According to a survey by Pew's study, during the UK 2017 general elections, at least twenty percent of the voters claimed, that they had voting decisions influenced after discussions on social media. Further, statistics issued by Ipsos Mori show that about a third of people aged 18-24 years old think that social media influence their vote (Sedghi, 1). As a result, the social media has grown significantly in its importance as platform for political activism. To illustrate this truth, the recent victory of Jeremy Corbyn of the Labour Party would serve as a perfect case study. In spite of the traditional claims that the youth do not vote, Corbyn had a huge rallying of the young people during the UK 2017 general election. This paper will analyse the impact of social media on the recent election of Jeremy Corbyn. Different strategies that were used by Corbyn's campaign team such the hashtags created on Twitter, Corbyn’s attendance of the Glastonbury speech, and the use of celebrities such as Stormy among others will be discussed.
Jeremy Corbyn’s Campaign Background
According to Husain et al. (224), the social media has had tremendous effects on fields such as public relations, commerce, and political communications. In recent times, the reputation of social media particularly has been underscored in politics, given the use of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter among others, which are believed to bear the potentials of positively influencing political decisions (Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan, 1281). According to various analyses, a couple of weeks prior to the elections indicated that the interest scale was tipped in Labour’s favour. On social media, memes were circulating that conveyed negative images of Tories with different hashtags aimed to build different campaign themes. Another great stratagem that Corbyn used was identifying with the popular culture of the people. This he did by using celebrity artistes such Stormy among other Grime music artists. Moreover, his appearance at the Glastonbury festival did much to portray him as a man of the people. In brief, a blend of old-fashioned rallies, political activism over the internet organized by Corbyn's team of digital supporters led to the flourishing of his humble campaign consequently flooring the Labour Party establishment. Below is a table showing the percentage of people that voted for the Labour Party according to age. Table 1.1 illustrates voters’ turnout in percentage according to their age during the UK 2017 general election. From Table 1.1, it is clear that majority of voters’ age ranged from 18 to 39 with the least voter turnout being registered by people aged 70 and above.
Age in Years
Percentage voter turnout
18-20
66%
20-24
62%
25-29
63%
30-39
55%
40-49
44%
50-59
37%
60-69
27%
70+
19%
Table: 1.1 Percentage Voter turnout by age (IpsosMori).
Social Media for Political Campaigns
According to a report by Kings College London and the Ipsos Mori indicated that at least thirty-four percent of people aged between eighteen and twenty-four years are likely to have their vote influenced by information gained via the social media. Further, across the UK, social media is ranked fourth as a possible influence on political decisions- after television discussions, newspapers and electoral broadcasts (Sedghi, 1). In fact, social media has become an effective way of collecting information (Thorsen et al., 70). Conversation chats of people from different age groups take different direction. Although the young people rarely talk about political matters among themselves, trendy issues on social media easily grab their attention. During Labour’s campaign, attention grabbers might have been hashtags such as Corbyn4PM, JezWeCan, TorisOUt, and Corbyn's hope badges among others.
Free Education
The Labour manifesto of cutting tuition fees was also an important campaign point for Corbyn. In one of the LBCs interviews, Corby boldly claimed that tuition fees for colleges, universities and adult education would be abolished thus freeing students from the massive education debts purportedly caused by the Conservatives (Mason, 1). As a result, the Labour Party experienced massive support after pledging to abolish tuition fees and restore maintenance allowances for the poor students in efforts to persuade the young people to vote. Following this announcement, the Facebook and Twitter became platform to proclaim that gospel that got most young people interested and eventually inspired to rally behind Corbyn. The following tables show Labour party’s followership on both Twitter and Facebook. Form Table 1.2, the Conservatives who were Labour’s closest rivals had about Labour’s half activity index on Facebook and their active users were 10% less what Labour had.
Party
Followership
Active Users in Percent
Interactivity Index
Labour Party
989,752
44.59%
15,875,607
Conservatives
633,477
34.23
6,239,432
Table 1.2: Number of followers and engagement on Facebook of the Labour party and the Conservatives (Thorsen et al., 95).
According to the above table, The Labour party closely followed by the Conservatives had a greater percentage of engaged thus could reach more people via Facebook.
Party
Followership
Mentions
Likes
Retweets
Labour Party
989,752
59,239
60,041
369,693
Conservatives
269,859
84,297
49,775
186,732
Table 1.3: Engagement on Twitter of both the Conservatives and the Labour Party (Thorsen et al., 95).
The Labour Party’s followership surpassed that of the Conservatives by far who were their close rivals. The Conservatives’ followership was merely a quarter of Labour’s. Thus, their retweets could reach lesser people compared to Labour.
Hashtags, Gifs, and Memes
Corbyn’s superlative ‘memeability' led to Corbyn's popularity among the youth. In the concluding weeks, as the Labour Party campaigns rallied while those of the Tories floundered, the social media was rife with memes. Several of these memes revolved around the slogan "here we go". Gifs were also shared and reshared showing Corbyn supping a martini with firecrackers in his background (Thorsen et al., 92). Moreover, Corbyn's side-eye was unceasingly positioned to react to political broadcasts. In a bizarre, completely unpredicted way, he was cool such that Ed Miliband – in spite of the Milifandom- was extremely geeky to cope. In spite of his age, his self-styled Zen style of campaigning, his rebuff to get personal and his petitions to integrity all supplied to his sense of cool. Although the Newspaper may have gone to the streets on Corbyn, the young people barely read newspapers. They obtain their news from the social media, which was kind to Corbyn. Moreover, the emergence of left-wing sites, for instance, the Canary, as a remedy to the mainstream media indubitably played a part towards Corbyn's popularity and eventual victory.
Moreover, at the beginning of Labour Party campaign, Corbyn might not have had much regarding street cred. In most cases, young people like to incorporate fun and creativity even in ‘serious' issues. Support for the music industry provided the fun and creativity that may have been needed to get them interested to get to vote. Artists that spoke on behalf of Corbyn did not; at any point patronize their fans. Instead, like Corbyn, they led positive campaigns that overlooked negative portrayals from the press. For instance, a hashtag used on twitter; Grime4Corbyn campaign encouraged Grime supporters to rally behind Corbyn with a certain website promising free tickets to grime show to any young person that registered to vote. Moreover, media outlets (Novara Media and GRM Daily) kept the fans updated about the election's state of affairs. Elsewhere, Corbyn’s relations with popular musicians helped to woo the youth to vote. For examples, Mobo award-winning artist Akala wrote a letter on Facebook explaining why in spite of not being a Labour supporter he was going to vote for Corbyn. Another Musician, Stormyz, told the Guardian that he felt like Corbyn was the only one who was getting what the ethnic minority, the homeless, and the working class are going through. Since most celebrities use social media sites to communicate with their fans, the Labour Party seemed to have an upper hand when they turned to Facebook and Twitter to reach the majority of young people. Table 1.4 shows the percentage followership increase on social media. It indicates how followership increased in both Twitter and Facebook during the general election. On both sites, the Labour party experienced the greatest increase in followership with the UKIP trailing. Although the percentage increase on Twitter for the Conservatives was greater than Labour, its impacts was not as much compared to 19.88% increase on Facebook for the Labour.
Party
Percentage followership increase on Twitter
Percentage followership increase on Facebook
Labour Party
6.00%
19.88%
Conservatives
8.00%
10.00%
Liberal Democrats
6.00%
6.53%
Green Party
6.00%
7.43%
Scottish Nationalists
2.00%
4.73%
Plaid Cymru
4.00%
4.44%
UKIP
4.00%
2.24%
Table 1.4: Followership increase on social media (Thorsen et al., 95).
Glastonbury Speech
The Glastonbury Speech was of great value to Corbyn's Victory. During the fifteen minutes speech, Corby spoke about the need to aid the poverty-stricken as he spoke to thousands of music lovers who had paid close to £240 for a full weekend ticket. The festival was packed with young people some who even did not have any political views. With the presence of musicians such as Stormyz, Lorde and Radiohead who firmly rallied behind Corbyn, social media was replete with comments about the reaction that Corbyn got which by far surpassed those of renowned musicians (Staples, 2). Corby asked the people to seek peace, thus endeavour to build wall and not bridges. Such a message is what voters would have liked to hear and he had nailed it (Khomami and Ellis-Petersen, 1). The impact of these comments was to spread what Corbyn had said that had pleased the youth. The likes of Stormy later mobilized their fans to register to vote leading to an unprecedented rise in young people's vote.
Criticism about Corbyn’s Social Media Campaign
Corbyn’s campaign strategy was widely criticised especially by his arch-rivals, Tories and the mainstream media. The biggest critic was Tories who spent close to 1.2 million dollars on pessimistic anti-Corbyn social media adverts. The conservative that seemed to have had little impact on the youth on social media as they continuously bombarded them with conflict-ridden attack advertisements (White, 1). Corbyn was accused of being a terrorist sympathizer in several adverts to an extent that one of the anti-Corbyn adverts became the most viewed advert in the UK. Tory specialists the likes of Tim Bale in addition, criticized Corby social media campaign strategy by claiming that he was Labour’s biggest strength while May was their biggest strength. The media also had superfluous negative remarks about Corbyn and the Labour party, according to Burtenshaw (1), the Media Reform Coalition was working to systematically undermine Corbyn’s position. Consequently, there was immense negative coverage with 60% of all articles that appeared on the mainstream media being negative and only 13% positive.
Conclusion
In summary, it is indubitable that the social media set momentum to the Labour Party's campaigns. A massive voter registration furthered the whole gamble by Corbyn, especially of the young people. Although most of the efforts to register the young were unbiased, the link between keenness to sign up young people and backing from Corbyn is evident to most people who were involved. A huge interest form popular grime artists gave the Labour Party a new energy and a viral outsider entreaty that added to Corbyn's non-mainstream party-political message. His online conversations and messages were widely shared on Facebook and Twitter, which not only led to the endorsement from other musical spheres but also to the signing up of the youth in large numbers.
Works Cited
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