The National Churn
How Online Media Didn’t Influence the Senedd Election
From Planet 243
by Gareth Leaman
Gareth Leaman argues why the reliance of parties on the ‘Twittering Machine’ is mistaken. He puts forward that progressive causes are undermined through a dependency on platforms whose economic logic of harvesting attention and publishing ephemera cannot lead to meaningful change.
If your awareness of this year’s Welsh Parliament election had been refracted solely through online sources, you could be forgiven for inferring that Wales’ static political map was facing an existential reckoning. Only a cursory glance at the conversations conducted on social media, or facilitated by the many online news websites that have been established since the previous Senedd poll, would leave anyone with the impression that independence-supporting parties would see an insurgent rise in support, or the abolitionist threat of the Far Right would wreak terror upon the devolved institution, such was the prominence afforded these duelling narratives.
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