Ryan MacMillan

Cold pizza for breakfast.  Turning right at a red traffic light.  Undertaking on a motorway.  Hip hop. Being friendly to people you don’t know.  There are many things that work well in America but not in Britain.  But why is the fusion of politics and social media among them? 

Dan has been lamenting the level of digital creativity and, well, competence in UK politics - and with some justification.  In this two-part post, I wanted to look at another puzzler: why is Britain behind the States in terms of online political engagement when its technology infrastructure is comparable to that of the US (think broadband penetration and 3G mobile phones), and the younger half of its electorate is at least as digitally active?

There’s no doubt that British politicians and their surrogates, interest groups and citizens have made some effort to garner support using viral videos, blogs and social networking sites; and there’s a temptation to blame the lack of success on their ineptitude.  This top-down view of politics and social media certainly tells at least half of the story.

 Back in 2003 Tony Blair launched a laudably big online conversation - called the Big Conversation, in fact - but it hasn’t been heard from since (it’s currently a Big HTTP 500 Internal Server Error).  We can assume that it wasn’t a success.

And on these hallowed pages we’ve recently reported on David Cameron’s determination to get with the kids by setting up sites on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and iVillage. 

Or, more accurately, we reported on the reporting of the Tory party leader’s latest social media move, puffing our cheeks and turning puce with incredulity that the BBC would mention in its lead paragraph that there’s no charge for being a “friend” of the Tory Party.

The sad fact, however, is that the initiative was the subject of a sincere news story (as opposed to an ironic lashing) because it was, in British political terms, news.  Ditto Webcameron, which I’m still not sure isn’t an ingenious, intricate spoof orchestrated by some social media genius at Labour Party HQ to bring down Gordon Brown’s archrival.

While Ron Paul, a Republican candidate who stands less chance than my spaniel of securing the party’s presidential nomination, is being bounced into running for office by a largely online, grassroots campaign that recruits activists, disseminates information and raises millions of dollars, an attempt by the Conservatives to exploit one of the world’s largest social networking sites for the first time is newsworthy because no political party in the UK has (arguably) tried anything comparable. 

Hillary launched her 2008 presidential campaign online via a shareable video, and her 3:00 AM ad appeared on every political website imaginable, generating hundreds of thousands of hits and almost as many spoofs. 

By contrast, David Cameron’s blog entries have one or two comments under them.  Boris Johnson’s blog leaves one wondering whether Boris knows that he actually has a blog.  It’s all written in the third person (”This morning, Boris stopped in Checkendon …”).

So we’ve established that, to date, British politicians have not invested (or, perhaps more pertinently, have not been able to invest) too much time or money monitoring what’s said online, talking to bloggers, and providing social networks with the media that can shape perceptions and generate digital momentum. 

The question then becomes: do they have to?  Or is the use of social media in UK political life doomed to failure for structural and historical reasons that have nothing to do the lame attempts we’ve seen so far?  For the answer to that, and more besides, stay tuned…

[Correction: the original version of this article contained a reference to a Gordon Brown blog that was, in fact, maintained by someone other than the current prime minister.  Once alerted by a keen-eyed reader, I actually read it properly and vowed never to be suckered by spoof blogs again.  The spoof is here, by the way, and it's moderately funny once you get past the first two paras.  The No. 10 website, for what it's worth, is YouTube-ready, and could perhaps be the subject of a detailed post in the future].