General election 2010: Please stop talking about old vs. new media
I’ve been reading loads of blogs about the election, all scrutinizing the marketing campaigns of the leading parties (most of which has been pretty unoriginal and unexciting I hasten to add). The big debate so far: is this a new media or old media election? See here for a recent example.
After the 2008 U.S. election people predicted that this one would be led from the bottom up, online and over social networks. But then when they announced that we would be getting the leaders debates on TV, the emphasis shifted to the power of television and how historically this has been an indication of the winning party.
The truth is this is the same old hackneyed debate that has been going on for some years but applied in new context. To discuss which is the most effective is entirely missing the point. Where people attribute the rise of the Lib Dems in the opinion polls to the TV debate, they are blinded by the fact that this was a TV first and missing what was going on online at the same time. Let’s not forget that this was also a first for Twitter which recorded a record number of tweets.
Moreover, people weren’t just tweeting from their phone or PC away from the television, they were watching the debate at the same time. Following the excitement of the event and over the course of the next couple of days, thousands of people joined the group “We got Rage Against the Machine to #1, we can get the Lib Dems into office!” on Facebook, fuelling the poll rise even further. It seems completely clear to me that the two are not working in parallel universes of old and new media. Where TV works to raise the profile and awareness of a cause, online is effective at generating discussion, intensifying buzz and cementing opinions.