Today, Sarah, one of our Mindbubblers, has investigated the impact of politician participation to women & mums online community.
As a Mumsnet virgin I had never before considered how politicians are accessing influential women through social communities.
Despite being the mother of two small boys and with education at the top of my worry list as Big School beckons for Eldest in September, I have found politicians so remote, their sound bites so devoid of humanity that I’ve buried my head in the sand and ignored most of their rhetoric and promises, thinking it irrelevant to me.
Then, with some prompting, I tapped into the Mumsnet interview with Gordon Brown and found myself wishing I’d heard the webchat for myself. (Our PM admitted he lost his web chat virginity to the website).
Unless I’m working I rarely take time out at home to scour my PC for anything other than my computer weakness for house websites.
I’ve never sat back with a ‘virtual G&T’ to partake in a bit of online goss, but sitting with Gordon Brown rather than Gordon’s Gin in front of me I felt, for the first time, like I was part of a community and he was talking to me.
His instant response to members of the Mumsnet community, who’d asked clearly thought out and executed questions on issues entirely on my radar, was an absolute breath of fresh air as were the conversational but factual answers in English, rather than in the Westminster-boys-club garble we’re used to hearing on telly.
I’m not saying I’m suddenly going to campaign for Mr Brown but it gives me the opportunity to look over the interviews and weigh his arguments up against the opposition in order to make a clearer decision when the time comes.
There is criticism that Internet campaigning is ‘dumbing down’, but we’re not all political animals. Many of us, I speak for myself, just want to hear the bits relevant to our life at the time and how it will impact on what we imagine will be happening in the coming years: for me that’s education, pensions, healthcare and care for the elderly.
As Dominic Campbell, founder of consultancy FutureGov says: “Politics is possibly getting diluted and dumbed-down but that is not always a bad thing. There needs to be varied spaces online for different kinds of debate.”
And I agree – I need the simplicity – but I still can’t find myself jumping on the Ed Miliband-wagon and becoming a top Twitterer like the Energy and Climate Change Secretary. That just seems a 140-key taps too much of a waste of time for me at the moment.
The party leaders have each made a canny decision to stop in at Mumsnet on their journey towards the next General Election? Are they softening us women up, tapping into our ego?
It’s a great coup for Mumsnet’s founders Justine Roberts and Carrie Longton, to have landed the crème de la crème of British politics but will we find in a year’s time, that these men are simply the masters of woo?
Will their eagerness to take part in such a personal form of interview, like the new-fangled web chat, stop once the Election results have been revealed?
By the time of the election, if Mr Brown’s chat is anything to go by, I will be sitting down with a virtual vineyard of plonk at every opportunity. But, be warned pay little attention to our pleas and concerns after the event and you’ll leave us all feeling as cheated as a deserted wife, and a woman scorned…
