The 'shrugging shoulders' of politics (what a way to experiment)
"No sooner has she joined and she's left!" says on Twitter. Ann Widdecombe's time as a twitterer/blogger/technophile is over.
The experiment has finished and what Ann describes as the "shrug" of the electorate has shown itself in full force.
Because people don't see a big difference between the major parties, she says, and because of the perception that the public cannot change anything significantly, the overriding feeling throughout the experiment has been similar to the about MPs and politics in general.
"It's the one thing that politicians cannot counter," says Ann. What she means is that there is no opposing view to apathy and no way to engage these people. They are neither for nor against anything and so cannot be drawn on any given issue.
Outside election time, it can appear difficult to change things directly and quickly in a . Ann herself says that "people don't get involved because they think politicians have made up their mind [on a certain issue]."
Douglas Carswell (see previous post) says the reason that people did not really participate is because there was nothing for the public to change.
Perhaps then, the shrug could come from a lack of desire to engage under the terms politics currently operates under, the idea of "business as usual" and the way information about MPs is available to voters. With the time constraints on modern life, fewer people have the time to engage with politics in its traditional forms.
"Public meetings are not what they were," says Ann, referring to the relatively low turnout at the public meeting organised last week.
But public debates have already begun the move from County Halls and coffee mornings to social media, from constituency offices to the blogosphere. Questions are asked and answered online at all times of the day.
Is it a true test of technology to write 285 words in her three weeks as a blogger? Is it really a fair experiment if she only tweeted 13 times?
"[Ann Widdecombe] didn't really get Twitter, did she? I guess you can't force these things: either people are into [web 2.0] or not," said on Twitter.
, also on Twitter, was not so forgiving and simply tweeted: "Wow, epic fail."
Social media is a conversation. Without something to argue about and without something even to shrug their shoulders at, constituents and the wider population could not disagree and engage with Ann.
There was no online discussion because there was so very little to discuss or debate. The thousands of visits to the site ended with negligible interaction.
But, if people were genuinely interested, all Ann's views on policy issues are public and, if desired, available on sites such as and she is more than happy to make her constituents aware of any decision she is making before she votes on it.
Eventually, politicians are likely to move their policy discussions online because surgeries and public meetings feel so old-fashioned. No-one will sit on plush chairs, sip wine and nibble on snacks in a few years time. Very few people do now.
This is evident with the . "Britain is catching up with the rest of the world," says , of Strathclyde University.
But perhaps the real epiphany will come when the majority of Westminster realises that the real debate is already going on online without them.
What we have found in our own experiment is that people seem to only engage on what they really care about - what really affects them and those around them.
What might have helped, as Douglas Carswell suggests, is if people were given the opportunity to engage on their own terms, in their own time.
Perhaps then at least people would be given a real choice as to whether they give a shrug or not.
