New Media & Politics (Again!)

I left off yesterday talking about the immediacy with which new media can react to events increasing pressure on politicians. It seems to be a double edged sword. Politicians are subject to more scrutiny and more pressure but they are also far more likely to find an outlet to defend them. It seems this is what has been happening in the United States (see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/05/AR2006100501811.html) It also seems that this doesn’t necessarily improve debate but just makes politics more personal and negative.

I still think there is potential for new media from the point of view of the politician to engage more directly with the public though. A quick example is the Number 10 e-petition website. Now, I know it’s very difficult to draw any definite conclusions but I had a quick look at the first 200 out of 855 petitions that are open at the moment and as far as I could see there was only 1 about the environment and none about the NHS. Most seem to be about constitutional or local matters! I thought that was a bit strange.

Granted people who set up e-petitions on the Downing Street website are more likely to be interested in politics as a general subject than most people but surely if we are all so concerned about the NHS and the environment there would be a few more. Maybe new media can help politicians to understand what is really on the nation’s mind. Establishing that this is different from what the media wants to be on the national agenda will undoubtedly have an affect on the relationship between media and politics. This disparity between what people are really thinking and what the media say people are thinking has already been an issue in previous elections when matters such as the single currency were top of the media agenda but not of the electorates.

Being better able to perceive what is really going on in people’s minds could make politicians more responsive and therefore create more interest. This is what Philip Gould and Peter Mandelson did for Tony Blair through their focus groups in the mid-90s. The only problem there was that they tried to satisfy everyone.

New media can play an important role in keeping politicians informed of public opinion (at least the opinion of those who are online which causes problems!) but this information needs to be used as a tool to inform policy. New Labour’s mistake was to become a slave to that information rather than using it to lead the policy debate. Still, as far as the relationship between media and politics goes, I think that everything is still so uncertain. The only thing that seems certain is fragmentation. God know how we’re going to make sense of it all

PS – While at the Downing Street e-petition site I signed the petition set up by Steven Bainbridge ‘to halt plans for an elected House of Lords, keeping the current appointment system.’ The last thing we need are more elected politicians following party lines like sheep and not really debating issues. For all its faults at least the Lords don’t care so much about what their parties say, nor for that matter, about what is popular. This gives them a great opportunity to contribute constructively to developing sensible, sustainable legislation, something they should do more often!