Regardless of your politics, the SNP's stunning election victory may have one very beneficial side-effect: dragging Scotland out of the digital dark ages.
Quite how dark these are was demonstrated by Newsnight Scotland last week. Katie Grant and former Labour hackette Lorraine Davidson joined berouged Andrew Neil wannabe Gordon Brewer in declaring that new media had no impact on the Scottish general election campaign. The “new media” voice was provided by Gerry Hassan, who is a sound cove but a self-confessed late adopter. Quite why Grant and Davidson were inflicted on us, I have no idea. Perhaps they saw an interweb once.
At no point did Newsnicht define what they meant by “new media”: the web, social networks, mobile, email, Usenet or World of Warcraft? And at no point did they point out that far more Scots use Facebook, Twitter et al than watch their wee segment.
Where were the new media experts? Or the people who make a living from this stuff? This is not just me bleating because I didn't get my fuzzy fizog on the goggle box: there are some very exciting projects in Scotland that could have corrected the programme's erroneous conceit. How about speaking to someone from STV, who appear to be building a new media deathstar? Or Mashable? Or The Daily Mash? Or The Daily Dust? Or Newsnet Scotland? Or “Scotland's digital guy” Craig McGill? Or social marketing genius Andrew Burnett? Or one of the many bloggers who add so much to the online debate?
There's no excuse for this at the well-funded BBC, which has new media talent coming out of its ears. Except for viewers in Scotland, apparently.
We're all used to the usual lazy, lazy, lazy Newsnicht approach of getting their old pals to jaw on and on, but this time their complacency was cruelly exposed. Because while Brewer and pals were parroting the mainstream media line that this web stuff is just a flash in the pan for geeks and perverts, the SNP were crafting a stunning, historic, landslide victory using … drum roll … new media.
The übersmart Kirk Torrance and digital guru Ewan McIntosh were using social media as it should be used – as a search engine for finding people's sympathies. The party's new media team used social networks to identify targets for their offline activity, marketing which made use of an iPhone app to record real-time intel from canvassers. Ewan has documented it all on his websbite and it is a thing of awe-inspiring beauty.
It's not just BBC that causes despair, though. Before starting the Caley Merc, I worked as a consultant for the Scottish public sector.
Let me tell you, the will to live is a fragile thing indeed.
While working on a ludicrously ill-conceived project that cost a fortune but never came to fruition, I suggested publicising a website by creating a page for it on Wikipedia. This was shot down as “too risky”. It's your money they're spending…
I knew I had to get out when I was pitching to a marketing bod billed as an expert on new media. I suggested that the campaign website they wanted might benefit from the use of “tags” to aid navigation. They thought that was a great idea because they'd never heard of tags. This was in 2009. Tags have been commonplace since 2003. It's your money they're spending…
And it's your money they're wasting on lame website after lame website packed with dull content of interest only to the dreaded “stakeholders”. What's needed is an immediate “vale for money” audit of all Scottish public sector digital activity to see what has been of use to real people.
In short, with the exception of a few NHS services, there's only one website needed for the public sector: scotland.gov.uk, which has long been a centre of digital excellence. It's the place the user expects to find this information, why waste money on building other sites? It's the content and social connections that matter.
And don't get me started on the Scottish Government's digital advertising. We carry SG ads, but only bargain-bucket ones provided by an agency in, you guessed, London. Where's the public sector support for start-up publications? Why don't they advertise with Scottish new media outside the cosy arrangements with mainstream media? There's a lot of hot air from self-appointed new media experts in the public sector about supporting online innovation.
But they don't put their money where their mouths are. Again, this isn't special pleading for the Caley Merc. There's a large, vibrant online content community in Scotland – and it gets very little support from anyone except its large number of readers.
In short, there's a big job to do to change Scotland's approach to digital, starting with the Scottish Government's huge marketing and advertising budgets.
Thankfully, we have a governing party swept to power by new media and who have access to the brightest possible digital talent.
Politics aside, I look forward to a brighter digital day dawning on Scotland.
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