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!

More ABCs

A small step in my London PR career. Jim Bilton used half a line of the press release I sent him on CITY A.M. and the ABCs in his article in today’s Media Guardian. So that’s my first hit in a national then. Lord Bell will be quacking in his boots!! Joking apart, the important thing here is that it gives me some ready made analysis to refer to when thinking about the relative strength of the national media vis-à-vis politics.

What would be really useful would be to see some audited figures for use of national newspapers’ websites. I think politicians will be relishing the fragmentation of media and the decline of printed newspapers. But as far as I can see there's no way that people’s thirst for news is diminishing. So, are newspaper readers staying loyal to the titles they’ve always read but choosing not to buy the paper version? In fact, they’re probably reading a greater variety of news sources.

So, to get back to the question of how new media is influencing the relationship between media and politics, it seems to me that those media outlets that have the best online strategy will continue to succeed (once they work out how to make real money from the internet). Will the relationship change? Or will it just be the format?

The internet will always give politics a direct route to the public and this inevitably affects the relationship but in the end media brands still retain loyalty and people will still refer to them for a steer on what really lies behind what the politicians are saying.

Rather than getting better for the politicians, the arrival of online media with its immediacy could make things worse but I'll go in to that tomorrow as if I spend much longer at the computer i'll be in trouble (and rightly so!)

Uploading

I’ve spent most of today working on my dissertation questionnaire for politicians and journalists in Hackney. I should be working on my essay but as my first interview (with Councillor Shuja Shaik) is only just over a week away, I really had no option but to make some real progress on it.

With a little help from Clare, I think I’m almost there now and I have uploaded it on to this site just in case anyone out there who’s interested in politics and or Hackney wants to fill it in. It can be found under ‘Dissertation Questionnaire’ in the column on the right. Any comments or suggestions are welcome.

I’ve also finally got round to uploading a scan of my interview with Michael Vella, the Hull Kingston Rovers player, which The Sunday Times in Malta published on 25 March. Yes, I know I’m very efficient! You can have a look in the ‘Published Articles’ section also in the column on the right.