Safety first for Election 2010

There’s an interesting debate emerging among public sector and government comms people about the sense – or otherwise – of personal blogging during election purdah. See Simon Wakeman and Steph Gray’s blogs.

My initial reaction was that pudah – the name given to the period in the run up to an election – should make no difference to public servants for two reasons:

Firstly, the actual purpose of purdah is to prevent the incumbent party from using the machinery of government to get an unfair advantage in the election. It’s a government communicator’s job to promote, explain and defend the government’s policies. But once an election is called they’re no longer the government’s policies, they’re the policies of just one of the parties standing for election. Hence no government publicity campaigns, no big announcements, etc. But personal blogs are not part of the machinery of government, so no problem.

Secondly, the need for public servants (certainly those at any level of seniority or experience) to be unbiased and to serve the administration of the day exists all year round. Purdah should be no different. And I’ve not seen any blogs from public servants that stray over that line.

I’m no longer a civil servant, but I’m still acutely aware that I need to exercise great judgement about what I blog on, particularly if it concerns clients – public sector or private. I offer the very best professional advice to everyone I work with, but maintain a level of professional detachment. Just as today’s opposition could be tomorrow’s government, so could today’s client’s competitors be tomorrow’s client.

So no problem there then – everyone carry on as you were! But Simon and Steph point out that purdah is a particularly sensitive time, and as we gear up for our first election with an established social media, no-one quite knows what the rules are.

I don’t think we’ll see the level of sophistication in the use of social media that we saw in the States with Obama’s campaign, where it was used for massive levels of fundraising and mobilising and coordinating grassroots activists. But there’s no doubt the internet will set the agenda far more than it ever has in any previous election. Social media is perfect for mischief making.

Gaffes will be on you tube before they make the 6 o’clock news, and we’ll see doctored, falsified and made up videos and images circulating. The Tory poster of Cameron and his pledge on the NHS was doctored in all manner of ways and doing the rounds within hours of being published. Some of these images and videos will be amusing, but some will no doubt be very malicious. Anything anyone says has the potential to be spun out of context and the immediacy and lack of verification on the web makes that potentially very dangerous.

So while you can exercise the greatest judgement over your posts and tweets, you can’t be sure who is following you, and how they are using what you put out there. I think Simon and Steph are right to exercise caution, no one will want to be the first social media casualty of Election 2010.