Viral memes are ruining our politics. Share if you agree

Something goes viral online when a certain (undefined) number of people link to it, share it, comment on, or interact with it. Because of the way social media works, content spreads exponentially. One person shares a video to their one hundred online friends, each of which can then share it to their one hundreds, and so on. Just like any virus.

As a result, a lot of internet content goes viral. It used to happen accidentally, and often still does. Take for example that ridiculous white and gold / blue and black dress, which started with an innocuous photo taken at a wedding on the tiny Scottish island of Colonsay.

But increasingly, things are designed to go viral. For marketers getting content viral is the dream. There is so much stuff online that it’s often the only way of getting people to actually see yours. Companies invest huge amounts of money in trying to figure out how it all works. In an excellent little book about digital memes the Israeli academic Limor Shifman argues that content goes viral if it has the same features as Richard Dawkins’ Selfish Genes: longevity, fecundity and copy fidelity. Good examples include: "Leave Britney alone!", "Nyan Cat", or Downfall parodies. Beyond that, however, it remains something of a mystery.

And, slowly but surely, this obsession with virality is invading politics. It’s not new: a recent book by Karine Nahon and Jeff Hemsley, Going Viral, pointed to the example of the 1955 arrest of Rosa Parks. When that happened, 40,000 people boycotted the bus network before the press even covered the story. Phones, hand bills and word of mouth were the mediums of transmission.

Perhaps the best known example came in the 2012 US presidential campaign. As soon as Mitt Romney made his notorious "binders full of women" remark, it had a parody Twitter account, parody blogs, and more. Obama himself referenced the phrase, saying he didn’t need binders full of women – he had plenty of great women working for him already.

It’s obvious why this matters. Viral content can reach millions of people: think of "we are the 99 per cent", or, more recently, Ukip Weather – a campaign to get "It's Raining Men" back into the charts following a Ukip councillor blaming homosexuality for the recent floods. They don’t just stay online either, but rather spark real world activity. Last year Paul Cookson posted a rant on Facebook about extortionate prices during school holidays. Soon after, 150,000 people had shared it and an e-petition to raise the issue in Parliament passed the necessary 100,000 signatures to force the Backbench Business Committee to consider it for parliamentary time.

Yes, things were talked about before, especially if they caught the moment. When Bill Clinton hammered George Bush senior in that famous 1992 debate, it was widely discussed and reported on. "How has the national debt personally affected each of your lives?" asked an audience member, "and if it hasn’t, how can you honestly find a cure?"

‘I’m sure it has [affected me]…’ stumbled Bush. "Are you suggesting that if someone has means the national debt doesn’t affect them? I’m not sure I get it, help me with the question." He goes on to say that he read in a church bulletin something or other about teenage pregnancy. Then in steps Clinton and absolutely nails it. Clinton: in touch. Bush: distant.

Imagine if that happened again today! There would be a sharing frenzy. It would be parodied. There would be special effects and Facebook pages about church bulletins. A Twitter account called "Man of Means" and another called "National Debt" would duke it out. There would be music and captions and cats and lols. All to make it all that bit more exciting, that bit more shareable.

Take the Green Party’s recent election video, in which a boy band of Miliband, Cameron, Clegg and Farage sang together in harmony – all the same, see. People complained it was inaccurate (why were Farage and Clegg part of the same side?) that it was hypocritical (aren’t the Greens meant to be about serious politics?) that it was funny, that it wasn’t funny, that it was badly made, that it worked, that it didn’t work.

All of which is utterly irrelevant. The point of the video was that it would be shared. On that measure it was been an unqualified success. It has been viewed on YouTube over three quarters of a million times. Three times more than the Labour equivalent – and that had someone from Lord of The Rings in it. The Tory campaign video? No idea, because I can’t find it. When you search YouTube for it, the Green’s video comes up again. When the world’s awash with content and attention spans are short, what matters is views. In an age of viral politics, the Green’s vid was a knock-out win.

So what’s been viralling on Twitter in the campaign so far? Together with my Demos colleagues, we worked out some of the top bits of content to date. Here they are:

There is a strange new army of digital campaigners on all sides, waiting patiently to either produce content like this that will viral (yes, it’s been verbed) on Twitter, catch a mood, a flame, whatever. My colleague Carl Miller has written of "guerrilla memes" – with opposing sides designing immediate response content in the hope it goes viral, and often hijacking the ideas or speeches of the other side. It’s often created by people that aren’t central characters in the party, perhaps active supporters but not engaged to do this in a formal capacity.

Viral politics is fun but it makes me nervous. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I like my politics argumentative, aggressive, shouty, but wherever possible accurate and detailed. Viral politics is the often the opposite. Short, overly simplified, snappy, and scant opportunity for discussion. What matters is views, hits, shares, likes. Don’t care how you get them, just get them! And that incentivises content to be ever more outrageous, simple, or funny. It also produces something else: the narrowing of political discussion, since virals tend to percolate within the same group: and that can close off discussion, making the converted more zealous, and more entrenched. We also took a look at how these virals spread on Twitter, by mapping them against the different political tribes.

What this slightly complicated map tells you is that virals circulate in their own little galaxies: Labour ones tend to be shared among Labour (top left), Tory ones around Tories (bottom right), and Galloway ones around Galloway. The only one that was cross party was Douglas Carswell’s peculiar tweet about Hello Kitty, which we later learnt came from his small child accidently tweeting from his account. This too reduces politics to little more than goodies and baddies, to simple moral choices and decisions. Cameron is a liar. Ed’s a crypto-communist. The Tories are privatising the NHS. Labour will bankrupt us again. Etc, etc.

The truth is rarely so black and white. But who cares for the enormous differences between Clegg and Farage? They’re both white men, and it wouldn’t have beenas shareable if there weren't four of them (who’s ever heard of a three piece boy band?) so what the hell. And that’s coming from a party that says they want to encourage serious, honest politics. So what if Romney, stupid phrase notwithstanding, was actually saying he’s been trying to get more women into his cabinet, and doing so quite successfully? His cabinet had more women in senior positions that any other in America. Who cares, though? Binders of women is well funny innit. Haha! Binders full of women! What an idiot! Share with your mates.

Viral politics might also mean that politicians become ever more fearful of speaking off the cuff, terrified of speaking their mind because there’s a team of Photoshop-campaigners on hand to twist and mangle their words. Or they start speaking in viral language, in the hope their quotes can be viraled. And so politics becomes ever more staid, scripted and dull – and yet more polarised and entrenched. This is the last thing we need.

On the whole, the impact of social media on politics is a very good one. There are many - overwhelmingly positive - ways that social media and internet communication is changing politics. But viral politics isn’t one of them. If you agree, please share.