With the UK General Election campaign concluded and won, researchers from Proofpoint Nexgate have analysed the Facebook and Twitter accounts associated with the nation’s major political parties, in order to establish what role social media has played in their battle to become the UK’s leading political party.
The analysis took place between April 1, 2015 and May 4, 2015 and the parties studied included the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Scottish National Party, UK Independence Party and the Green Party.
Proofpoint Nexgate has detailed it’s analysis in a new blog, however key findings from the study include:
The Conservative party has the most engagement on their main Facebook page with more than 467,000 likes—and their fans are the most active commenters with more than 50,000 comments on their main Facebook page.
The Labour party has the most engagement on their main Twitter account with more than 210,000 followers. The Labour party has the most total associated twitter accounts with more than 225. This includes the most verified accounts (27) and the most suspicious accounts (11). The Labour party has had the highest rate of porn content posted on their main Facebook page (10 in total).
The Green Party has the most associated Facebook pages with more than 540. Their Facebook fans are also the most profane of all fans (3 percent of all posts).
The Liberal Democrats have the most verified Facebook accounts with eight pages—they also had the most spam posted to their main page (39 total). They are also the most active on Twitter of all the parties with more than 3,300 posts to their main Twitter account during the research timeframe.
While the analysis didn’t give us any clues on the winning party, it does show that social media has been at the heart of the 2015 General Election.
Parties have used social media as a communications medium and voters have used it as a chance to voice their opinions. This ultimately shows that social media is a powerful tool for engaging with supporters or customers; however, it must be managed carefully. When used improperly, social media can cause irreparable damage to a company, or political party’s brand.