The Great Debate UK
TweetTracker shows Nick Clegg most liked
- Paul Afshar is senior account manager at public relations firm Edelman. The opinions expressed are his own. -
A famous German writer once said “personality is everything”, which could not ring truer for the UK’s General Election, and particularly “likeability” on social media.
With the public, to lesser and greater extents, unbothered by detail of party manifesto commitments, the sturdy Scottishness of Gordon Brown vs. the persuasive tones of David Cameron and, arguably Nick Clegg, act as barometers of voters’ intentions better than their understanding of National Insurance contributions.
Should the party leaders be concerned about their likeability on social media?
Yes, according to Edelman’s TweetTracker tool. On Twitter, with its 2.5 million UK users, personality is everything.
TweetTracker comprehensively assesses personality ratings of the three main party leaders – David Cameron, Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg – on Twitter, giving them an “approval/ disapproval” score, like those used in U.S. Presidential campaigns.
The battle for Twitter
- Paul Afshar is senior account manager at public relations firm Edelman. The opinions expressed are his own. -
Twitter claimed its first scalp in the Election campaign on Friday with the sacking of Labour candidate for Moray in Scotland, Stuart MacLennan, following a series of controversial tweets on the site.
Whether or not 140 characters will influence the election campaign is a moot point, but with 2.5 million UK users including the PM’s wife Sarah Brown and actor Stephen Fry, Twitter will no doubt have some influence on conversation around the campaign.
To track its impact, Edelman has used its Political TweetLevel tool to track and measure the influence, trust engagement and popularity of the top 150 politicians, bloggers, candidates and journalists, ranked by their influence, on Twitter during the campaign.
TweetLevel measures the influence of individuals on Twitter based on a number of factors (including re-tweets, followers, frequency of tweets, references etc measured by an algorithm).
But enough about the science and down to the findings.
The battle for influence on Twitter is decisively being won by Labour, a trick the party will no doubt want to emulate in the polls. Labour politicians and candidates are greater in number and by influence in the top 150 with MP for West Bromwich East Tom Watson topping the ranking, beating even Downing Street and David Cameron. Grant Shapps, the Shadow Housing Minister beats all other Conservative MPs for influence, closely followed by party favourite Eric Pickles.
As the previous comment noted, Labour voters are quite active, and as Twitter is an amplifier, all the action is in an echo chamber. Twitter, Facebook or any other social media website will not decide the election because like it or not, it’s the swinging voters that decide the match, not the MPs tweets (and to be honest, what value does a tweet have in cyberspace). Also, UK politics is structured: Always Left vs Right with a bit of fanaticism on the sides, class mentality grilled into one at birth. Swinging voters are probably smart enough to look beyond social media slanging matches.
Why trust is the new currency for banks
- Robert Phillips is UK CEO of Edelman, a public relations firm. The opinions expressed are his own. -
Trust is an entry which does not appear on a bank’s balance sheet. As an important asset, perhaps it should.
As banks struggle to get back to their feet, however, another deficit would not be welcome. According to Edelman’s 10th annual Trust Barometer, published last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, trust in the UK banking sector has fallen to an all time low, plummeting to just 21 percent, down from 41 percent in 2007.
The UK banks are by no means alone: trust in U.S. banks fell from 68 percent in 2007 to 29 percent in 2010 as the banking giants on Wall Street ran into a new wave of criticism from Main Street.
However, it is not all bad news for business: trust in business as an institution has risen globally to 54 percent, driven by significant jumps in a number of Western countries (up 20 points in Italy and 18 points in the U.S.) and higher scores in the BRIC countries (67 percent in India and 62 percent in China).
In the UK, trust in business (47 percent) remains low but stable over the past 10 years. With almost 70 percent of respondents expecting companies to return to “business as usual” once the economic crisis is over, what lessons can be learned by banks as they seek to restore trust?
In an age of bailouts and bonuses, banks must acknowledge that yesterday’s “business as usual” is no longer common currency. For the first time, “trust” (72 percent) and “transparent and honest business practices” (64 percent) are seen as the most important drivers of corporate reputation in the UK (and globally).
damaged Gordon Brown’s perception, and Cameron’s ill-fated interview on gay rights, broadcast late March on Channel 4, saw his favourability scores decrease significantly.
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With over 50,000 Tweets on the three party leaders in the past 3 weeks, half of those during the election campaign itself, the parties should be paying attention to their Leaders’ likeability on Twitter.