An awful lot has changed since 1975 but in the coming months Enda Kenny and his political peers will enter the first truly digital general election in Ireland.

 

#GE11 happened around the time Ireland began to open itself up to social media. There was a hashtag, parties tweeted some awful smack-talk and journalists live-tweeted tallies. That was about the height of it though. The majority of the action took place on the radio, in the papers and at party markings.

 

Since that time, our activity on social media has increased dramatically. There’s approximately 700,000 Twitter users in Ireland, sending over 1 million tweets per day. There has already been much talk about the upcoming General Election since early this year; many people asking when it’ll happen and parties have upped their activity online.

 

The key difference between this upcoming election and #GE11 is that social media will be a make or break tool for each and every candidate. Candidates we’ve never heard of will “go viral” and appear on the front page of the papers and radio shows, longstanding politicians will make an awful gaffe or two which will be scrutinised and torn asunder and all social media platforms will be used a mini-propaganda tools by the parties.

 

 

We can look to the US or indeed the UK to see just how much of an impact social media has had on politics and elections.

 

The 2008 US Presidential Election was one of, if not the first social media election. There were 1.8 million tweets sent on that particular election day. Things have changed dramatically since then, with around 500 million tweets sent out per day.

 

Obama’s appearance at the 2012 Democratic National Convention caused four million tweets during his 40 minute speech alone. Twitter reported that the election was the most tweeted-about event in U.S. political history. There were more than 31 million tweets sent, with a peak of 327,452 tweets per minute shortly after the television networks called the race for Obama.

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton opted to launch her election campaign on social media and has been very active on platforms including Twitter and SnapChat every single day since.

An Ipsos Mori poll, carried out with King’s College London looked at the impact of social media on the 2015 General Election in the United Kingdom. Some 34% percent of those aged 18-24 said that reading something on social media was likely to influence their vote, second only to TV debates.

 

The study found that TV debates was the most likely source of information set to influence the vote of the population as a whole, followed by newspapers, election broadcasts and then social media.

 

Some 71% of the population of the United Kingdom said they believe social media provides a platform and a voice to people who wouldn’t normally take part in political debates, but 50% believe that social media makes political debate more superficial than it used to be.

 

Social media has an impact on what the public thinks of the politicians and their parties. It is influential, particularly with young people, but a lot of people acknowledge that it’s not the be-all and end-all.

 

We witnessed the impact of social media when it came to #MarRef. Political parties will be looking to tap into that pool of politically minded young people to try and get them elected. Regardless of individual party plans, there’s no denying that this election will be one to watch.

 

Bookmark #GE16 now and watch the action unfold!