The election is here! As everyone rushes off to the polling stations, we thought we would take a look at what our political leaders have been doing online to prepare for today, inspired by this Wired article on their Instagram presence.
It was said that 2010 was the first election in which social media played a significant role. Politicians were able to campaign and get their key messages out into the public from the comfort of their own homes. They were immediately made more accessible to the public with anyone able to engage and ask questions in a mere 140 characters and the quick click of a button.
So, five years on, what role has social media played in the run up to the election? We know that the public has been talking, discussing and engaging with the election campaigns online from the spikes of activity around the leaders’ debates – on 2nd April alone there were over 1.5 million tweets about the debate.
However have our politicians been using social media to talk to the public and how successful have they been?
To find out, we’ve done an audit of the five party leaders who are top in the polls to look at which social media channels they’ve been using and how engaging they’ve been. Here is what we found:
David Cameron
Twitter (@David_Cameron): 999k followers, 1,761 tweets, joined in January 2010.
Facebook (DavidCameronOfficial): 547k likes, 121k people talking about him, first post September 2013.
Instagram: No account.
Ed Miliband
Twitter (@Ed_Miliband): 471k followers, 4,715 tweets, joined in July 2009.
Facebook (edmiliband): 109k likes, 60k people talking about him, first post June 2010.
Instagram (ed_miliband): 8,022 followers, 136 posts, first image September 2014.
Nick Clegg
Twitter (@nick_clegg): 241k followers, 2,187 tweets, joined June 2008.
Facebook (nickclegg): 87k likes, 7k people talking about him, first post October 2008.
Instagram (nick_clegg): 718 followers, 58 posts, first post February 2015.
Nigel Farage
Twitter (@Nigel_Farage): 224k followers, 8,296 tweets, joined January 2009.
Facebook (nigelfarageofficial): 243k likes, 104k people talking about him, first post October 2010.
Instagram (nigel_farage): 302 followers, 65 posts, first post March 2015.
Nicola Sturgeon
Twitter (@NicolaSturgeon): 192k followers, 10.2k tweets, joined June 2010.
Facebook (NicolaSturgeonSNP): 166k likes, 37k people talking about her, first post September 2010.
Instagram: No account.
DAVID CAMERON
Overview: David Cameron has quite clearly been late to the social media game. Not only does he not have an Instagram account, he only started his Facebook page two years ago and despite having the most followers on Twitter, of all the leaders he is the least active. Having said that, both his Facebook and Twitter accounts are very on message, very positive and on the whole he avoids criticising the other parties. His posts span a wide range of policy areas, although primarily focus on business and the economy, and he has a nice selection of videos and pictures to keep his followers engaged. However, he is lacking any interactivity with his followers – even those who post supporting messages don’t seem to have had a response.
ED MILIBAND
Overview: Ed Miliband is the clear winner on Instagram. Over the past six months his account has been very active. He has posted messages on both his political stance and insights into his personal life, even throwing in the odd selfie. Both his Facebook and Twitter accounts have also been quite active in the run up to the election with a range of policies being discussed, particularly with a focus on the NHS. It would be nice to see more of a variety of content on his Twitter and Facebook. It seems that all his pictures and video content are going straight to Instagram – co-ordination across his social media profiles wouldn’t go amiss. As with David Cameron he is also fairly unresponsive to his followers’ comments and tweets. It would be nice to see a bit more engagement with his supporters.
NICK CLEGG
Overview: Nick Clegg has been consistently active across the three of the social networks we’re looking at and he is one of only two leaders who has adopted the official general election hashtag #GE2015, ensuring his visibility. Unfortunately, something missing from his social media feeds is a strong idea of the Liberal Democrats’ policy focus. From looking at his social networks it is clear that Nick Clegg has been out and about touring the country and campaigning hard, but it would be nice to get more of an idea of not just where Nick Clegg is at any given moment, but what his political stance is on the key election issues.
NIGEL FARAGE
Overview: Nigel Farage comes close to being the most active of our political leaders on social media with over 8k tweets and 104k people talking on Facebook. On his social network feeds we have a variety of pictures, videos, links to articles and strong opinions on a large range of political issues. However, there is little consistency across platforms, a fairly negative tone and a large amount of criticism on the other parties’ policies. It would be nice to see more positive messaging on what UKIP can offer rather than just signposts to what is wrong with the other parties.
NICOLA STURGEON
Overview: Nicola Sturgeon clearly wins the Twitter battle with over 10.2k tweets and is the second leader to use the official general election hashtag #GE2015. Not only this but she is the only one to engage with her followers on Twitter, posting public replies and responding to questions. Her policy messages are clear from her posts with generally a positive tone as she avoids being too critical of the other parties. Overall it would seem Nicola Sturgeon has got the hang of Twitter and Facebook, but it would be nice to see her making use of Instagram and injecting a little more personal insight to the platforms she is using.
On the whole it would seem that our political leaders are not too far off when it comes to social media. If there were one criticism that they could all learn from it would be to be more personal! We can all look up what their party lines are on any given topic – what we really want to know and see are the personal stories and opinions behind them.