With the general election looming we are seeing more questions being asked about how political parties will win over the younger voters, which experts believe could be the key to Downing Street. While most commentators acknowledge that social media is the way to reach this younger demographic, the last election saw only 44% of young people between 18-24 turn out to vote, despite significant use of social media by all the main parties. So what went wrong?
Social media was a massive success for Barack Obama, who in 2008 was dubbed the first social media president when he used social to engage young voters during his presidential campaign (this paid dividends during his re-election campaign in 2012 when he had twice the social audience and 20 times the engagement of competitor Mitt Romney). So with UK young adults spending 1.33 hours a day on social media (more than any other media channel) it seems logical that the political party which owns the social space will capture the hearts and minds of young voters, just like Obama.
However, to date, politics in the UK has had a rocky ride on social media. Last year #CameronMustGo was allegedly tweeted more than 100,000 times a day and MPs such as Emily Thornberry have found themselves out of a job after tweeting. So how might campaigners avoid these gaffes in the future and what might the key trends be?
Media partners
We’re looking at a future where instead of courting massive media companies such as News International, political parties will attempt to leverage the influence of those tech giants such as Facebook, Twitter and Google. Twitter and YouTube already attempted to host a UK democracy event last year with a live Q&A called Bite The Ballot, which party leaders such as Nigel Farage, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband took part in, but with viewing figures in the low thousands it might be suggested that this experiment fell flat. However, with Facebook’s potential ability to reach 9.2m young people with one promoted post the influence of these platforms can’t be ignored.
Lack of regulation
This is the first election when social has reached higher user penetration within the UK than traditional media, yet it still remains an unregulated medium for politicians. Nigel Farage has already predicted that this campaign will be the “dirtiest” in history and we could see a repeat of the Nike ASA incident from 2013 with the Electoral Commission writing new rules.
Snackable policies
Perhaps the key trend for political parties will be how social can make policies more accessible. The statistics show that young adults are unlikely to engage with long-form content on TV or in the papers, yet voraciously consume all types of video content online. So, political parties should be thinking how policies could be communicated using Vines, YouTube and potentially even Snapchat.
Big data
Just as important as how political parties use social media to get their message across and improve perception will be what methods they are employing within their command centres to monitor opinion and change the campaign trail in real-time (much like Obama did in 2012). However, this can prove disastrous when used in the wrong context as the Yes campaign found out during the Scottish referendum when a Twitter conversation falsely suggested they held the majority.
Rise of the renegade
Where politics is concerned, social media to date has largely been about renegade movements drumming up momentum to speak out against political policies or hijack campaigning. Such as the humorous hijacking of #WhyImVotingUKIP, “I’ll Vote Green If You Do’ a pledge site created by a Green party MP (so far 14,000 people have pledged) and a successful Change.org petition calling on TV networks to allow smaller parties into the televised debate. It wouldn’t be surprising to see a movement similar to #NoMakeUpSelfie and #JeSuisCharlie nearer to the polling date.
The opportunity to sway opinion and mobilise young supporters is definitely there to be taken advantage of. The question is how will politicians cope with being constantly under the microscope with gaffes having the potential to reach hundreds of thousands of people within minutes? And how will they manage the ebbs and flows of the build up to the election? Only time will tell.
Allan Blair is strategy director and Ned Hodge is social strategist at Tribal Worldwide, London
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