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The Digital Election

Still observing the UK Election from the Web angle. J’accuse brings you another possible tool – direct Q&A with the leaders. Of course this entails meeting the leaders of the political parties and that means that they have to accept answering questions but just look at what the use of Youtube and Facebook combined manages to contribute to an election debate.

The Youtube page in question is Ukelection, and there you will find that following a poll with Youtube and Facebook users, a set of questions were put to the three UK party leaders — Brown, Cameron and Clegg. Their answers were available for all to see, compare – and significantly – vote upon.

You can visit the Youtube site now and see the result.This was the original promo ad for the debate.

and here is a sample answer – chosen by biased j’accuse: Nick Clegg commenting on the electoral system:

Brown's Viral Blunder

In the time it takes to consume a heavy, unhealthy lunch at the canteen (should I say restaurant) at the ECJ we get sufficient proof of the value of Web 2.0 in internet elections. Gordon Brown was caught off guard this morning after an exchange with a Labour voter.

Having shielded her questions for what might have seemed an eternity (and after having discovered that she was after all on his side) Brown quit the scene but failed to notice that he was still being recorded. It was at this moment that his description of the voter as a “bigoted woman” was heard. The MSM might have hooked on to it and online newspapers are already carrying the news but not before it has already reached viral proportions on the net.

Twitter (#bigotgate), facebook and more… it’s really gone viral. Poor Gordon.

The Reactions

Gordon Brown Apologises on Sky One Hour Ago

Internet Elections?

An interesting article by Iain Dale in the online Telegraph queries whether the UK is really having an “internet election”. Dale comments that:

This was supposed to be the election when internet politics came of age, when the blogosphere and social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook had a real impact on the campaign. But it hasn’t turned out like that: far from being an important player, the internet has become all but an irrelevance. So why has the web been the dog that hasn’t barked?

But has it? Dale’s analysis turns out to be mostly party centered -one that seems to expect party politicians to be using the internet as their main medium. We made the same assumption with The Malta Chronicle when we started to monitor politicians’ blogs in the last national election in Malta.

In a way it is a justified assumption to make – here’s the tool to send information and so we expect those who have been channeling one-way information to just take their seat at their keyboards and do the same – only with a much faster, much more easily accessible medium than your average TV (expensive time slots), newspaper (controlled by editor) or radio (last seen at crime scene – suspected murder by video).

Follow politician’s blogs, tweets or facebook pages and you will reach what should have been an obvious truth. The class of politicians that has become pampered at controlling the message and its delivery (with the conniving assistance of the PR folk) are loath to engage with an audience that can react in real time. The most poignant example of this was GonziPN’s personal blog. Aspirant Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi set up a blog with comments disabled. Not a blog. Not a medium of interest.

At most politicians will pander to the Big Brother use of the internet. Cue the “days in the life of David Cameron” youtube stunt and things of such trivial sort. Not exactly mind-boggling debate over policy. So what use for the internet? Dale uses the words “echo chamber” to describe the twitter and facebook effect. Propaganda thrown into the cacophony of voices will be crunched and retweeted – to the point that it might not recognise itself at the end of it. Webb 2.0 is the crudely powerful New Media enhancing the grapevine, the bar chat and the streetwise cracks by a zillion.

And what of the promise of interactive debate? Well, there is the battle of the blogosphere that has been resolved in some way. Dale’s take is interesting. He believes that the blogs (or at least those that count) have been taken over by journalists:

Will the internet recover its voice after the election? I hope so – but it is also possible that we have seen a high water mark in terms of new media’s influence. Yes, the mainstream press calls on bloggers such as Tim Montgomerie, Will Straw and myself to play the role of political pundits. But the fact that so many bloggers are, effectively, professional journalists creates the impression that we’re not online insurgents, breaking down the gates of the Westminster village, but just another part of the establishment. It’s rather like a scene from Animal Farm: “The voters outside looked from blogger to journalist, and from journalist to blogger, and from blogger to journalist again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

I wonder if there is some truth in this assessment. Or could it be that a “successful” blogger still gets validated the moment he becomes a MSM journalist? The debate is open. Change is happening and this too will be of considerable importance in the next election in Malta.

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Addendum: Cheers to Iain Dale for featuring this post on his blog’s The Daley Dozen.

May Day May Day

So the government has rejected the request for shops to open on Workers’ Day. Spokespersons for the ministry of finance said that circumstances were not extraordinary such as to warrant allowing shops to stay open.

I’m missing something here. What is the principle behind whether or not shops open on a particular day? Whether it is a Sunday or public holiday that we are talking about I am genuinely asking whether the government can put its finger on one particular principle.

Apparently an exception was made previously on Freedom Day (March 31st) when shops had been allowed to open. March 31st happened to be a Wednesday that fell two days before Good Friday. So one can assume that the reasoning was that with March 31 thrown in and with Good Friday being another closed shop day there would be too much shopping deprivation in one week (considering of course that this includes Sunday so technically three days on seven would be serious deprivation for shopaholics).

How does that principle work though? The GRTU argued that keeping shops closed on Workers’ Day (a Saturday) would mean two consecutive days of shoplessness. Has this therefore has become the standard measure?

To my mind the main concern with whether or not shops open on Sundays and Public Holidays are the workers themselves. In countries like France and the UK where the debate raged until the common sense free market approach (yes, I am biased) prevailed that was the main question.

The problem I have here is that the government (in this case the proto-conservative PN) gives the impression of having a problem with free choice. Times have moved on and many countries have Sunday (and Bank Holiday) opening hours for certain establishments. I would prefer to have a more clear decision on the issue – one that is not twisted by undecipherable exceptions.

So. Are you a pro-open all hours or do you too want a commerce free day?

One for the Funny

I received a link to an interesting blogpost about the role of Election Videos (online) at election time in the UK (see it here at Putneydebater). There is no doubt that online videos will have an important role in the next election in Malta. Most of them will turn viral and there will be a huge interest in satire of the Maltafly style. Here is a selection of vids from the UK scene (enjoy):

Labservative (another way of saying PLPN)

Never mind the tiddlers (2)

As I said in the previous post, speculation on Cleggmania is ripe in the papers. I just came across another article as I ran through today’s Times. Incidentally, for an election that is only ten days away it is incredible how (proportionally) little newspaper space it takes up. The front page of the printed Times has news items on Thai revolts(main article), oil spill in Mexico and the London Marathon. A reference to the election can only be found in the “In the news” section (Labour in turmoil).

Back to Cleggmania though. Here is columnist Martin Bell interpreting Cleggmania  in his article “This is more than a revolt against the big two” (subtitled, for good measure , “Voters want to loosen the grip of political parties on the windpipe of democracy”):

Many people who were previously indifferent to politics, and especially to party politics, are finding a sense of wonder and excitement in this the most enigmatic election of modern times. Something extraordinary is churning out there. The immediate casualty is two-party politics and the pendulum-swinging assumptions that go with it: first one major party holds office for a while, and then the other, and no one else gets much of a look in. This is beginning to seem as out of date as the competition between two superpowers.

My friends in the old order, and their cheerleaders in the press, have long been assuring me that the public revulsion against MPs’ expenses was a passing phase that would have lost its momentum by the election. They believed that once the obvious miscreants had been purged (though many remain, including certain absolute crooks), the politics of the status quo would return, slightly purged but still intact.

This has not happened.

Not bad for a starter. But Bell is not rooting for the LibDems. He declares his interest as adviser to the Independent Network – “a loose coaltion that helps Independents to help each other.”

I believe that we are witnesses of a phenomenon that goes beyond the Lib Dems’ traditional election pitch of a-plague-on-both-your-houses. Anti-politics as usual would not work in the way that Nick Clegg’s campaign has if it did not connect with a wider belief that our system of government has fallen sick; and that a gap has opened up between the politicians and the people that only the people can close through act of democratic insurgency.

The insurgents on May 6 will include 315 Independent candidates — twice the number who stood in 2005. Most will fail. Some will lose their deposits. But others are serious challengers.

So the thesis here is slightly nuanced. It is not the LibDems that are breaking the strnaglehold of the two main parties. It can only happen if the disillusioned voters transform their disillusionment into effective votes. And yes… there is the danger of their being “wasted” thanks to the outdated electoral system. Martin Bell has something to say on that too:

The Lib Dem surge may make it harder for them, but the Independent appeal is still a strong one.

And this is just the start of it. This election will surely be the last under the first-past-the-post system. Its result will be such a distorted reflection of the popular will, in the ratio of seats gained to votes cast, that it can hardly be called democratic. Any future, fairer system will remove the bias against Independents, who may well be the voters’ second choice if not their first.

The Independents are back — and here to stay. They should be welcomed.

Finally, here is Peter Riddell on Election Briefing (also the Times) explaining why talks on coalitions and other solutions to hung parliaments are useless until after the election:

The talks are speculative rather than substantive, for three reasons. First, we still live in a winner-takes-all culture at Westminster, unlike most of the rest of the EU, Scotland and Wales where, under proportional representation, it is assumed that an election will result in a coalition or minority administration. The main parties, therefore, say that they are fighting to win outright, since any hint of pre-election talks would be seen as weakness. Moreover, in PR systems, talks invariably take place after rather than before elections, producing an average 40-day delay between polling and the formation of a government, unlike the familiar changing of prime minister the day after polling day in Britain.

Second, the parties are not remotely prepared for a hung Parliament. The leaders’ advisers are belatedly starting to think out the options. But their main focus is still on the final ten days before May 6. The Lib Dems have considered hung Parliament scenarios since the early 1980s, but these have mainly highlighted the awkward dilemmas of which party to back — which have now been exposed.

Third, the parties are divided about what to do. What happens is crucial for the careers of individual politicians. Whatever their private conversations, Cabinet ministers are not going to say anything firm about negotiating positions before the polls close. But some are preparing to go public immediately afterwards.