Shortly after Gordon Brown called a Rochdale voter a ’sort of bigoted woman’, Twitter users blamed his close aide, Sue Nye, for much more than just arranging the Prime Minister’s ill-fated conversation.

After an exchange in which a local pensioner challenged him on the influx of Eastern Europeans, the Prime Minister failed to turn off his microphone after getting into his car and was heard calling Gillian Duffy a ’sort of bigoted woman’.

He also questioned who had the idea to present him to Mrs Duffy, before concluding: ‘It was Sue, I think’.

While the news media concentrated on the political fallout of the gaffe, Twitter users very quickly adopted several hashtags to analyse the funnier side of the story, including #bigotgate, #gillianthebigot and #blamesue.

David Mitchell's tweet inspired the #blamesue hashtag

The latter became one of the top trending terms in the UK for three days and was used to account for everything from a late bus to a spilled cup of coffee.

The comedian, David Mitchell, led the way before thousands followed, ranging from school children blaming Sue for their difficult homework, to a joiner who held Sue responsible for accidentally hitting his thumb with a hammer.

Conservative supporters soon capitalised on the popularity of the hashtag, by launching a website to facilitate even more Sue-bashing: www.blamesue.com

The third and final televised leaders’ debate took place last night at Birmingham University.

The final Leaders' Debate on the BBC

It was broadcast live by the BBC and attracted 8.4 million viewers, over double the audience for last week’s Sky News leaders’ debate and 300,000 more than last night’s Eastenders.

As Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg debated immigration, the frequency of tweets registered its highest peak across the campaigning season, at 51.7 per second.

Overall, the average frequency was slightly up on last week, at 26.77 (+0.1). Tweetminster reports that 33,095 people (+4,305) tweeted 154,342  times (+ 11,546) during the ninety-minute programme.

Whilst all of these figures show increased activity compared to last week’s event, they still do not match the statistics for the first leaders’ debate, broadcast by ITV.

Tweetminster reported the peak when the leaders discussed immigration

Again, the words Cameron, Clegg and Brown were among the top trending terms on Twitter all evening but the most tweeted issues this week were immigration, tax and banks.

Tweetminster reports that Nick Clegg (3.13 / 5) won on Twitter sentiment, with Gordon Brown (2.99) and David Cameron (2.96) trailing behind.

However, most of the instant opinion polls gave David Cameron the win, with one (Populus/The Times) calling a draw between Clegg and Cameron, and only Channel 4 declaring Gordon Brown as the winner.

Sky News hosted the second televised leaders’ debate last night in Bristol.

The second Leaders' Debate on Sky News

The ninety-minute live programme had an average of 4.1 million viewers, well down from the 9.4 million who watched last week on ITV.

This drop in viewing figures wasn’t quite reflected in the number and frequency of tweets about the debate, but there was a marked decline.

Tweetminster reports that 28,790 people (-7,963 from last week) sent 142,795 tweets (-41,601) at an average frequency of 26.6 per second (-2.46).

Unlike after the first debate, Twitter sentiment seemed to show no clear winner, with all three leaders scoring 3.1 out of 5 on Tweetminster’s scale.

Immigration, work and energy were all top trending terms but Cameron was the most tweeted word, followed by Clegg and Brown.

Sky News employed much of the same interactive features as ITV, with a live facebook status feed, sentiment tracker and rolling analysis from correspondents on its website.

The debate, chaired by Sky News Political Editor, Adam Boulton, included heated exchanges on Europe, climate change, tax, sleaze and nuclear weapons.

Opinion polls conducted immediately after the event gave conflicting verdicts over whether David Cameron or Nick Clegg came out on top, but most indicated that Gordon Brown had the most-improved ratings.

Naturally, politicians rushed to claim their respective leaders as victor.

Here’s a selection of what they had to say on Twitter:

Ed Balls (Lab): ‘Cameron just hasn’t had his moment in this debate.. And Nick Clegg still sticking on the Ross Perot “outsider” pitch which isn’t enough.’

Eric Pickles (Con): ‘David showed passion, conviction and leadership throughout the debate. He looked like a PM.’

Jo Swinson (LD): ‘Liking Nick’s passion on voting and people getting involved in politics #gonick #leadersdebate‘.

The third and final televised leaders’ debate takes place next Thursday, 29th April and will be broadcast live by the BBC.

Ninety minutes of television made political history tonight and brought Twitter to a stand-still.

Nick Clegg, David Cameron and Gordon Brown on ITV.

The first of three live leaders’ debates was broadcast on ITV and simultaneously streamed live on the internet, with viewers encouraged to share their opinions via social networking sites.

Tweetminster reported that 36,483 people sent a staggering 184,396 tweets incorporating the hashtag #leadersdebate during the programme.

These figures don’t include the tweets that used different or no hashtags and those that were sent during several periods when Twitter crashed from being over-capacity.

ITV pushed the boat out with its multi-functional viewing website, featuring a live Facebook status feed, a ‘Comment Cloud’, illustrating the leaders’ most frequently used words and a ‘Sentiment Tracker’, reflecting the feelings of 5000 influential Twitter users.

Using the latter of those tools, Tweetminster declared that Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg won the most approval, with a final score of 3.631 out of 5.

Twitter crashed several times during the 90-minute debate.

The leader of the opposition, David Cameron and the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown finished clearly behind on 3.033 and 3.006 respectively.

Two hours after the debate finished, the names ‘Brown’, ‘Cameron’ and ‘Clegg’ were still amongst the top trending topics in the UK.

Here’s a selection of tweets from some of their colleagues:

Douglas Alexander (Lab): ‘Smiles in our debate team backroom – this debate opens up the race. Game on.’

Alan Duncan (Con): ‘DC looked like next PM. Blog wars breaking out now, but it is what you think yourself that matters. Have confidence! Go for it …’

Phil Willis (LD): ‘Congratulations to Nick Clegg – a fantastic performance this evening. Both YouGov and ITV say he won comfortably.’

Ben Bradshaw (Lab): ‘Great performance by gordon – unrivalled on policy, Clegg good on style, Cameron full of anecdotes but no substance.’

William Hague (Con): ‘David Cameron demolished Brown on spending and waste: GB in ridiculous position of raising taxes to finance waste.’

Tim Farron (LD): ‘I know I’m biased but Nick Clegg won by miles. I’m sat in the hotel next to the studio with Vince (name drop!) we are very proud of our man!’

The second leaders’ debate will take place next Thursday, 22nd April and will be broadcast live by Sky News on television and the internet.

The Library of Congress in Washington, DC

The United States Library of Congress is to archive every public tweet ever made.

Since the birth of Twitter in 2006, billions of tweets have been created and 55 million are sent every day.

The digital archive will include tweets from President Barack Obama on the day he was elected as well as the first tweet from co-founder Jack Dorsey.

The Library of Congress made the announcement on the social network site and stated that tweets deserve a home alongside better known historic documents like the Declaration of Independence.

Shortly after, Google revealed how it is going to make the Twitter archive searchable for users.

It unveiled a ‘replay’ feature that lets users search tweets along a timeline, broken down into days, hours and minutes.

The Library of Congress made the announcement on Twitter

The Labour Party launched its manifesto yesterday, with the help of a 21-year-old Bristol University student.

Ellie Gellard caught the eye of party officials after her blog, ‘The Stilettoed Socialist’, recently became one of the most-read pro-Labour websites.

Under the alias ‘BevaniteEllie’, she has also gained over 4000 followers on Twitter, including Sarah Brown, Alastair Campbell and Ed Balls.

Before introducing Gordon Brown at Labour HQ yesterday, she detailed the party’s intention to use e-mail, social network sites and short youtube films to get out their message.

‘How we share our ideas, our policies and our values is changing’, she said.

You can watch the rest of her speech here:

Shortly after Ellie Gellard was thrust into the media spotlight, several newspapers started digging through her 18,000 tweets and hundreds of blog posts to find anything that was off-message.

Sure enough, the Daily Mail printed the story that she didn’t even want Gordon Brown to be Prime Minister.

It quoted a blog post from July 2008, following Labour’s Glasgow East by-election loss to the SNP:

‘How dare he stand by with personal interest watching our party sink. It is not his to lose, it is ours. In short, Brown (although I had high hopes and don’t burden you with total responsibility) get your coat, time’s up’.

The newspaper also highlighted a tweet about the unveiling of Margaret Thatcher’s portrait in the Prime Minister’s residence last November:

Ellie Gellard's tweet was criticised by the Daily Mail

The inevitable scrutiny of Ellie Gellard’s online record has led to her gaining over 500 more followers in a few hours today, many of them journalists and fellow bloggers.

This episode will serve as a warning to political commentators that Twitter can propel people to prominence very quickly, but can also be a platform for exposing weaknesses.

With only a few weeks to go until the General Election, politicians are upping their Twitter games and flooding the site with propaganda. However, on Monday, it was the Prime Minister’s wife leading the way, with thirty-two tweets in one day.

Sarah Brown (@sarahbrown10) on Twitter

Sarah Brown was described by the BBC’s Political Editor, Nick Robinson, as a ‘national political phenomenon’ last week.

Speaking at City University, he highlighted the way she drives a ‘liberal agenda’ by regularly mentioning gay rights, women’s issues and climate change on Twitter.

The occasion that dominated her tweeting on Monday was International Women’s Day.

Brown regularly quoted famous women to her million plus followers, ranging from Joanna Lumley and Jo Brand to Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy:

‘It’s important to celebrate International Women’s Day not only to remember the great female achievements of the past 100 years, but to remind ourselves of the huge talent and potential of women worldwide which still needs to be unlocked’.

Daily Mirror IWD Supplement, edited by Sarah Brown

Alongside quotes and replies to her followers, Sarah Brown also posted several photos and publicised her role as Editor of a Daily Mirror supplement celebrating 100 years of the event.

She had previously promoted the newspaper pull-out by telling her followers she was ‘in Mirror Ed’s office working on International Women’s Day supplement’.

Attention on her prolific tweeting and pseudo-campaigning has led to speculation over what role her opposite number, Samantha Cameron, will play in the run-up to the election.

Conservative leader, David Cameron, has responded by announcing that his wife, Samantha Cameron would now be seen ‘a lot more on the campaign trail’.

As yet, Mrs Cameron hasn’t joined Twitter. But with Sarah Brown tweeting from 8:20am to 11:07pm on Monday, she would have a hard act to follow.

What is more likely to affect the election is ‘good old self-important, narcissistic television’, according to BBC Political Editor, Nick Robinson.

Nick Robinson, BBC Political Editor

Speaking at the politics and new media debate at City University on Tuesday evening, the beeb’s top man in Westminster was skeptical about the real political impact of online social networking.

After revealing that he rarely looks at comments on his BBC blog, he compared much of the content on Twitter to that of the ’small print magazines that were dashed around coffee houses several hundred years ago’.

Nick Robinson outlined the dangers of using blogs and social network sites as primary journalistic sources, arguing that it’s still rare for news to be generated on the internet.

The one form of ‘new media’ that could potentially change the outcome of an election, he said, is the camera phone, which could catch a ‘flash of anger or gaffe’ and instantly feed every television news outlet.

Despite not using Twitter himself, Robinson did acknowledge the power of the site in the case of Sarah Brown, who he described as a ‘national political phenomenon’.

‘By playing a small ‘l’ liberal agenda, she is trying to get back the middle-class voters who abandoned Labour after the Iraq War‘, he told the audience.

The Prime Minister’s wife has well over a million followers and regularly tweets about gay rights, women’s issues and climate change.

Having highlighted the importance of Sarah Brown’s social networking, Nick Robinson concluded that new media can provide ‘a way of connecting communities of interest‘.

But, on the day that an agreement was reached over the format of the televised leaders’ debates, he held firm to the view that ‘old media’ will be the biggest factor affecting the election once again.

Listen to Nick Robinson’s speech here:

Nick-Robinson-Part-1.mp3

Nick-Robinson-Part-2.mp3

Nick Robinson (far left) addresses the panel & audience at City University

That was the clear message from the London Director of the internet advisory firm behind Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign.

Matthew McGregor (@mcgregormt on Twitter)

Matthew McGregor, from Blue State Digital, was a panellist at the much-anticipated debate about the role of new media in the forthcoming election, held at City University on Tuesday evening.

Sandwiched between Google’s Head of UK Communications and the BBC Political Editor, he gave a short speech in which he outlined the lessons that could be learned from the successful Obama campaign.

‘Elections are decided by the issues… but the internet can definitely impact campaigns,’ he said, before extolling the virtues of e-mail.

The Obama campaign had around 13 million e-mail subscribers, representing almost one fifth of the total Democrat vote on election night in November 2008.

Matthew McGregor stated that the biggest lesson to be learned by British political parties is how to use new media to both mobilize and organise followers.

However, in reflecting on the need for a balanced campaign, he pointed out that most of the Obama campaign money raised through ‘new’ media, was spent on traditional TV advertising.

He concluded by stating that: ‘The party most willing to take the lessons of the Obama campaign can really change the way politics are run in this country’.

Listen to an excerpt from his speech here:

Matthew-McGregor.mp3

From YouTube gaffes and airbrushed campaign posters to taxi drivers on Twitter.

A packed City University auditorium hosted an impressive panel discussion this evening, entitled: ‘2010: The first new media election?’.

The guests were:

• Evan Davis (Chair) – BBC Radio 4 Today Host & Dragons’ Den Presenter.
  

  Evan Davis (@EvanHD on Twitter)

• Nick Robinson – BBC Political Editor.
• DJ Collins – Head of UK Communications, Google / YouTube.
• Matthew McGregor – London Director, Blue State Digital (Obama Presidential Campaign Web Advisors).
• Rupa Huq – Blogger, Sociologist & Labour Party Member.
• Rishi Saha – Head of New Media, Conservative Party.
• Professor Ivor Gaber – Professor of Political Journalism, City University.

I spoke to the Chair of the event, Evan Davis, about his reflections on the ‘new media’ issue…

EvanDavis.mp3

Full report of the event to follow.