Neil Arun didn’t want to miss a rare but risky opportunity to embed with an Iraqi police unit, hunting members of al Qaeda. But his employers -- responsible for Neil’s security -- weren’t happy. This film by Richard Pendry nvestigates how a frontline journalist balances risk and reward.
So what role did social networking sites and online media play in influencing your election vote? Probably none at all.
2010 turned out to be the “TV election”, not the “internet election”. The big noise was all about how the party leaders performed in the UK’s first ever TV election debates.
I was left wondering why the internet hadn’t played a more decisive role; especially after Barack Obama’s stunning use of social media in his 2008 election victory.
I think there are two reasons; First, where the US leads, Britain tends to follow. The first TV election debate in America was in 1960 and it’s taken us fifty years to catch up. Politicians in the UK will presumably discover the power of the internet sometime between now and 2050.
Second (and perhaps more importantly) social media marketing isn’t a “quick fix”. Using Facebook, YouTube etc is all about having conversations and dialogue with people and it works best over a long period of time.
The UK election campaign lasted four weeks; not really enough time to develop meaningful social media initiatives. By comparison, the US presidential election campaign lasted twenty one months. This was the period of time between Obama announcing his candidacy (10th February 2007) and the voting itself (4th November 2008).
It’s interesting to note that the day before Obama announced he was standing, he registered the mybarackobama website address!
Of course politicians here have used the internet, but they’ve generally used it in a rather traditional way; ie to tell us things, rather than encourage us to take part in dialogue and get involved ourselves.
Perhaps it’s simply a reflection of contemporary British politics. Our role as voters is simply to listen to what politicians tell us and then vote (or not) on polling day.
