This Year's General Election and New Media

Last week, I took myself down to City University for the Panel Discussion on Social Media, and its likely impact on the forthcoming general election.

It was an interesting debate which you can watch by clicking on the link here which takes you to City University's website.

Following the election of Barack Obama in 2008, many media commentators focused on the President's use of Social Media as a way of raising funds and building national support.

I went to this debate to try and find out whether social media would really be changing the political debate, or whether it was just a load of hype which would fail to challenge the position of traditional media.

So what did we learn? Well Social Media will have an impact on this year's election but not to any great significance and won't overtake old media in the way that the election is experienced.

I think sometimes those of us in the media industry can get a false sense of how important some media tools are. Sometimes it's easy to forget that there are many people who aren't on Social networking sites like Facebook, or Twitter, they don't have their own blogs and don't post comments on other people's blogs.

Clearly the sort of people who will mostly be involved in online politics, are going to be political journalists, bloggers, activists, and those people who really follow politics closely. I have to say I'm not convinced that the election will convert more people into social networking political debates. If it does, the numbers will be small.

Another point that I found really interesting was made by Nick Robinson. He seemed fairly cynical about the impact social media would have, and was quite critical of the sort of comments he receives on his own BBC blog.

He was right when he said that there isn't always a debate or discussion on his blog, more a case of people shouting and arguing their opinions and criticizing other people's points of view. I sometimes think you have to have a certain ego about you to have you own blog or to leave comments. It's obvious that you have something to say, and want the world to know this.

There's nothing inherently wrong with this, but as Robinson seemed to point out, it doesn't always leave much room for people who just want to discuss the issues, or don't have fervent views one way or another, but who are looking for more clarity and explanations on what the issues mean for them.

I've experienced it myself, in that blogging forums can be aggressive and intimidating places, and I think politics only exaggerates this.

Despite all the talk of social media, I think it was generally agreed amongst most of the panel, and the audience which had a final vote that said, traditional media will still have the greater impact on the election.

The biggest reason for this will be the three televised leadership debates. These will quite clearly be the focal point of the election campaign. I do think though that's it's asking a lot for people to watch three 90 minute debates in their entirety.

Social media will come more into play in terms of people's reactions. I'd imagine that the most significant points of the debates will be uploaded on to sites like You Tube, and people will comment and debate the impact and performance of the leaders through the likes of Twitter and Facebook.

Matthew McGregor of Blue State Digital argued that social media is likely to have a greater impact on a local level, focusing on local candidates and local issues. I think he's probably right, but on a national level, traditional media's position of dominance is unlikely to be replaced by social media.