What will be the impact of the internet on the general election?
This is a question which is often asked of those of us in the blogosphere - and it is addressed by Andrew Rawnsley in his column in The Observer this morning.
He is quick to assert that whilst the internet will not change the fundamental nature of why people choose to vote for a particular party, it will very much change the way in which the election is fought:
"This election will still be decided by arguments about issues, values and character. The internet does not replace their importance. What it provides, to politicians clever enough to exploit them, are new devices for shaping the argument, mobilising supporters and communicating with the electorate. And it reshapes the terrain on which the struggle is waged."
All very true: just yesterday, for example, the Conservatives launched cash-gordon.com, a Facebook-based campaign to highlight the reliance of Labour on the cash from Unite. And earlier in the week, I highlighted the iPhone app promoting Shaun Bailey's campaign in Hammersmith.
But it is about more than just how politicians and parties communicate messages to the electorate. It is about how the blogosphere has empowered masses of people wanting to challenge the agendas being pushed and the claims being made. Rawnsley refers to the "disruptive force of fact-checkers, claim-debunkers, story-breakers, rumour-mongers and cyber-satirists" in the blogosphere - and yesterday provided a perfect example of how a false claim about a senior politician from a partisan blogger can swiftly be scotched.
Moreover, in elections in the analogue age, each party would try each morning to dictate the agenda for the day with a morning press conference dedicated to a specific subject - but those days are long gone. With 24-rolling news channels, print journalists filing to the web throughout the day and indeed that aforementioned army of bloggers, the pace of the news cycle has become ever more rapid. There will be two kinds of politicians fighting an e-election, asserts Rawnsley: "the quick and the dead".
Jonathan Isaby
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