The two types of web: communication and organisation

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

On Saturday, I spoke at the Progressive London conference on how the broad left can fight back against the right in 2010.

It’s often said that the imminent general election will be the first “internet election” in Britain. It’s a term that a lot of people use, but one that few understand.

Speaking at the session “Winning the argument: new media and the election”, I argued that there are now two types of online activity that will influence the election: communication via blogs in order to dominate the mainstream media narrative in the 24 hour news cycle; and organisation in order to connect with voters in a more traditional sense, networking online in order to mobilise offline, harnessing social media and news streams.

The two forms are symbiotic and related, but distinct nonetheless. Both will affect the election in some way – indeed, both already are.

Here are some of my thoughts on both types of online activity, and how they will play a role in the coming weeks.

Communication
This traditionally centred around who can best influence the narrative of the mainstream media through their online activity through independent and alternative research; through building a mass readership; and through trying to connect with and influence mainstream journalists in order to affect the 24-hour news cycle.

It has normally occurred through independent blogs, Facebook, YouTube videos, email and Party websites, and is the type of online activity most people still think of when they think of politics on the web.

Traditionally, it is territory that has been dominated – and even saturated – by Conservatives and the broader right. With Guido Fawkes, Iain Dale, ConservativeHome and the Spectator’s Coffee House blog – each relied upon by the mainstream media for their news and opinion – the Tories had four distinct but mutually supportive echo chambers, which each filled a niche space, had their own styles and dominated online debates. They are websites which set the tone and agenda of the political debate, which connect grassroots to Party leadership and which provided a space for community.

Until last year, it was this type of space that Labour and the Left struggle to replicate.

But over that last year, the left has fought back in this field, not by trying to replicate sites on the right, but by finding its own unique voice. Iain Dale and Tim Montgomerie both now concede that in LabourList, Left Foot Forward and others, the Left has found that voice online, though there is still a way to go.

In a normal year at a normal time in politics, this communications-led type of internet politics has been the more prominent and more dominant form – and it remains important. Blogs break stories, shape debate and set the internal party discussions.

But this is no ordinary year, and the requirements for our online politics are frankly different. As Paul Staines said, the 24 hours news cycle has now become a constant news stream, and that requires smarter online activity that will have more tangible results.

In this new, election year environment, the Left has been leading the way.

Organisation
This type of online politics is ironically a more traditional form of campaigning – and it’s the one that the Obama campaign is famed for having been so good at: organising online to mobilise offline. It’s using the internet to connect like-minded people, and getting them to take action in traditional ways: connecting with voters by phone and encouraging doorstep campaigning. This is a more involving, empowering form of online politics, far removed from the hierarchical traditional type.

LabourList has been part of this in a couple of different ways. We’ve used our online networks of many thousands of readers to ask people to attend Margaret Hodge’s Days of Action in Barking and Dagenham. And we’ve encouraged people to join together and arrange canvassing sessions through the aggregated Twitter hashtag #LabourDoorstep. That’s played an important role in getting people out to canvass, and then getting those activists to shout about their results in order to encourage others to join them.

Recently – and in no small measure because of the good work by the Labour Party in providing usable tools for activists, MembersNet and the Phone banks in particular – Labour activists have been colonising Twitter and Facebook in order to connect with each other and use these bespoke tools to call people in their own time and from their own homes, using the support networks provided by communicating with other activists in the online space.

#MobMonday – an initiative set up autonomously by two Labour activists and Twitter addicts – for example, organises and galvanises people to make calls to voters every Monday for two hours in the evening, and targets marginals. Last week, activists made reached 350 voters; today, they hope to reach a similar number, and then grow the campaign over the coming weeks.

It doesn’t sound like much, but – like the #LabourDoorstep – it’s very quickly taking on a life of its own. In the long campaign and particularly in the short campaign, and with Labour’s finances well documented, that could make a difference in some seats.

I still don’t think the internet will affect the overall outcome of the general election. That will be decided by the messages we take out, not just how we mobilise.

But the left is already starting to win the war in both these two fields online. That will be important, both in shaping the media agenda and in gaining votes – in 2010 and beyond.