Which Irish parties use social media effectively?

An Ciarraioch

Obviously, with Irish constituencies being geographically sprawling, old-fashioned door-to-door canvassing will always dominate electoral campaigns, but which parties are fully utilising social networks to their political potential, overcoming financial handicaps in the process? No surprise to see SF topping the follower count, while Labour's "Talk to Joan " campaign suggests they don't quite have the hang of evolving trends. The chart, for what it's worth:

1. Sinn Féin 35k
2. Labour 25k
3. Fianna Fáil 17.8k
4. Fine Gael 16.9k
5. Greens 14.8k
6. Socialists 3,800
7. Social Democrats 3,330
8. Renua 3k
9. People Before Profit 160

Seth Brundle

AAA has 8.3k likes but also have a number of localised sites (though the membership probably like the main one also).

To be honest, is the number of likes really relevant?

FreudianSlippers

Sinn Féin is an odd choice. MLMcD basically retweets everything she sees that is even remotely left-wing and Gerry tweets more about his teddy-bear than anything coherent.

IMO politics and twitter don't mix well.

BoJack Horseman

Websites that require social media logins do pretty well for SF.

theJournal.ie is effectively a duplicate of 'an phoblacht'..... The content of the site is adjusting to this accordingly.

An Ciarraioch

BoJack Horseman wrote: »

Websites that require social media logins do pretty well for SF.

theJournal.ie is effectively a duplicate of 'an phoblacht'..... The content of the site is adjusting to this accordingly.

Likewise politics.ie, especially on any thread relating to Irish history.

Flatzie_poo

Leo Varadkar after that burn on Paul Murphy!

expectationlost

An Ciarraioch wrote: »

Obviously, with Irish constituencies being geographically sprawling, old-fashioned door-to-door canvassing will always dominate electoral campaigns, but which parties are fully utilising social networks to their political potential, overcoming financial handicaps in the process? No surprise to see SF topping the follower count, while Labour's "Talk to Joan " campaign suggests they don't quite have the hang of evolving trends. The chart, for what it's worth:

1. Sinn Féin 35k
2. Labour 25k
3. Fianna Fáil 17.8k
4. Fine Gael 16.9k
5. Greens 14.8k
6. Socialists 3,800
7. Social Democrats 3,330
8. Renua 3k
9. People Before Profit 160

used effectively for their own supporters or for others?

Scofflaw

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

Sinn Féin is an odd choice. MLMcD basically retweets everything she sees that is even remotely left-wing and Gerry tweets more about his teddy-bear than anything coherent.

IMO politics and twitter don't mix well.

I have to say I regard Gerry's Twitter feed as a work of genius. By someone.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Muahahaha

I remember reading an article after the 2011 election that FG had some 30 odd members of Young Fine Gael monitoring and engaging with all social media platforms during the three week election campaign.

The Shinnerbot syndrome visible on the Journal and Politics I view as just lots of lone wolves with identical opinions. I don't see SF as organised when it comes to social media, just that their younger party members are very active on it. They don't seem to have any coherent strategy to actually harness it effectively

I'd see FG as more organised on social media. They're the party that hired in election campaign expertise from the US where social media had a huge influence on Obama getting elected. AFAIK FG also hired a social media manager for the party a couple of years back too so they do take it reasonably seriously, a lot more so than FF or Labour IMO

expectationlost

Muahahaha wrote: »

I remember reading an article after the 2011 election that FG had some 30 odd members of Young Fine Gael monitoring and engaging with all social media platforms during the three week election campaign.

Muahahaha wrote: »

The Shinnerbot syndrome visible on the Journal and Politics I view as just lots of lone wolves with identical opinions. I don't see SF as organised when it comes to social media, just that their younger party members are very active on it. They don't seem to have any coherent strategy to actually harness it effectively

yes maybe SF have more spontanious SM users but they also have a SM strategy which mostly entails pumping out picture quotes (like the other parties do now), its a question of whether they have somebody who will run tools to collect the engagement data and connnect it to real people like is done in America and the UK?

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

IrishProd

BoJack Horseman wrote: »

Websites that require social media logins do pretty well for SF.

theJournal.ie is effectively a duplicate of 'an phoblacht'..... The content of the site is adjusting to this accordingly.

I thought the opposite, Hugh O´Connell must be on his summer holidays at the moment then.

BoJack Horseman

IrishProd wrote: »

I thought the opposite, Hugh O´Connell must be on his summer holidays at the moment then.

He's the only writer who isn't outwardly anti-government.

Though I dobt most of their 'writers' care either way.... every political headline is an anti-government dog whistle to bring in the clicks

Social media login is required to comment... There seem as many SP commenters as there are actual SP voters.

Ren2k7

BoJack Horseman wrote: »

Websites that require social media logins do pretty well for SF.

theJournal.ie is effectively a duplicate of 'an phoblacht'..... The content of the site is adjusting to this accordingly.

Good god no. The Journal is fiercely anti-SF as a cursory glance at any of that site's wittering's will prove.

BoJack Horseman

Ren2k7 wrote: »

Good god no. The Journal is fiercely anti-SF as a cursory glance at any of that site's wittering's will prove.

Like what?

Ren2k7

BoJack Horseman wrote: »

Like what?

http://www.thejournal.ie/state-of-the-nation-greece-sinn-fein-2190803-Jul2015/

http://www.thejournal.ie/sinn-fein-dublin-mayor-2016-2-2187360-Jun2015/