How Brexit Party won the social media battle

mickysavage
5 years ago
Categories: campaigning, Deep stuff, International, Media, Politics, uk politics
Tags: nigel farage

There is this fascinating recent article at the Guardian on how the Brexit Party’s success at the recent European Parliament election. They succeeded by pushing a very simple message, keeping it negative and the use of bots.

From the Guardian:

The Brexit party used simple messaging, an active social media presence and a “overwhelmingly negative” attack to win the online battle before the European elections, according to a new analysis of the campaign.

Nigel Farage’s party accounted for 51% of all shared content on Facebook and Twitter during the campaign, despite only producing 13% of the content. The analysis, by the 89up digital agency, said the “scale of their success went beyond what we were expecting”.

Meanwhile, Change UK, made up of pro-Remain former Labour and Tory MPs, were the losers of the internet campaign. Despite spending more than £100,000 on 1,000 Facebook ads in the week before the vote, Change UK generated 1.1% of all shares on the platform – fewer than any other UK-wide party.

Clearly the simplicity of the message combined with the immediacy of social media were major factors in the success. And as a corollary complex messaging, something us lefty intellectuals love, is not the way to persuade our target audience.

Again from the article:

The analysis looked at each party’s impact on Facebook and Twitter, their top-performing content, and the impact of their party leaders. The analysis found the Brexit party generated more than 45 times as many shares through “simpler, stronger messaging and a deeper understanding of their audience”. The campaign was “overwhelmingly negative”, focused 39% of all ads on attacking Labour and prioritised older Facebook users in England rather than 18-24-year-olds, or residents of Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The analysis also identified dozens of pro-Brexit party accounts with a “high likelihood of being inauthentic”. The accounts were all created relatively recently, had Brexit party profile pictures, tweeted dozens to hundreds of times a day, and posted almost exclusively about Brexit.

From posts made between 5 April and the election, The Brexit party made 212 to Change UK’s 62 posts. It received 325,900 shares, compared to Change UK’s 7,200 shares. Change UK’s messaging was criticised as complex, suggesting that a vote for them would lead to a second referendum, which would in turn allow the British public to have a final say. The Brexit party’s posts were more direct and emotionally charged, compelling followers to “save democracy, support Brexit”, or help Britain avoid humiliation. The Brexit party’s Facebook posts were an average of 19 words long. Change UK’s were 71 – more than three times longer.

In 212 posts, the Brexit party avoided talk of immigration or the benefits of Brexit, focusing instead on the idea that cancelling Brexit would be undemocratic, or as they’d put it: “This isn’t about left or right, it’s about right and wrong.”

Something for the left to ponder …