Social media: a sideshow, even in closely fought seats

Filton and Bradley Stoke in Bristol is just the kind of seat you'd expect to be the subject of a local campaign fought without fear or favour on all fronts.

A notional three-way marginal, the Lib Dems need - in these days of Cleggmania - a 'mere' 5.5% swing to take the seat from the Tories. Labour need a swing of less than 1%. The Greens, the BNP and UKIP are all standing.

So, while canvassers are out knocking on real doors, is there any sign that their candidates are carrying the fight into cyberspace?

Well, no, not really.

Of the declared candidates, Labour's Ian Boulton, the Conservative's Jack Lopresti and Peter Tyzack have limited social media presences.

Ian Boulton does have a Twitter account with a little over 100 followers: he tweets his activities and thoughts and has even posted campaigning videos to YouTube. But there's little sign of any @replies or conversation.

For the Conservatives, Jack Lopresti's Facebook group has 255 members. There are no recent posts from him or his campaign team and only a handful of replies to messages of support.

Lib Dem Peter Tyzack's campaign website links directly to the party's national Twitter, Facebook and YouTube sites. He does have a personal Facebook page, with 181 friends, where he posts about his media activities. But his politics and political activity are kept to an unconnected and unlinked campaign group where there is little interaction with the 50 members.

It seems that this is a pattern repeated across the country. Research by Apex Communications into individual campaigns suggests that 'lip-service is being paid to online campaigning, with a few active candidates masking a general lack of interest.'

Apex's study across 100 key seats in February found that 10% of candidates had no personal website and 54% of websites had no links to candidates' social networking sites.

Of course there are exceptions. Ed Balls has almost 7,000 Twitter followers and George Galloway has about the same number; both actively retweet and @reply. But they're national figures and Apex's research suggests the top ten politicians account for more than half the total number of political followers.

There are also missed opportunities for the larger parties. David Evennett, the Tory candidate for Bexleyheath and Crayford, has a Twitter following of more than 1,000: he figures on 93 lists. But he's only tweeted six times.

And what about the independent candidates? Are they using social media to get their campaigns across directly to the voters? High-profile celebrity candidate Esther Rantzen tweets furiously to and with her 2,000 followers. Her website links prominently to both her Twitter account and her - closed - Facebook group.

For other, less prominent, independent candidates, the picture is as mixed as it is for the major parties. The Independent Network, an organisation that describes itself as "a one-stop shop for everyone interested in independent politics", lists 37 independent candidates. Four don't have a website listed; more than half have no Twitter account.

Does any of this matter? Two weeks into the campaign, it's become a truth universally accepted that 2010 is not a social media election - that it won't be 'Facebook wot won it' - either because of how the parties are fighting the campaign or because the social media landscape in the UK is not yet ready.

But, as public affairs expert and Lib Dem activist Mark Pack argues, audiences are local, not national - at least online audiences are. So - to quote another aphorism - if 'all politics is local', could the failure of local candidates to use social media to connect with their voters not just be a missed opportunity for them in their battle for votes but also for democracy both local and national?

Matthew Eltringham tweets at http://twitter.com/mattsays