Last Friday, the launch of Alex Salmond’s Alba party was an extremely online affair. Hosted on Zoom, the event was live-streamed via Facebook and YouTube.
Despite technical difficulties and on-screen awkward silences, the launch of Alba was all that Scotland seemed to be talking about on Twitter.
Nowadays, 88% of Scottish households have access to the internet, and using social media is one of the most common reasons for Scots to log online. This figure, alongside the fact that the upcoming Holyrood elections are taking place during a global pandemic - where door-to-door campaigning is limited - means that social media is going to be a key battleground in the run up to May 6.
READ MORE: Could Alex Salmond get seats in Holyrood?
Even in elections that took place before the pandemic, political parties that had the most effective social media campaigns have gone on to electoral victory. From Obama’s groundbreaking use of online advertising and voter mobilisation in 2008, through to the cutting simplicity of the Tories ‘Get Brexit Done’ digital messaging in 2019, via of course Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ memes in 2016, it is clear that social media matters in determining who wins on election day.
As we are yet to see any polling that includes the Alba party, and given that social media shapes elections, we can turn to social media engagement figures to give us a preliminary sense of how much support Alex Salmond’s party has.
In the space of a week Alba has amassed a following of just over 9,000 Twitter followers, but on Facebook they have only gained a following of 1597 people. These do not seem like the levels of support needed for a party to have electoral success.
Indeed, the small social media following is surely a disappointment for a party that is led by a former First Minister, ran by a former SNP digital strategist, and has the support of several controversial yet supposedly popular pro-independence bloggers.
By using the social media analytics tool CrowdTangle we can see the Facebook interactions that Alba has gained over the past week, and again the numbers will be disappointing for anyone who is under the illusion that Alba represents a large grassroots movement.
Alba only has a daily average of 732 Facebook interactions (likes, comments, shares, reactions, and follows). To put that into perspective with other pro-independence parties, the Scottish Greens have double the amount of daily interactions (1429), whereas the SNP outperforms everyone else with an average of over 20,000 Facebook interactions every day.
READ MORE: Alba Party urged to cut ties to Wings Over Scotland blogger after Sturgeon 'decapitation' row
If Alba does have a large base of supporters, they aren’t engaging with the party much on Facebook, which is where you would expect to see them interacting and sharing content across their social networks.
Alba supporters also aren’t rallying around their leader in large numbers. Alex Salmond’s official Facebook page has only had an average of 604 daily interactions. In fact, when you look at the responses to Salmond’s launch of Alba on Facebook we see more negative than positive responses.
Out of the top 50 comments on Salmond’s post about Alba, 46 of them express negative sentiments, with many independence supporters criticizing the former FM for ‘sabotaging the independence movement’ and ‘continuing to undermine independence’. Others suggest Salmond has ‘an ego the size of Ben Nevis’, and they describe Alba as the ‘best thing that’s happened to the Tories in years’. Positive comments about Alba, or Salmond, are few and far between.
We await the polls for a more detailed and representative insight into public opinion on Alba, but it’s clear that they are yet to galvanise much support online. In an election during the midst of a pandemic, a startup party like Alba will need to have a large and engaged base of supporters to achieve electoral success, even on the list. A lot can happen in the weeks between now and May 6, but Alba’s small online following doesn’t bode well for them.
Dr Rhys Crilley is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow and part of the Department of Politics and International Relations at University of Glasgow
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel