I started this blog and the twitter account (@lplmayorwatch) as a way of bringing together the on-line coverage of the mayoral election process in Liverpool. I was interested for a number of reasons but most pertinently I have a professional interest in social media and how it can (and should) be used in public engagement - I think there a possibility of a renewed civic life from social networking - and in the emerging area of 'social scrutiny' (I'll discuss this term a little later). Other reasons include: my own civic and democratic passions; I'm also a local government enthusiast, however perverse that might seem to some; the historic nature of the mayoral election; the way the election came about; I would like to see more effort to engage people, Liverpool has some turnout problems in my opinion and digital engagement may be one partial solution; and, finally but not by any means least, I take an active interest in politics although I'm not a member of any party...
My Approach
Basically my approach was two fold, on the blog to try and tackle some issues that weren't be tackled elsewhere and on twitter to act as a curator for social networking activity relating to the the mayoral campaign and, where pertinent, intervening in creating unbiased activity. On the blog, I failed (see below). On twitter I think I ran a really good, independent campaign.
Mostly the twitter campaign was to act as a retweeting service for all the candidates, for their messages of support and for some media coverage. I did this fairly and honestly whilst making no editorial judgements about content. I didn't, however, retweet any retweets - that would have been daft. I also attempted to curate other media content.
I also did a live tweeting session from the Epstein Theatre on the hastag #lpoolpeoplesdebate that had over a 1000 unique followers, when there were only 150 people in the theatre. I was only pulled up on one tweet in over 300 tweets that night for giving a partial answer. It was a fast a furious evening. That's my excuses and I'll be sticking to it.
During the 10 weeks of the campaign, including at the Epstein, if I was ever challenged to make a correction or a clarification I always retweeted the request and gave an answer as best I could.
In my day job I'd do a more diligent approach, but this was squeezed from spare hours here and there. On that basis I'm quite happy with my approach on the whole, however...
Mistakes but no regrets
I've made some mistakes along the way that much is for sure. Firstly, over the 10 weeks of the campaign I've come to think that 'Liverpool Mayor Watch' as a title set the wrong tone - it was a bit surveillance-y and I came to wonder how that might seem to some of the candidates, particularly to Joe Anderson who, has the kind of incumbent-by-proxy, gave him-self lots of campaign advantages but also had the difficult position of having to defend his time as council leader. Anyway a name change looms, see below on 'the future'.
Secondly, some of my earlier questions on Twitter may have been a bit too clever for their own good - a personal failing - and so may have seemed like 'bear-traps' to the candidates I was asking them of although I don't know for sure. I didn't really get any traction in my attempts to engage Joe Anderson or Richard Kemp, whom my early attempts at engagement were largely directed at and I wondered if that was part of the reason. I say part, because ultimately I don't think any of the candidates did much engagement on social networks, but I'll revisit this topic too.
Thirdly, this content for this blog was quite emergent. I set it up in the days after the city Deal was announced and then looked for stories. Mostly they were about Joe Anderson - for a good reason - or Phil Redmond - also for a good reason - but on reflection I don't think it set the right tone. but like I say, it was emergent. Then, I fell into a really busy period at work - I'm a partner in small firm and its feat or famine, so most of my efforts were focussed there and that only left time for my twitter activities so the blog didn't really develop. If I have known then what I know now, the blog would have been a very different beast.
However, I've no regrets. Social media & politics in the UK is largely a new phenomenon and I'm citizen trying to be engaged in the political process in new ways.
Political Engagement on Social Networks
I honestly thought that the campaign teams would do more. Then I expect they are not really aware of the reach of Social Networks in Liverpool. I know that a couple of the candidates at least are using the the twitter web interface to run their campaigns, this is at best very amateur - there are some amazing, free social marketing tools out there that could have improved. However, some candidates didn't use social media at all, which is quite archaic. What strikes me about this is there is probably little sympathy for any of the politicians among 'social media' natives and so we didn't see much traction in this platform. Its also probably indicative of Liverpool's low internet penetration rate.
During the campaign I used some a number of analytic tools on the web to gauge the dynamic and particularly the reach of all campaigns. I developed a bit of ad hoc methodology, which I wont go into here and largely because of time constraints, but I estimate in the 10 weeks the total reach (the number of unique individual accounts) that viewed candidates, various hashtags or my account was about 70k - that's really without a great deal of amplification. Some of that reach will be from outside of Liverpool - so a conservative view might be about 50k for Liverpool although those in Liverpool wont all be voters either because of registration or fulfilment. I'm finishing writing this at 6pm on election day and in the last 24 hours there have been 52k unique followers on the #liverpoolvotes hashtag, so I'm comfortable with my ad hoc methodology given the nature of my approach to the campaign.
I'm classifying 'engagement' on social networks as interaction and not broadcasting, so I view this in 3 ways: sharing media such as shares in Facebook or retweeting; replying to people who ask a direct question; and other ways such as: responding to indirect comments about the campaign or the candidates; or using keywords that people are searching on e.g. #LiverpoolMayor or #joeforliverpool or #tony4mayor etc.
Retweeting/sharing was the main form of engagement, but as you might expect this was limited to positive messages. However, even this took a while to happen as some candidates seemed slow to get the process and some still hadn't shared or retweeted by election day.
The most astounding thing was there was very little 'response' to direct activity except some expressed gratitude for positive comments. And as far as I could discover there was definitely no 'corrective' response, where people made assertions about the campaign or the candidates and this was responded to with a clarification. Only Joe Anderson had an 'ask a question' feature on his website. While some people on twitter saids they had asked questions, mainly negative, these were never published or answered. I don't know if this was an oversight or not, but I suspect it was a choice to not respond to negative questions.
There were only a handful of responses to negative content, two of them toward me when I summed up, with one week to go, my opinion on each campaign and what type of contention I thought was happening from my perspective. Richard Kemp, the Liberal Democrat candidate, told me I was talking rubbish when I suggested he didn't seem to be running a campaign that could win the election. Adam Heatherington, of UKIP, suggested I was part of widespread media conspiracy to keep his message away from the public - oh how I wish! - and over a few tweets I put him straight on my role, reach and influence.
As far as I could tell there was no response to indirect comments. This is a missed opportunity for all candidates. Its really good opportunity to engage with people who may be wavering in their choice or with people who may not fulfil and fail to vote at all. Its worth thinking about networks that exist around the candidates for this, with the candidate at the centre, with their 1st and 2nd degree reach being visible mainly to existing supporters. Then beyond that we start going to the 'edges' of the network where the linkages or ties are the weakest to the candidate, this is an opportunity to build and grow the support network.
In Social Marketing, one of the key 'vectors' for engagement is social content. This tends to be immediately accessible media such as video, audio, images, and so on that can easily shared - you may have come across 'viral marketing' that is rapidaly and frequently passed around the internet. There was very little 'social content' generated throughout the campaign. After an initial period when nothing had been produced I generated some myselfs to test if was worth doing. I created a series of colourful 'word-clouds' based on the manifestos or election statements of the candidates in the shape of a Liverbird. These went out and had a good spread but I stopped following the reach after about 10 days when it hit about 4k (with very little amplification). Interestingly, Joe Anderson shared his with lots of people commenting on the creativity of Liverpool, but when I pointed out I'd made it he didn't thank me or comment on my creativity. I took that a little personally, and its when I started reflecting on my earlier approach (see above).
The Green's made a couple of social videos that they distributed via their facebook page and twitter initially using the YouTube platform. They were good social product because they took a topical approach to the campaign but sadly, in media-analytical terms rather than political, they didn't do much of a promotion job. I commented on this because the number of views on YouTube was very low - they then switch to an embedded service with no metrics but I don't know if they were related. Liam Fogarty, the independent candidates, took a picture of himself in the drivers seat of one of 5 Taxis that were advertising his campaign. Joe Anderson shared a couple of photos of him opening a new building in the Eldonian community and a picture with the amazing Giants which was a street theatre spectacle that happened over a weekend late in May. Tony Mulhearn didn't share anything but some of his supporters shared photographs of their political rallies.
All the candidates shared media coverage of themselves, but not of the campaign itself. There was also some independent material, that was produce - about 5 pieces from recollection including a cartoon from one the local blog-zines, Liverpool Confidential. Another blog, 7 Streets, ran a poll for their readership and only the candidates with the two highest polling shared it.
Another key feature of social marketing is 'Calls to Action' in which campaigns/brands invite their supporters todo something: share a tweet; click a link; ask a friend; etc. Its a key tactic for amplifying a message through the networks the campaign is connected to. This did not happen once from recollection. Another tactic that was not deployed was the 'open question' in which a campaign tries to illicit a response from their followers to raise interest in the 2 degree network.
After 10 weeks of this I didn't feel there was very much political engagement through social networks at all. Interestingly, Stuart Wilkes-Heeg, from the Democratic Audit, ran an online survey which yielded a response from 81 people. It will have been a very biased sample from small number of people who are a) politically engaged already at some level and b) digitally native but offered some indicative insight that the largest groups, 36%, used the internet as their primary source.
Although I am only relying on intuition here, I suspect that the internet may have yielded a rich source of new voters for some candidates and if there had been more work early on I suspect they could have used the internet to support voter registration. However, I do recognise that mostly they focused on door-step campaigning in their target areas, and with a small resources this is entirely understandable. But I do think they missed an opportunity. As a rule-of-thumb perhaps 80%-20% split door-step to internet would be the maximum I would look at on early campaign.
Social Scrutiny
Social scrutiny is another emerging phenomenon in politics. It really comes about because like me there are people in the UK who really want to take a look inside politics and expose its internal workings. For some people this is a malign because they believe that politics is a corrupt and dirty business. For others, like me, its because I want to expose the internal complexities of running a city. In part to show what an amazing job councillors and officials do on the whole, even though bits are very broken and not fit for purpose. In part to cast a light on the internal so that people from the outside may get involved to make a better civic.
Social networks create the potential to be disruptive of existing social relations, because its easy to find people who want to improve services at the same time as defend them. Some elected politicians might not like that but i think overall it will strengthen democracy. And, ultimately, the process of transparency should be an inalienable right. Having a mandate from the electorate is permission to act on the behalf of citizens, being transparent is about keeping the people involved.
A growing number of people are engaged in all kinds of social scrutiny. This includes campaigners using FoI to get answers to questions about the way services are run. It includes 'Armchair Auditors' who are looking at the expenditure to find ways that we might make savings and efficiencies. There are a number of applications for people, citizens and the like to engage in the political process with out having to stand for election or being limited to a once-evey-now-and-again vote. The age of the paternal alderman is past, and the age of social scrutineers has arrived.
There will be mistakes along the way, but because of the way the the concerned citizens use social networking and actively engage with each other the act as an informal learning organisation, and revise their own approach more often. This learning will be invaluable in the coming period of localism and continued downward pressure of finances. Progressive politicians from all side should embrace it. That was a key aspiration for me, to show politicians that the internet and social networks could be a useful place to do better stuff. I think I've demonstrated it to some extent.
The Future
What next for Liverpool Mayor Watch? A name change to start with. As I mentioned above, the 'watcher' status was too antagonistic and wrong for what I'm trying to do. If you have any suggestions for this I'd be delighted to receive them.
The nexts steps are two fold. Firstly, I like help grow an informal network of others in Liverpool who are interested in this approach to find news of looking at local government democracy in this way, but without trying to become an opposition - thats what politicians are for. Its really about trying to find a way of helping the new Mayor and councillors navigate this exciting historical juncture and get it right for 'the residents our wonderful city. I hope the new Mayor of Liverpool will take this genuine offer in the way it is intended and I think he'd be surprised by how many civic minded people there are who would want to get involved if the opportunity. I've invited all the mayor candidates to have a friendly twitter chat in
the next couple of weeks, I hope the successful candidate will take me
up on that offer so we can start the conversation. I'm also available for private chats about how this could work if anyone wants to take me up on this.
Signing Off
This is this last post on this blog. If you would like to get involved please use the contact link and get in touch and lets see what we can do with this? I'll be keeping the twitter account going and seeing what comes of this process, although I'll be changing the name very soon. If you'd like to keep abreast keep following on twitter.
Bye for now.
Garry Haywood
aka (formerly) Liverpool Mayor Watch
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