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Digital

First-Past-the-Election

“The verdict was already in, even before polling day. This was not an internet election, and all those who had suggested it might be had got it completely wrong.

It was a television election, and all of those tweeters and bloggers were sad political obsessives talking to each other.

Hold on a minute – can I insert a couple of points about what has already become received wisdom? First, even the most rabid of digital enthusiasts never suggested that new-media techniques would be the decisive factor.

Just about every debate I attended on this issue before the campaign ended with everyone agreeing that television, and the debates in particular, would be decisive.

But the internet, from social media to Google to good old-fashioned news websites, did play a significant part in the way many people experienced this election – and that was very different from what happened in 2005.”

Read the full story from Rory Cellan-Jones, it’s a great article about how social media may have changed the engagement with politics, and removed some of the apathy, even if it couldn’t predict the outcome. Now we’ll see that campaigns continue online for a change to Proportional Representation: