How Labour Can Improve Its Media Presence - And Why It Is Important

By The Pragmatic Leftist 🌹 (@thepragmaticleftist.com)
Published:

It is no surprise that Labour has been struggling in the opinion polls since last year’s election victory. A Conservative-sympethetic news media landscape (owned by billionaires) has always been an uphill struggle to contest with, but the party also grapples with self-inflicted wounds and optics mistakes that require urgent attention if they hope to turn around their fortunes.

Some may believe that quietly focusing on governing \-- sowing the seeds if you may \-- will allow Labour to weather early unpopularity, reaping the rewards closer to the next election with a strong track record to show. Whilst this approach is noble, it is perilous and ill-advised. Media overwhelmingly shapes public opinion, influencing how voters will judge Labour’s performance in government irrespective of actual outcomes. This risk is increased by social media and leaves the party vulnerable to deliberate, targeted disinformation campaigns from opponents. It is an arena where misinformation spreads rapidly and unchecked, due to algorithms which favour sensationalism and which lack accountability when presenting falsehoods. This creates an extraordinary disadvantage for a party merely relying on the truth of what it has accomplished to persuade voters (information which may not even reach its audience on these platforms without Labour’s active presence).

Furthermore, the middle-aged voters of tomorrow are increasingly consuming their news content from social media over traditional news outlets. These platforms are both unregulated and fertile ground for radicalisation. If Labour neglects these spaces, it creates a vacuum for the right wing to exploit, who will happily steer young voters towards extremism. Conceding the online battlefield while also failing to tackle traditional media risks alienating both current and future voters.

To secure its future, Labour must embrace a bold media strategy that seizes the narrative and keeps the conversation of this current government on its terms. Here’s how they can do it.

Strengthening Party Messaging

A unified message from senior party members resonates more strongly with voters. This harmony doesn’t happen by accident \- it is the result of deliberate orchestration from leadership, with senior members as the conductors.

Regular Press Conferences

So the starting point for the party should be deciding on a clear theme (or themes) for the week on what it is intending to get done. Focusing on just one or two avoids the risk of confusing voters with too many kinds of messaging and allows for a narrow, targeted campaign throughout the week in various media channels just on these particular themes. Saturation of a small number of themes is more effective than just a saturation of many different, disconnected messages.

To an extent, Labour does try to do this by briefing the press in advance for certain initiatives. But we’ve seen recently how they can be cut from under the knees on this when the media focuses on other things. Labour initially planned for a focus on the NHS and reducing waiting lists in early January, only to be completely derailed by an entire week focused on grooming gangs due to Elon Musk’s social media intervention.

My suggestion is that each week or fortnight, a strong core theme is established, and a senior cabinet minister (e.g. the PM, Deputy, Chancellor or other cabinet minister) chairs a press conference at the beginning to basically take control of the media cycle and set the agenda.

The press should not be briefed in advance on the contents for these particular conferences \- as it currently stands, it basically means that information is leaked ahead of the conference and people don’t bother listening to it. They’ve had the content and are already moving on to the next news item of the day.

The conference should use plain, easy terms to keep the general public informed and establish trust. It should cover the key things that Labour is getting done that week/fortnight, treating the country as stakeholders in a project that is getting an important project status update. Stakeholders want a clear and easy picture of where things are going and to be reassured that everything is on track. If things aren’t on track, that can be forgiven if the government is clear, honest and straightforward about the steps being taken to redress this.

Speakers should:

Quickly summarise what was accomplished last period (giving a feel-good factor for things that were actually done) Outline what is being focused on this week, sticking to at most 3 specific policy areas. Cover what is happening and why; how it links to the manifesto and how it benefits ordinary people Where necessary, give an indicator where this progress is in the broader context of policy execution and delivery (e.g. are this week’s tasks the beginning, middle or final steps? What remains to be done after this week and when will those be expected to happen?) Take questions from the press on these policy areas; batting away irrelevant ones to the theme

Should unforeseen events dominate the news cycle which need addressing, you can use the start of the next conference to do so. Acknowledge and address the issues (which demonstrate that the party can adapt and respond to the country’s pulse), but do not become buffeted by all new events and turn with the wind (as this reduces confidence in the government’s ability to restabilise and continue on delivering its missions).

Press conferences help the party leadership’s image in a number of key ways.

Firstly: because these are regular press conferences, the media always has some level of “meat” that it is expecting, meaning it is less likely to hunt for other stories to tell at the start of the week (reducing the likelihood of being wrongfooted by bored journalists looking for a story to tell about the government).

Next, it is only in the government’s power to hold press conferences in official government buildings like this: it creates a professional background that gives confidence to viewers that this is the voice of people who are in charge, which conveys authority and gravitas. It is the best avenue for presenting the serious, professional and managerial image that Labour have wanted to portray since 2020, so the party may as well make the most of it while it is actually in power. It is also perhaps gauche for other parties to try doing their own faux press conferences in this way when there is nothing they can report on for policy delivery, so it also bakes in an institutional advantage that Labour should be utilising (note: Labour did attempt their own press conferences in opposition, but they did so sparingly: this was only in response to large public backlashes from the Conservatives where they were clearly lacking a professional leader to convey a similar type of message to the public).

This also gives a chance for senior leadership to speak directly to the country and \-- importantly \-- show their faces to the public. People do not like feeling as though their representatives are deliberately avoiding scrutiny. A commitment to regular talks with the public helps build trust and accountability for the various initiatives that the government is doing (by tying recognisable faces to specific projects and deliveries, people can know who should be questioned on the status of these deliveries). Live-streaming the conferences would also allow a more direct line to the public without people having to use specific news media outlets (and their specific framing/pre-empting of it). If the party is confident enough, perhaps they could even answer curated public questions via those live streams, so people feel that they can personally have their questions answered (and that this isn’t just an exercise for journalists to be entertained on a Monday morning).

Lastly, it puts other parties on the back-foot when it comes to having their own media stories published at the start of the week, as all of the attention is focused on the government (journalists will want to be with a senior official if they can, so this takes a level of oxygen away from the opposition early into the news cycle).

After the conference: making use of social media

The minister that delivered the conference should obviously share the link to the video of their conference once it’s finished, and key figures in the party should boost its profile on social media, reinforcing key messages from it (possibly even turning phrases from it into identifiable \#HashTags that can potentially be used in other posts through the week, to tie back specifically to it once tasks have been accomplished.

In general, however, social media needs to be leveraged for strengths that aren’t afforded by the setting of the conference: this means personable authenticity, rather than organisational professionalism.

Professionalism is required for being taken seriously as a party of government (i.e. people need to see the party leader, squint and plausibly see them as a Prime Minister). Social media however, connects people not through the professionalism of one’s content, but the authenticity and earnestness of the content creators themselves. The currency of social media is “realism”, which is exactly what you aren’t expected to show in most news media. The conference does need to confer a certain level of authenticity in order to be trusted by the public (hence why it should express its points in the simplest terms it can afford), but the conference is about establishing authority and trust (i.e. “I might not like them, but I’ll listen to them”), rather than letting one’s personality really shine through (i.e. “I really like the cut of their jib”). In today’s world, you need to be able to do both professionalism and realism if you want to capture voters’ hearts and minds.

Consequently, party figures (particularly MPs) should be able to use social media to have a more informal relationship with the public than news media would ordinarily allow. They should be allowed to share behind-the-scenes updates of what is happening in Parliament and how they engage with their constituencies (e.g. by sharing clips of MP surgeries they’ve hosted).

A good model for this is US Congresswoman Alexendria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). At the time of speaking, she has 12 million followers on Twitter and over 1 million followers on TikTok, with regular engagement from fans and supporters. She regularly posts and shares photos and messages in support of left-wing causes; she pulls the viewer behind-the-scenes for moments happening in Congress, signal-boosts key Democratic messaging and challenges Republican governance with fiery earnestness and sincerity. Her personal success on these platforms is organic: it is not because of the Democratic Party shining a spotlight on her or trying to make her the next big thing.

Imagine if we had more Labour MPs with the same media savvy and nous; imagine the amount of reach this would have towards young people on social media today\!

Linking back to what I said on authenticity: some MPs will be better with this than others. Some will be best for focusing on professionalism and managerialism; others will be better suited to this more personable media expression. It would be a mistake to force all MPs to specifically be one over the other.

There are some key things that need to be pinned down in utilising social media channels in this way:

We still want an “orchestra” at the end of the day, so things should still be linked to the overall vision and themes where possible. Re-sharing content and thoughts which tie in with the weekly theme and using hashtags related to the theme are all essential There is “news media training” and there should be “social media training” as well: people should be careful what they put out (and especially avoid reacting in anger to unpleasant comments); they should be wary of whose content they share (particularly when the person is not a fellow colleague), and how often they are interacting with social media in general (limits should be set to avoid becoming unhealthily online to the point of being personally detrimental \- MPs should not risk the accusation that they spend more time tweeting than they do helping their constituents)

This could be helped by Labour regularly updating their code of conduct for media behaviour, along with comprehensive training to avoid mishaps. If someone violates the code of conduct, specific sections should be linked to and quoted for transparency. This will help to avoid gaffes without impacting authenticity. Then again: *there should not be a pathological fear of making mistakes. Knowing how to roll with them (often with a humorous bent) is critical, because statistically a party member will make optics mistakes at some point in their tenure. What matters is how quickly they pull themselves out of the hole.

But there is more to social media than just the channels that are being used. It all needs to pull together strategically and cohesively from the top down, and this requires an answer to an important question.

Towards a bold digital media strategy

Where exactly does a potential voter go to learn about the good things that Labour is doing?

Not Google, with negative spin dominating the headlines. Not the Labour website, which completely lacks a visible news section on the front page (something that even the Lib Dem and Tory websites have). And certainly not social media, where the party’s messaging is scattered, anaemic and infrequent.

My proposal is: use the Labour website as a central hub for Labour news. Make it the go-to place for hearing good news on what Labour is doing, specifically making it easy to go and find the other social media channels where applicable.

Front and centre should be the big-ticket items on Labour’s weekly/biweekly agenda. The press conference should be pinned to the top of the site early into the cycle to set the tone for what news to expect in the coming days. Along with it should be top content from the different social media feeds, aggregated in a carousel of flavourful information: top tweets from Labour officials; promotional photos from Instagram, highlights from Youtube, etc…

This brings me onto the actual content of these platforms. Each one has a different target audience and preferred engagement medium: Twitter is for short, punchy posts that work as memorable quips; YouTube is for longform content like interviews, podcasts and Public Service Announcements; Instagram works for inspirational imagery showcasing the government’s vision for the country; TikTok works for bite-size, authentic (and less professionally produced) video snippets to engage a younger \-- and perhaps less patient \-- audience.

But creating bespoke, per-platform content is time consuming and ultimately not sustainable. Instead, Labour should prioritise the creation of adaptable content, ensuring that one piece of work can serve multiple channels with minimal additional effort.

Let’s walk through an example:

Suppose that Labour records an interview with an important figure in the party. It covers key policies for the week, but also peppers in some light-hearted personal questions to humanise the interviewee. This content can be distributed into multiple streams:

This single piece of content can derive a steady stream of posts across all platforms (possibly for multiple weeks), maximising both reach and efficiency. Other content may be less versatile, but the ability to turn one piece of content into something applicable for multiple channels will make it easier to create a regular release schedule of positive news and updates. That is the key here: if there is valuable, regular information being released by the party in engaging ways, then people will listen. The news media may benefit from clickbait and negativity, but people ultimately want to hear good news. They want to know that things are getting better.

Other ideas that would be good to see in action are:

Before getting too carried away though, a word of caution: there is a delicate balance to strike between high-quality, professionally produced content (which is absolutely needed on certain platforms for an authoritative, governmental image) and lower production-value, authentic content which needs to connect to audiences craving a sense of “realism” from politicians. Party member individuality needs to be expressible in the more \-- let’s charitably say \-- volatile mediums (e.g. TikTok, Twitter), but consistency of imagery, professionalism and messaging is important for other audiences and content types (e.g. YouTube, Instagram)

There is so much available to Labour if it chooses to make effective use of social media. The days of simply relying on the traditional press to amplify its message are over: people are hungry for engaging, authentic and transparent content from their social media feeds, and Labour have a unique opportunity to deliver (and in return, reap the political reward of loyal, direct engagement with their target voters).

If the Labour Party truly is modern, forward-thinking and ready for the future, then we should demand that it be ready to meet today’s voters where they are now: in our feeds and our communities, both offline and especially online*. The political battlefield is treacherous and the stakes have never been higher, so we deserve a party willing to embrace bold strategies and modern tools to succeed for our futures.