There was much talk about weblogs in 2005, but did the online chatter swing many votes? Nigel Jackson explores the role of political blogging
General election campaigns are competitive events and parties seek to use tactics, techniques and technologies which they believe will give them an edge. In 1997 the Labour Party's use of the Excalibur supercomputer provided that technological edge. In 2001 videos, the web, SMS and email were all experimented with.
Following the US Presidential election campaign in 2004, where both candidates and experts' weblogs had played a role, some commentators predicted the blogosphere would be significant in the 2005 General Election.
Weblogs are, in effect, a personalised diary of the blogger's experiences, opinions and views. Essentially they can be divided into two types (though some do both). First, those that act as filters which extensively use hyperlinks to guide their readers to other interested sites. Such blogs effectively surf the web for interesting stories on behalf of their readers. Second, those that add their own comments and views.
Such blogs usually encourage comments to be posted in response to their thoughts. In this way blogs can assist the development of ideas. Blogs are rarely seen in isolation; usually they are part of a wider community of interest. Blogs therefore have both an individual and a collective impact.
Blogs are believed to have started in about 1997. Originally they had to be written by those who understood how to create a website, and so there were very few. However, there are now estimated to be some 10 million blogs worldwide. A number of factors have shaped this explosion, but perhaps the most important was the development of easy-to-use software in 1999. Blogs are often viewed as an alternative to the gatekeeper role of the traditional media. The blogosphere has tended to be dominated by individuals with something to say, but in recent years politicians, businesses and journalists have sought to muscle in.
There appear to be two different ideas at work in the discussion on blogs. The first links to traditional agenda setting theory. Research published in June 2005 by the Pew Internet & American Life Project suggested that blogs can influence the traditional media and so in consequence shape the news agenda.
One US example is frequently quoted as evidence of this. In September 2001 at the 100th birthday of Senator Strom Thurmond, the Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott appeared to make comments supporting Thurmond's segregationist stance in the 1948 US presidential election. Blogs initially created a storm of protest which was only later picked up by the traditional media.
The reason blogs were effective here was that they had equal access (via C-Span television) to the primary source of the story. The second idea suggests a different approach, namely that a blog's impact is direct. For example, a Harris Interactive survey of April 2005 of 2,630 American surfers found that 44% had read a political blog. In other words, individual citizens are bypassing the traditional media to find out direct from political commentators their views. It is within the context of this nascent debate that the use of blogs at the 2005 UK General Election must be viewed.
The first MP to set up a blog is widely believed to be Tom Watson MP in March 2003, after he made a New Year's resolution to spend half an hour a day online. The first widely acknowledged use of a blog during an election campaign was during the Hartlepool parliamentary by-election in November 2004. The Liberal Democrat candidate, Jody Dunn, provided a weblog, often written at the end of each day.
At the beginning of the campaign it provided some minor PR value as journalists wrote about it, and then Dunn made a comment about canvassing in one area of the constituency which was interpreted by some as criticising some of her electors. The resultant argument and press furore was generally believed to have undermined Dunn's chance of victory.
Therefore, in the run-up to the 2005 General Election, individual politicians' blogs could be viewed more as a media relations tool than a means of engaging in meaningful dialogue with constituents.
Dunn's negative experience clearly had an effect on other politicians as they considered their online campaigning in the run-up to the 2005 election. In December 2004 and January 2005 I interviewed 20 MPs and asked them whether they had considered a blog. The vast majority had, but had then fairly quickly rejected the idea. Whilst clearly the problems Dunn experienced struck a chord, it was not the only reason.
About the same number who pointed out the dangers of writing something when tired were also very concerned that a blog could be 'hijacked' by their opponents who could overwhelm it with their comments. One even pointed out that a blog "would be boring" for readers, and another suggested that blogs by volunteers of their perspective of a campaign might be more interesting. Blogs did not appear to have gained a significant foothold amongst MPs.
Another development in the run-up to the election campaign was the existence of proxy MP's blogs. Some bloggers were critical of how few MPs had blogs or that their websites lacked interactivity, and therefore created proxy websites for MPs. For example, a blogger created a blog for Tim Yeo. Although clearly not a supporter of Tim Yeo the bloggers' point was not so much political as to encourage the MP to take over the blog created in his name. Some 17 such proxy sites were created, and in September 2004 one of the MPs with a proxy site, Sandra Gidley, created her own blog.
The initial success the US Democratic primary candidate Howard Dean had in using his blog to raise substantial sums of money and mobilise supporters was probably the driving force behind the interest in blogs in 2005. However, although since Watson had launched his blog there had been a slight increase in the number of MPs providing a blog (though still in single figures), during the 2005 election campaign politicians' blogs were a rare novelty.
Tony Blair and John Prescott offered blogs, the Conservatives offered Sandra Howard, the leader's wife and the Liberal Democrats had a blog on the campaign battlebus written by a staff member. Journalists questioned whether some of these blogs were actually written by their authors. Blair's blog provided a number of small tidbits, but also offered him another avenue to repeat the key campaign messages.
Sandra Howard's blog gained a certain amount of press interest especially when she made a comment about which hairdresser one of the other party leaders' wives used. The parties also had support from blogs created by sympathisers such as Bloggers4Labour, Libdemwatch and Conservativeshome. But overall partisan blogs had a very minor effect.
Achieved very little
Nor did blogs seem to make much of an impact at a candidate level. Wainer Lusoli estimated that only 65 candidates had a weblog. Therefore, out of an estimated 3,521 candidates only 1.8 % had a blog. While most were of a daily diary nature, some such as Derek Wyatt took a slightly different approach in that he had a weekly round-up.
Most appear to have been fairly chatty about where they have been and what they did. It might have enabled them to repeat some of their key messages, and possibly to sow a seed of doubt about their opponents. Most did not appear to encourage feedback. But what actually did candidate blogs achieve?
Probably very little, with email a much more effective means for mobilising supporters, and how many floating voters read and then were persuaded by blogs? They may have provided a small PR story locally through their novelty value, but it is unlikely that during the campaign they had much impact. Rather, politicians' blogs, if they are to have an effect, may be of greater use outside the election campaign as a drip-drip communication tool.
One view of the blogosphere is that it might be creating a fifth estate challenging the dominance of traditional mass media. Certainly, as an event the election excited comment from a small band of bloggers such as Not Apathetic, Bloggerheads Election Comment and UK Election Blog 2005. However, a similar claim was made of websites in general for the 2001 General Election, but in fact it was the traditional media which made greatest use of the web then. The same is true of blogs in 2005.
How can an individual blogger compete with the blogging resources of a large organisation like the BBC? Nearly all news organisations provided weblogs, often several from their reporters around the campaign. It has been suggested that a Power Law exists within the blogosphere whereby only a few popular blogs attract a significant audience. For the 2005 general election power clearly lay with the traditional news organisation blogs, not the individual bloggers.
The UK experience of blogs in 2005 suggests largely that they were bloggocks. Blogs from political actors, commentators and the media provided an interesting backdrop, but not one which appears to have had a significant effect. No major news story during the campaign appears to have been created by blogs, and no seat appears to have been won by a candidates' blog.
I think I'd entirely agree that blogging had almost no effect on the election earlier this year. And that there are lots of good reasons why many politicians don't want to blog.
Blogs are no good as a short term election tool; you can't develop an audience quickly enough, you don't have time to devote to writing stuff, and any mistakes you make will be amplified by political opponents.
I think blogs can be quite good between elections as a way of talking to an interested audience about the decisions you're involved in and the policies you are pursuing, and that's what I'm trying to do.
Posted by: Andrew Brown | November 05, 2005 at 01:46 PM
November 20, 2005
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Posted by: ROBBINS Sce Research (1998) | November 20, 2005 at 10:47 PM
"Blogs are no good as a short term election tool; you can't develop an audience quickly enough, you don't have time to devote to writing stuff, and any mistakes you make will be amplified by political opponents."
It's depend on hard work, what you and what your blog...
Posted by: note | March 28, 2006 at 05:20 AM