New media was the real General Election winner
AS THE dust settles on this most extraordinary of general elections, it’s entirely reasonable to think that Theresa May will have cause to remember the words of Brenda from Bristol, who, on the day that the contest was announced, mournfully said to the BBC’s Jon Kay: “You’re joking! Not another one... Oh for God’s sake. Honestly, I can’t stand this... Why does she [May] need to do it?”
And so began an election campaign which, though it will be forever linked with the tragic events in Manchester and London, was notable for its concentration on the personalities of May and Jeremy Corbyn. As Loughborough University’s Centre for Research and Communication in Culture highlighted, this was an extremely presidential election where the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the main protagonists were the focus of debate.
As far as the press is concerned, the hostility directed toward Corbyn, particularly in the final week of the campaign, was intense and unprecedented. To be sure, the Mail and the Sun have traditionally targeted successive Labour leaders but the level of abuse heaped upon Corbyn plumbed new depths.
On the eve of polling day, the first 13 pages of the Daily Mail were intended to provoke fear and loathing. On page one, Corbyn was pictured alongside Diane Abbott and John McDonnell as an “apologist for terror”, while inside the paper the attempts to link with him with terrorism both past and present were meant to communicate his contempt for Britain and British values.
The Sun’s editorial was equally damning, encapsulating two years of anti-Corbyn sentiment with this togetherness. Social media was the glue that bound essentially disparate groups of people together.
While all that I have written may go some way to explaining why the Labour Party performed much better than anybody expected, it still obviously didn’t win the election. That it feels that way to many of its supporters is largely because it gained 31 seats and because the expected Tory landslide (remember that as recently as mid-May experts were talking about a 212-seat Conservative majority) did not happen.
To some observers, though, the election campaign has been a “stage-managed sham” where the main party leaders avoided journalistic interrogation and meaningful debate. But this was nothing new – didn’t Mrs Thatcher’s rallies resemble presidential conventions, with warm-up music and Union flags provided for everybody to wave? These events were all ticketed, invitation-only affairs, too.
Of far more immediate concern to media scholars is the future of the right-wing press as influencers of public action. For Roy Greenslade, former editor of the Daily Mirror, this election represents the end of its domination. As academic James Rodgers writes, the Prime Minister has learned that the support of the traditional Fleet Street outlets is no longer enough. Week after week of relentless negativity toward Corbyn did not result in a May majority.
All this may be true, but the Conservatives are still in power – that alone makes me wary of sounding the death knell just yet.