Aptus Consultants

In recent days something remarkable has emerged on the UK political scene. No, it's not Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats.

It is the power of Social and Digital Media to influence UK political opinion, and it threatens to eclipse the power of the bastions of 'old media'.

Admittedly, it seems to have started with a novel application of old media: the televised Leaders' Debate between the three main party leaders. For the first time this gave the minority Liberal Democrats a high profile equal billing with the main parties, and LibDem leader Nick Clegg was the surprise success of the show.

However, the old media response was triggered by a series of polls that launched the LibDems into equal billing with Labour and Conservatives.

David Yelland, ex editor of The Sun, throws fascinating light on how this development is likely to be viewed by the leaders of the old media establishment. He claims that a LibDem victory would severely curtail Rupert Murdoch's influence on the political establishment.

Within a few days the opinion polls showed the LibDems consolidating their success from the televised debate and The Sun, The Telegraph and The Daily Mail launched a large number of articles simultaneously attacking Nick Clegg.

So what was the New, Social Media response to all this?

Within hours of the first televised debate ending, Twitterers had picked up on the number of times Gordon Brown and David Cameron said 'I agree with Nick', and launched a Twitter hashtag '#iagreewithnick'. This was picked up by bloggers and the following day a site appeared selling T-shirts with the slogan.

The Twitter community was also distributing comment on the election campaigns with Twitter hashtags like #ge2010 and #ukelection.

These tweets expressed a wide range of opinion and sentiment with a substantial smattering of humour.

They also promoted ostensibly neutral tools designed to help people decide which party they should support. For example Vote For Policies offers the visitor 'anonymised' policies to vote for, and then tells you the party which best suits your views. Another site, Twit Vote, allows you to vote for a party in your constituency (based on your post code) and shows a real time map of UK constituencies and the party winning in each seat.

However, it wasn't until the old media launched their apparently coordinated attack on Nick Clegg that social media showed its teeth.

Their response? A barrage of tweets appeared with the hashtag #nickcleggsfault, ironically blaming Nick Clegg for every imaginable fault, crime, slight, accident. This quickly became the UK's biggest trending Twitter topic and was rapidly picked up bloggers.

Although the number of tweeters was relatively small - less than 300 - the volume of tweets was big, as was the frequency and as I write , the hashtag #nickcleggsfault is still number 3 in the UK.

So, what influence does all this social media have on people's opinions?

Well, let's take a look at the range of opinion represented by social media.

I have tried to use a variety of free Twitter sentiment analysis tools, but these have been completely thrown by the humour of the majority of the tweets, mistakenly labelling supportive tweets as 'neutral' or 'negative'. Consequently my analysis is rough and qualitative not quantitative.

The entire political spectrum appears to be represented by social media, but a significant majority appear to support the LibDems, in marked contrast to the views propagated by most of the old media, especially the print media.

Is this representative of UK political opinion as a whole? I'd suggest probably not, since the numbers of people actively expressing opinions via Social Media is relatively small and unlikely to be as representative as those involved in professional polls, for example.

It is probably representative of the constituency of social media contributors, however, and this constituency is growing. In addition, the apparent bias towards the LibDems is likely to strengthen their support amongst the wider population. Anyone stumbling over Twit Vote , for example, is likely to consider the LibDems a serious contender for the election, despite a strong showing from the Pirate Party.

Those who experience a wide variety of opinion through social media are unlikely to place as much significance on the narrow spectrum available through the old media as in the past.

The bias and outright untruths of old media in their election coverage have been quickly and cruelly exposed by new media. Social Media punishes dishonesty very quickly, and an impatient audience soon goes elsewhere.

It seems likely that unless the old media starts to reflect the breadth and transparency of new media both in print and online, the current decline of old media can only continue.

The political power of the print media in particular, and it's ability to drive political opinion in the UK, is probably in irreversible decline.

What do you think? Have you been following the election coverage online and offline? How do you think they compare?