Did ‘old media’ really win the election?

So, this was meant to be the election that TV transformed. In my mind, what really revolutionised this election – or certainly the coverage of it – is the web.

The best thing about the live TV debates was not what was occurring on the TV screen, but on my husband’s laptop and my iPhone. From immediate comments by political columnists to the instant polls run by newspaper websites, access to biased and un-biased opinion had never been easier.

Most striking of all, however, was the sub-conscious acknowledgement of defeat by the old-style media power houses to new media – a frequent discussion in our household. ‘Citizen journalism’ has been scoffed at by the mainstream media ever since it began to take form as a concept. The idea that Joe Public could deliver stories to the masses to rival the likes of the BBC, The Times or the Sun has been dismissed as impossible. But, time and again, reporters on each channel began reporting breaking news by referring to twitter postings or blog entries.

The biggest story of the night was of thousands of dissatisfied potential voters as polling stations closed with queues of the electorate still outside. The BBC, ITV and Sky correspondents were all safely stationed miles away waiting for results in key marginal seats. This was a story that broke and grew virally, by text and online posting.

A month earlier I had had dinner with two university friends – one working for a ‘traditional’ bank and one working in online journalism – and we sat trying to explain to ‘banking friend’ about exactly this – citizen journalism and the power and value of on the ground/of the minute information. We had used the analogy of an explosion happening in Old Street and us reporting via our iPhones from the restaurant we were in– that we would provide instantaneous information, seconds/minutes if not hours ahead of traditional reporting. She didn’t get it – I’ll revisit that conversation and see how she was watching the election.

So we’ve had party candidates fired over twitter posts, pictures of disenfranchised voters posted on facebook and constituency results arriving on Twitter. These were stories by the public for the public. It’s not over yet – but I’m glued to my Sky News App for updates in a way I’d have never considered possible before and for me, it’s the power of digital that’s altered that.

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