Amongst the build up and anticipation of Thursday’s election (and particularly from 10pm as Andrew Neil set sail on the BBC election barge) there was unsurprisingly a phenomenal volume of Twitter traffic. I kept half an eye on a live feed of #ge2010, which appeared to be constantly ticking over for most of the evening.
However, what really struck me wasn’t the inevitable story about “wow, social media is being used to discuss the election”, but the fact it started to slowly become incorporated into TV coverage. I say slowly because it was mentioned just a couple of times on the Beeb (I admit I didn’t watch the ITV coverage), but most notably it was being used as the source of the live story of voters being locked out of polling stations.
For me it felt that there was still an atmosphere of novelty factor in the studio, and that it was used simply to try and show the BBC as being on the cutting edge of reporting. Even so, how refreshing to see the focus of the story as not about the technology itself, and rather the realtime insight it was providing.
Did you tweet anything with #ge2010?
