one of the biggest items of news to emerge from a live Web chat that the prime minister recently held with female voters.
Welcome to the world of Mumsnet, a social networking site for 800,000 British women, which is increasingly becoming a key battleground in the upcoming U.K. general election.
So much so, in fact, that the May election has already been described by the chattering classes as a ’mumsnet election.’
“Mumsnet is totemic of the modern mothers who will be the key political battleground at the election,” Deborah Mattinson, a pollster for Brown, told the Times newspaper in a recent interview.
However, Brown’s Web chat is merely the tip of the iceberg in terms of politicians attempts to re-engage with a generation of politically disenchanted Internet addicts.
Barack Obama’s 2008 election campaign, which utilized highly targeted e-mail canvassing and new media, has been held up by Labor, Conservative, and Liberal strategists as the ideal model of how best to engage with modern voters.
Aside from adverts on Mumsnet and Facebook, politicians are also using viral campaigns to pour scorn on the opposition. The Liberal Democrat spoof Web site, Labservative.com, has circulated satirical advertisements lambasting the front-running Labor and Conservative parties for being practically identical.
However, the fact that the cynical and mocking adverts have gained popularity after being circulated by Liberal activists on Facebook, speaks of a wider issue.
A large number of voters have become increasingly disillusioned with politics following one of the country’s worst political scandals last year—where scores of politicians were found to have been claiming thousands of pounds in parliamentary expenses for frivolous purchases.
In a bid to overcome prejudices against politicians, parties are increasingly exploiting ‘word-of-mouth’ campaigning through social media such as Facebook.
Even in online advertising, parties are using new means to target the message to particular interest groups. The Conservatives are currently planning a multilevel advertising campaign on the U.K. dating site Match.com, after a staff member discovered that users post personal details such as personal income on their profiles.
Twitter too, has become an important tool for communication. After the fallout from cookie-gate for instance, Gordon Brown used his Twitter account to tell anyone who was interested that he preferred chocolate biscuits.
But how have voters responded to the use of social media by politicians? A recent survey for New Media Age found that 46 percent of 18 to 21-year-olds were more interested in this year’s election as a result of the increased political campaigning through social networks like Facebook.
In addition, some 60 percent of 18 to 25-year-olds are likely to think favorably of parties that use these channels for communication.
In a bid to harness the interest in campaigning through social networks, Facebook has launched a subsite called ‘Democracy U.K.,’ which so far has attracted well over 36,000 fans.
However, as an interesting caveat, just 5 percent of respondents in the survey trust the statements politicians make through Facebook; just 1 percent reported, trusting promises that politicians make through Twitter.
Part of the reason for the skepticism, is that the relaxed social standards of networks can allow individuals to make sometimes glib comments, which they could not make in televised debates.
Indeed, the Labor candidate Stuart MacLennan became the first casualty of Twitter after he was sacked for making jokes about slavery on his profile, as well as referring to pensioners as “coffin dodgers.”
Separate polls have found that most voters expect to base their political decisions on information that comes from televised debates rather than from e-mail or Facebook.
In the eyes of some academics, the role of the Internet has been overplayed. The majority of voters are still more likely to be canvassed by local politicians in traditional ways, rather than through the Internet.
In a recent survey of its members, the Conservative Party found that 89 percent had received material through the mailbox, compared to 18 percent by e-mail.
Indeed, professor Philip Cowley, who teaches politics at Nottingham University, believes that the novelty of Internet campaigning has skewed the perception of its importance.
“There is an inverse relationship between the importance of any election campaign technique and the amount of media coverage devoted to it,” he wrote in a recent blog posting.
