Member News
By Veronica Oakeshott - 4th March 2010
Sarah Brown’s use of Twitter has turned her into a "national political phenomenon", the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson said at an event this week on the impact of new media on the 2010 election.
The prime minister's wife tweets over ten times a day on anything from where to buy a cake for Haiti to the South African president’s state visit, and has over one million followers.
However the panel - which included representatives of political parties and new media companies - agreed that old-fashioned TV, not twitter or Facebook will make or break this election for the political parties.
Broadcasters in the UK have been calling for televised debates for 50 years - ever since they were first used in the USA - but this is the first year they will take place here.
The debates are to be tightly managed with rules forbidding the audience from clapping or the cameras from taking close up shots of the reaction on people’s faces in the audience as they listen.
With each debate scheduled to last an hour and a half, many attendees at the City University event felt viewers wouldn’t stay the course. But Nick Robinson predicted viewing figures of up to 10 million, almost as many as watched the final of Strictly Come Dancing.
However, many additional voters would watch clips of the debate online, for example on YouTube, said the panellists.
While the parties can control the structure of the TV debates, they won’t be able stop them being clipped after the initial broadcast for maximum political effect.
And any slip-ups will be repeated endlessly on computer screens around the country.
Online video clips would be important for the election more generally, said the panel. Gaffes by local candidates could be easily recorded on camera phones and picked up by the national news.
Matthew McGreggor, from Blue State Digital - the company that helped design Obama’s online campaign - said this would bring the 'air war' of national politics and the 'ground war' of local politics closer together.
But Rishi Saha, Head of New Media for the Conservatives warned the audience not to get over-excited about his own specialism, new media, reminding them that "Getting people out on the doorstep is still the most important thing."
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd