Will bloggers win the next Election?
Posted on February 19th, 2010 in Blogging, General Election | 7 Comments »
Much is made of the power of a blogger.
Some feel bloggers have undue influence on the political scene…others discount bloggers with contempt as a niche group of over opinionated zealous Party hacks with grandiose personal ambitions!
It is interesting to look at both sides of the story. Some bloggers do yield ‘power & influence’. No-one can doubt the ’power’ that Guido and Order-Order.com yields, with, at times, the ability to shape the news agenda. Effectively removing one of the PM’s most trusted and closest aides in Damien McBride was a real success for the bloggersphere. The story dominated ‘Fleet street’ for weeks to come. Guido certainly ups the paranoia factor in Westminster. When he says a news story is about to break….MP’s look over their shoulder and quake.
Iain Dale is another great example. Iain, in many ways does not shape the news agenda as much as a Guido exclusive does, but his grasp of PR and perceptive commentary on an issue for the media is nonetheless mightily impressive. Iain is a trusted authority, whether on NewsNight or Sky News and is a talisman for the blogging community on how to master gaining media coverage, (sometimes he does not get the credit he deserves for his achievements in moving blogging forward). Others now are starting to follow in his media shes, Shane Greer is a classic example and of course the up & coming Tory Bear himself.
However, not every blogger is a Guido or an Iain Dale.
Getting to the crux of the question, will bloggers win the next election? Nope is the clear answer if you are looking at their readership. Let’s be honest, blogs are generally read by ‘politico’s’, those in the Westminster village, eager party supporters. A blog reader will either be a supporter ie Conservative reading a Conservative blog, or a mischief maker, eg Labour supporters commenting on a Tory blog to torpedo any argument / have a little fun. However, this does not sway or change votes. Blog readers I would guess have 99% made up their mind on their voting intention, hence blogs generally don’t reach new readers and sway mass opinion. Hence blogs wont sway an election…..not by their current readership…..how can they make an effect then and can they impact an election campaign?
Key here is that a blog story can quickly be picked up in the media and escalate into a national news story, hence then reaching the ears of the wider electorate. Therefore the job of bloggers is to help find and highlight those issues which deserve national news coverage. Hence when Gordon Brown makes any claim in the forthcoming campaign, it will be the Tory bloggers, more so than the media, who will research the facts, check for previous policy quotes/soundbites and then publish that. From there, an Iain Dale, Guido, CCHQ escalates up. That is what will impact upon an election campaign…..what will be interesting in this forthcoming campaign is which bloggers, Left or Right, will generate stories that will reach national media coverage….and impact on the election campaign….maybe influence the result!
7 Responses
Totally agree with this.
Too many bloggers out there think they are gods gift to blogging, then you see they have 120 twitter followers and 80 facebook fans. That aint influence.
I think many blogs are a vehicle for the self indulgence of wannabe decision makers who will never get power, hence a blog is the closest they come to power!
Must say some I find very impressive on TV. I love iain Dale, a true quiet man of British politics who should be in the next Parliament). I also think Shane greer is superb.
I disagree on Tory bear. he comes across as a little boy trying to be a man. Less of him methinks!!!!
The Left are better organised at blogging. I dont include the dreadful Twitter Tsar Kerry McCarthy. She has zero credibility and less than zero influence.
Agree: bloggers won’t win the election, but they’ll help neutralise the sinister effect that the Suns, Mirrors etc used to have on elections.
Neither bloggers nor blogging will make any notable difference to the result of the next election.
However this does not in any way mean that the internet in general or blogging in particular is not having an ever more potent effect on the population at large.
For the first time the ordinary people have a voice, but far more importantly that voice is being heard by the same types of people.
For the first time in our history the ordinary person is finding that the MSM is not public opinion, and public opinion is not the MSM. They can see that the majority think very much as they do. They see the same things, and generally react in the same way. That way often being completely opposite to the media invented stereo typical Labour,Liberal or Conservative voter. We see the same things, and react in the same ways. Our conclusions may differ, but not half as much as we have been told they do.
We see for the first time that party politics is simply a method of dividing and ruling the public. This has had a very important impact on how the once party politically divided now see their own parties. Unthinking trust has all but evaporated in party politics and the media that has long since dishonestly sustained and perpetuated it.
Now this would not matter so much if those who use political blogging sites either never talked to anyone else, or where not generally involved in active politics. However a disproportionate amount of them very much are, or used to be so. The word gets around, and then gets around some more.
I dont doubt that if it where not for the internet Cameron would have an even bigger lead then he currently does, simply because now we can progressively more see that only a moron or someone missing several important senses would now trust the word of any politicians or their political parties as far as they can spit the lot of them.
The other “Sally” makes an interesting point. I think “she” has it slightly wrong however. What most people want is to have their opinions heard and noted – whether or not people choose to agree with them. In any event, what IS “power”? There are about seven or eight different types of power and legislative or authoritative power is only one of those types. Personal power is something which anyone can choose to develop (although the skills for doing so need to be learned) and that power can be used for good or ill. An example of power used for ill would be a blogger who went around impersonating others, particularly those whom they might want to discredit.
Power used for good would be to merely pass one’s thoughts around and allow others to take or leave as much as they wished of them….