Stephen Collins: FG and FF seem oblivious to the daily SF assault they suffer on social media

Sinn Féin’s domination of social media in February’s general election contributed significantly to the party’s stunning success, particularly among younger voters, and it points up an alarming level of complacency or incompetence in the way the other two big parties Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil approached the campaign.

Sinn Féin ran a social media onslaught right out of the playbook of Donald Trump or Matteo Salvini, attacking the two mainstream parties as “elitist” and out of touch with the concerns of ordinary people and presenting themselves as the agents of change. It succeeded beyond the party’s wildest dreams as evidenced by the fact that it didn’t run enough candidates to capitalise fully on its support.

An academic study has now confirmed the full extent of Sinn Féin’s domination of social media. Research conducted by Kirsty Park, postdoctoral researcher at the institute for future media and journalism, at Dublin City University and Dr Jane Suiter, associate professor at the school of communications. shows that Sinn Féin had about 10 times more engagement on Facebook during the election campaign than the other political parties.

The mystery is that Fine Gael was able to mount an effective social media campaign during the 2011 general election

The academics found that Sinn Féin posts on Facebook over the course of the campaign from January 14th-February 8th had 567,020 “interactions” or responses, compared to 55,152 for Fine Gael and 49,358 for Fianna Fáil. The party focused on the topic of “change” in its Facebook posts over the course of the election campaign, with more than one in five of its posts referring to the concept. It accounted for two-thirds of all mentions of “change” by all political parties on Facebook during the campaign.

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Intimidate people

If Sinn Féin has the energy and the resources to dominate social media and disseminate its message there is nothing wrong with that. Where it begins to get sinister is the way in which the party’s keyboard warriors seek to intimidate people propounding different views.

For instance the study found a marked difference between the emoji icons used to react to posts by the parties. “Haha”, or “Angry” constituted 94 per cent of emoji reactions for posts by Fine Gael, and 90 per cent for Fianna Fáil, while they only accounted for 7 per cent of these reactions to posts by Sinn Féin.

The study found that 91 per cent of the emoji reactions to Sinn Féin posts were “Love”. What it suggests is that the Sinn Féin keyboard army was not just actively pushing its own message but attacking the messages being put out by its political opponents.

Data collected on Twitter use during the last week of the campaign found a much greater level of activity on the accounts of Sinn Féin politicians than those of other parties. While the absolute number of tweets was relatively small for all politicians, Sinn Féin’s tweeted the most and generated more retweets and likes.

The authors of the study, which will be published in the forthcoming book How Ireland Voted 2020, say this underlined the number of Sinn Féin supporters on Twitter, “often referred to somewhat disparagingly as ‘Shinnerbots’ given their proclivity to be quick to denounce and attack any post not to their liking”.

Went meekly like lambs

All of this raises the question as to why Fine Gael and Fianna Fail went meekly like lambs to the slaughter in the social media campaign. The level of aggression from Sinn Féin supporters in everyday discourse on social media should have left little doubt about what was likely to happen in the election campaign.

The mystery is that Fine Gael was able to mount an effective social media campaign during the 2011 general election. The party’s election strategists Phil Hogan and Frank Flannery brought over a US social media expert. A floor in Fine Gael headquarters was allocated to young party volunteers and they had a significant impact on that election campaign. Almost a decade later with social media a much more pervasive influence Fine Gael put was not at the races in the social media battle and Fianna Fáil didn’t do any better.

There is still no evidence that either party has got the message. Whether it is down to poor organisation or fear of intimidation by the “Shinnerbots”, the two parties now negotiating a programme for government appear oblivious to the daily assault they suffer on social media, which is merely a harbinger of what awaits them when the next election comes around.

Fine Gael strategists would be foolish to conclude that the 35 per cent support level revealed in recent opinion polls will be sustained through an election campaign. The party’s support evaporated during the 2016 and 2020 campaigns and the odds are it will do so again next time around as younger voters, in particular, are swayed by Sinn Féin’s unrelenting negative campaigning on social media.

In her recent long interview in the Sunday Independent Mary Lou McDonald gave some hostages to fortune with her unapologetic support for the IRA terror campaign and her defence of Nazi collaborator Frank Ryan.

Imagine what the “Shinnerbots” would do with that if the boot was on the other foot. Luckily for them there is no evidence that their political opponents are up to the job.