As the conference season draws near, councillors, MPs and other activists will be wondering what does the Labour Conference actually achieves. Ideas typically range from a form of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ in the main Conference Hall itself, to the more outlandish dissection of policy by relative nobodies. Some people use it to showcase their importance within the party, whereas other people like me simply enjoy it as a holiday to meet other members of Labour and to discuss ideas informally.
How do activists get their message across? Heated arguments ensue about the balance and bias of the BBC, with approximately half of the audience accusing it of rampant left-wing bias with the other half accusing it of rampant right-wing bias. In the last year, I have noticed an upsurge in the number of Photoshopped posters, some definitely bordering on an incitement offence, defamation offence, or public order offence. Facebook proprietors are typically slow to remove outlandish controversial groups, but seem quite willing suddenly to remove ‘losers’ fitting a certain pattern of opinions.
Disability is one. Somewhat provoked by David Cameron using it as an opportunity to promote his love of the disabled, a swathe of disabled citizens and hardened disability campaigners have taken to the social media to put their point-of-view across, equally forcefully. It seems that everything is politicised these days, ranging from the policy to save billions by taking disabled citizens off the disability living allowance to the new alternative payment mechanism. GCSE grades are politicised. International students studying at London higher education establishments appear to be politicised, or rather extradited.
The social media nonetheless has become a place where people can communicate. Like all networks, speed of information can be very fast, and misinformation can travel extremely speedily. When somebody appears as a trend on Twitter, he or she has just allegedly died, or appeared on Question Time (or in some cases, both in a sense). Networks have a phenomenon where there are lead adopters, so if a Twitter seleb retweets your motley tweet you can find yourself having short-lived popularity status yourself. Everyone has a valid opinion on Facebook, even the anonymous tweeps can mount a persuasive case, and it is easy to dip in and dip out of other people’s conversations if you are so inclined.
Nobody is honestly deluding themselves that this is where actual policy is written. In fact, nobody exactly is sure where policy is written. It seems a far cry from the focus groups of New Labour, and possibly the easiest way is for all of us to sign up to a giant Wiki and put down our thoughts. However, I am sure that we would probably never agree, and, as a party, we seem genuinely uncertain about our past, let alone present, and let alone future. Twitter and Facebook are great media for where those who shout the loudest can have the most eye-catching message, and there is always the hope that Tom Baldwin and Ed Miliband, instead of reading the #xfactor tweets, are absorbing what people are writing about the privatisation of the NHS.
One can live in hope, but all too frequently the social media do not serve as an incubator for ideas. It is where instead good ideas can be given a good burial. Excellent political concepts are as rare as hen’s teeth, and there’s always a hope amongst the million blogposts, there’ll be that equivalent of a Mozart masterpiece. The social media, for Labour certainly, has become discredited by people just launching abrupt insults, which often disintegrates into a ‘well, he started it’ conversation. For example, it was all David Cameron’s fault that he started off with the benefit scronger language, some might say.
Blogposts have, however, been democratising to a limited extent. For example, some young people who started off as bloggers now write regular columns for national newspapers. The question nonetheless remains whether some authors should have more klout as they have more experience, or whether these authors are being given undue weight in what is fundamentally an utilitarian debate – greatest benefit for the maximum number of people. In such a system, there are no winners or no losers, so if you’re hoping for a top 100 list of bloggers to motivate you, forget it.
