The Buzz Bin

by Mike Mulvihill

There is nothing quite like political controversy cooked up in the land of meat pies, pints and the Queen. The latest controversy is full of contradictions. It is a great mile marker for the ever symbiotic connection between traditional media and social media (and vice versa). And, it is significant for reasons more societal than social. The U.K. has faced immigration issues longer than the States, and things have become a bit more politicized than here. (They actually have two elected member of Parliament who got there on the wings of some pretty severe, if not Fascist views on immigration and immigrants).

From a social viewpoint, this latest controversy underscores how, from a PR perspective, traditional and social media constantly feed one another. Media today mean everyone with credentials and anyone with a keyboard and a following. From a societal viewpoint, it’s more than a little bit scary.

Here’s a little background on the controversy in question (with some background on some of the players). First a quick synopsis: The top-ranked U.K. political talk show (the BBC’s “Question Time” – think more like a snarky health care town hall meeting format than “Meet the Press”) last Thursday had on its show Nick Griffin, leader of British National Party (BNP) whose mission statement reads like a page from a Klu Klux Klan playbook. The show’s producers proceeded to set up Griffin in front of 200 audience questioners who pound him for his views while four normal interviewees stood by to provide stark contrast color commentary. Later, it is revealed the BBC violated its audience “random” selection guidelines to stack the studio crowd against Griffin and even urging them to ask “provocative” questions.

If you watch any of the video clip contained in this post (yes, it is a long one), you can see that Griffin gets lambasted. But the result wasn’t necessarily all bad for the bad guys.  The BBC had 243 complaints that the show was biased against Griffin, compared with 114 complaints about him appearing on it. Coverage was all over the newspapers the following day, some of it fairly positive for Griffin and the BNP, and some of it sounding dire warnings of a growing anti-immigrant base.

The traditional media bottom line: This episode of BBC “Question Time” attracted 8 million viewers, a record viewership for a 30-year-old program. The show was so anticipated that leading U.K. newspapers, The Guardian and The Telegraph, ran live blogs during the show (which complemented the show’s existing method of engaging viewers by crawling their text messages across the screen during the broadcast. The show’s Live Chat had the most participants ever.)  No less than 68,000 blog posts were generated. And Tweets mentioning Nick Griffin’s name skyrocketed.

TwitterScoop graphic:

Like the traditional media coverage, there were a surprising number of positive social media comments about Griffin and the BNP. In fact, the commentary seems disproportionately more favorable than the 6 percent of the vote the BNP garnered in the last elections. All this causing our cross Atlantic allies to ponder if social media can play an Obama campaign-like role in their political process with national elections coming in 2010.

Politics, especially when combined with controversy, is the oil that lubricates traditional media. It sells newspapers, drives viewership and, thereby, generates revenue. It appears social media shares a kindred spirit on the politics and controversy front. Traffic spikes and users engage when these ingredients are in the mix, especially when the message engages or, in this case, scares us enough to capture our attention.