Article: How the SNP is transforming political campaigning

How the SNP's digital team is transforming the conversation between party and the public and keeping the party at the forefront of modern political campaigning. 

In the Summer of 2014, against the backdrop of Govanhill’s rejuvenated Edwardian public bathhouse, hundreds of people gathered in a celebration - a confident, positive declaration of the sort of Scotland they wanted to live in. The event was held in support of a Yes vote in the Scotland’s Referendum, but this was far from a typical political rally. It was a genuine grassroots movement, organised entirely by volunteers through social media and independent of the usual campaign machinery.

Fast forward to November 2014 and, in the wake of Scotland’s Referendum when the SNP's membership started rocketing towards its current total of 115,102, more than 12,000 people attended the largest indoor political event in British political history at the SSE Hydro. The mixture of speeches, music and film was broadcasted live on YouTube, photographed, videoed, Facebooked and Tweeted by anyone with a mobile phone or a camera.

Each moment captured in its own way the power and influence of digital in modern politics. With its immediacy, accessibility and interactivity, online campaigning is transforming the political landscape and the SNP is at the forefront of this movement.

“Digital is the fastest growing area of political communications,” says Ross Colquhoun, the SNP’s Digital and Political Engagement Strategist. “It can help shape the political agenda faster than any other channel when it is used to publish accessible content and provide instant rebuttals. It’s an unfiltered platform that enables us to have two way communication with party members, supporters and the wider public. In that respect it’s really powerful.”

Ross believes the referendum campaign was undoubtedly a turning point for political campaigning. “It made people think about how campaigning is conducted. There are a lot of different techniques that arrived during the referendum that hadn’t been seen in politics before, predominantly involving social media and types of subversive activism. You now see political parties embracing those types of techniques.

“So, we have the ability to organise in a way we never could have before. We can keep our members informed, hopefully engage them and develop them as activists. But it’s not just about meeting the demands of the party, I see digital as a fundamental platform for encouraging greater participation in politics and providing accessible and accountable governance.

“When Nicola became First Minister, she set out to be the most accessible government Scotland had ever seen. As part of that we’ve run a series of Facebook Q&As where any member of the public can submit their questions and Nicola will reply. They’ve been incredible, she’ll get questions covering everything from her favourite biscuit to the party’s stance on Trident.”

Ross heads a young, enthusiastic digital team based at the party headquarters. The five-strong team comes from a mixture of creative, political, artistic and technical backgrounds. They create ideas, content and projects for the various digital channels to encourage people to join the party and play their part in creating a better Scotland. 

Alex Aitchison, SNP Digital Content Administrator, says: “The team works collaboratively in different areas, ranging from overall direction, to creating content, to analytics. We’ve each grown up as part of the digital generation and we keep on top of how things are developing because that’s where our interests lie. So we’ll often see something new, show it to the rest of the team and then think about how we could make use of it.”

The main channels the team are using include the new website and campaigning platform, NationBuilder, social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Periscope and Vine), infographics, videos, photography and a weekly email update.

The SNP’s website outlines the party’s vision for a fairer and more prosperous Scotland and helps supporter stay informed with the latest news and updates, which can be tailored to their particular interests. Within the site, Policy Base provides a searchable archive of party policies and an events section enables members to organise their own events for supporters, members and the public. There are now two ways that people can sign up to the party – by registering as a supporter they receive latest updates, and by becoming a member they can influence party policy, attend branch meetings and volunteer to help.

Alex says: “The number of people who are using digital as their first point of accessing news is rising. The 16-34 age group is most active on our social media platforms, but the new website is being used by members from across the generations to access the latest updates and policy information in a clear, easily digestible, printable format. Everyone’s excited that they have a new campaign tool, it’s not just younger people.”  

And messages that capture the imagination on social media don’t stop there, as people take them offline and continue to spread the word. “There's a common mistake that people think social media is a bubble, says Ross. “It's an error some political parties and journalists make. Actually social media is just a communications channel like any other. You’ll share something on social media and your followers can share it with theirs, and take that message on to friends and family members offline.” 

The SNP has developed a reputation for really pushing campaigning forward and being innovative in its approach. Ross says: “We’re lucky to have a large and engaged membership and that means we can be a bit more creative online. There’s a great working culture in the party which means that an idea can come from anywhere within the organisation and we want members to submit their ideas and play their part in digital campaigning I’d encourage anyone who thinks they have a new or better way of doing things to get in touch. If it’s the right idea we'll run with it. We have all seen just how big an impact digital can have.” 

GIFs: Scottish Election 2016

Interview: Sunday Herald

This interview is a follow up to my Sunday Herald 'Referendum Special Edition' article on September 14th 2014. It was written for the Sunday Herald 'Referendum Anniversary Edition' on Sunday 13th September 2015.

Could you fill in a bit of background on how the National Collective came about and what its aims were?

In 2011 the Scottish National Party had just secured a landslide victory and they had a mandate to deliver a referendum on Scottish independence within five years. At this time, support for the proposition was at around 25% and it was clear that something special would be required if the Yes movement was to succeed against the No campaign.

Artists have often been at the vanguard of social change that defined new paradigms of thinking for society in the twentieth century, and in twenty-first century Scotland it is no different. In December of that year I met up with friends Euan Campbell and Andrew Redmond Barr in Edinburgh to discuss an idea that I’d had to create a platform for a collective of artists, writers and activists campaigning for a Yes vote. 

After agreeing to create the group we bounced some ideas off each other and came up with the name ‘National Collective’. We decided we would campaign with the mission statement of ‘Imagining a better Scotland’. Our aims were simple; we hoped to inspire, inform and engage people from all walks of life. To achieve this, we utilised social media to put unheard and disenfranchised voices front and centre of our campaign, at a time when much of the mainstream media and fledgling alternative media outlets tended to publish regular established voices. We ran inclusive engagement projects that made politics accessible for all. And we organised creative political events in communities across Scotland that brought a new audience to the Yes movement.

What were the achievements of National Collective? As a founder, did you ever think it would grow to have such prominence?

Although the Yes movement didn’t achieve its primary goal of Scottish independence, we made substantial progress against all of the odds. It’s not really for me to say what our achievements were, but National Collective has been credited with contributing towards the referendum’s legacy of high levels of political engagement and creating innovative forms of political campaigning.

When we launched National Collective we had no idea that it would grow to have such prominence. Where I think we succeeded was by offering a form of participation in politics that was accessible to all. We didn’t seek permission to organise, we simply identified exactly where the Yes movement needed support and responded.

On a personal level, what were the highlights of the referendum? And the low moments?

What inspired me the most during the referendum was witnessing normal people doing extraordinary things, the many activists and groups across Scotland who contributed their time voluntarily for a cause they believed in, the random acts of kindness, generosity and camaraderie, and finding out about people’s hopes and dreams for a better and fairer Scotland; whether they be written on a wish tree tag or performed through spoken word.

Online and social media activism flourished and it has become a case study for how social movements can utilise the medium to hold power to account. Hashtags such as #DonorGate, #500Questions, #IndyRefsky, #PatronisingBTLady and #YesBecause injected humour, wit and energy into the debate. What became clear to me is that the potential for digital in future political campaigns is vast, its reach is only limited by a our ability to use it.

I’d say my lowest moment was our referendum results night at National Collective’s subterranean HQ in Leith. I’d sensed a retraction of support from some of the softer former No voters after the barrage of hostile rolling news coverage. Our gathering of largely younger activists started in good spirits, however as the results came in the mood became much more sombre. Having been inspired by their dedication and bravery during the referendum it was heartbreaking to watch.

Could you explain a bit about why the decision was taken to end National Collective? Could it ever re-emerge if there was another referendum and are you hopeful another referendum will happen?

The decision for National Collective to cease activities came about because the organisers felt that the moment had passed. The referendum had been a mighty adventure and it is a period that I will never forget. I have absolutely no doubt that individually our members will continue to make their mark by using their skills and experience to help shape Scotland in their own way.

I do think there will be another referendum. Unless something dramatically changes at Westminster it looks like there will be another Tory government in 2020. I’d imagine that questions over our membership of the EU and the potential for indefinite Tory rule might sharpen the focus on Scotland’s future somewhat. However, I would stress that the Yes movement must learn from the past and work constructively towards the future. The time for building a better Scotland is now. I see my role at the SNP as one way of helping to facilitate that. I think that the energy that inspired the referendum can be used to transform Scotland in the years ahead. 

Would National Collective re-emerge if there was another referendum? Well, can you imagine another referendum without National Collective?

Could you explain a bit about your involvement in politics and the SNP since?

A couple of days following the referendum I took a bus up to Ullapool. I had no idea what my next steps were going to be as I was technically unemployed. I just needed some space to reflect on the result and the last 3 years.

Like many other people during this period, I made sacrifices so that I could dedicate enough time to campaign. And as National Collective rapidly grew in prominence and size, it began to take over my life. In my case the sacrifice I had to make was my social life and my small graphic design business, which I’d built up over 3 years. Every penny I had left and every hour of my time was dedicated to directing our campaign during 2014. It wasn’t easy as we didn’t have the vast war chest of the Better Together campaign.

On my return from Ullapool, I wrote a statement with another member of National Collective in a cafe titled, ‘How we won and how we will win’. It was a cathartic piece designed to highlight the successes of the Yes movement against the full might of the No campaign. The idea was that it would restore the hope that was so valuable to our movement. It seemed to resonate with many Yes voters as it was shared over 28,000 times on social media and read by over 200,000 people. It was around that time that the SNP’s membership was increasing dramatically.

Shortly after I received an email from Shirley-Anne Somerville, Deputy Chief Executive of the SNP, asking me to meet her for a coffee, so I did. We talked about some of the incredible moments we’d witnessed during the campaign and eventually we got onto the subject of my future plans. If I’m honest, it started with me saying that I didn’t have any.

The following day she dropped me an email to ask if I would consider working for the SNP. As a graduate of Visual Communication at Edinburgh College of Art I had never previously considered working in politics. After thinking about it for a couple of weeks, I accepted the offer as I saw it as the best way to use my campaign experience, build on my work for the Yes movement and encourage further political engagement.

Working behind the scenes at a political party means that you get to see first hand how hard all staff work, alongside grassroots activists and politicians, to help produce electoral success. I’ve been massively impressed by the relatively small team at SNP HQ and their openness to new ideas.

My role can be quite varied, it can range from political engagement and digital campaign strategy, to helping to organise events, such as the SNP’s sold out extravaganza at the Hydro. It really depends on what is needed at any given time. General Election 2015 was a fantastic experience and it’s been refreshing to have some time over the summer to prepare for the Scottish Parliamentary Election 2016.

When Nicola Sturgeon became leader of the SNP she vowed to be the most accessible First Minister ever. We've been helping to make this happen through events and our use of digital.

I enjoy working with digital as it’s an unfiltered platform that enables you to have two way communication with party members, supporters and the wider public. A good example of the way that digital has changed how political parties now operate was when the Telegraph’s #FrenchGate story broke. When it happened I was relaxing on a Friday night in a pub in Leith with friends. Although it was clearly untrue, we realised that it had the potential to be a damaging story if it were to gain traction in the UK media. Alongside one of my colleagues, we created a Storify, assisted by the First Minister’s tweeted rebuttal and by tweets by journalists who had contacted the French Consul to find out what had actually happened. It was read by over 62,000 people within 8 hours and the story was completely discredited by the morning. The hunt for the person who had leaked the story then begun.

Aside from meeting the day-to-day demands of a political party, I see digital as a fundamental platform for encouraging greater participation in politics and providing accessible and accountable governance.

Guerilla projections: #GE15

A small team from SNP HQ spent tonight setting up a series of guerilla projections on locations across Scotland as a way to persuade undecided voters and remind others to vote for the SNP tomorrow. 

Behind the scenes

An excellent film looking behind the scenes of @theSNP projections by @therealsifoto. #GE15 https://t.co/ReMOzI86W0

— Ross Colquhoun (@rosscolquhoun) May 11, 2015

Gallery

Storify: How not to report General Election 2015

Working for a political party means that you're never really off duty. Moments after the potentially damaging #FrenchGate story broke last night, Sean McGivern and I started to create this rebuttal, whilst on a night out in a pub in Leith. Assisted by tweets by journalists that had contacted the French Consul, it was read by over 62,000 people within 8 hours. The story was completely discredited by this morning and hunt for the person who had leaked the story has begun.

Award: The List's Hot 100

National Collective has been awarded second place in The List magazine's 'The Hot 100 2014', a collection of figures who've contributed to the cultural landscape of Scotland during the year.

Article: How we won and how we will win

We know that you are completely exhausted and utterly heartbroken. We are too. On face value we lost, but there is more to the result than meets the eye and this was anything but a fair fight. Two years ago, we started off with Yes on a poll of 25% and yet we ended up with 45%. The sheer resilience of the Yes movement in the face of the full might of the British state, corporate and media power, that was designed to demonise, smear and alienate anyone who chose to side with it will not die down. We’ve been looking straight into the eyes of the British establishment, and we don’t think much of what we see sneering back at us.

From the very beginning, the then ‘Better Together’ turned ‘UKOK’ turned ‘No Thanks’ campaign threw every toy out of the basket, played every dirty trick in the book, and ran a campaign based on negativity and scaring the population into thinking that we were not actually capable of running our own affairs. What we were faced with was a campaign based on stifling engagement, dumbing down politics and deadening thought whilst portraying a No vote as the rational, educated and realistic option.

One of the most heartbreaking moments in the campaign will be a familiar one for many. Knocking on doors and being confronted with an elderly person who had postal-voted No because they were told that they would lose their pension. The No campaign had shamelessly managed to convince people that, in the 14th richest country in the world, we could not afford pensions. The fear tactics employed were sickening. They threw everything under the sun at us, but not once did it dampen our spirits. We canvassed, we danced, we wrote, we sang, we campaigned. And we will continue to do so.

Aside from the fear tactics, this was a campaign aspiring to deaden thought, simplify politics and close minds. #PatronsingBTLady proved an excellent illustration of such, as was the ‘I love my family, I’m saying No Thanks’ billboards, and let’s not forget the ‘independence stresses me out’ stress balls handed out at freshers fayres. This is how they see us. They think we are passive, disinterested, selfish and stupid. In contrast, National Collective toured the country on Yestival, Radical Independence knocked on tens of thousands of doors in a day on their Mass Canvasses, tens of thousands of activists reached out to apathetic communities through local groups, Generation Yes ran open platforms on social media where young people could ask us anything – the entire Yes movement was about encouraging people to think and imagine.

Despite the ‘Better Together’ campaign being what is unquestionably one of the most incompetent political campaigns in the history of British politics, what hindered the steady surge to Yes was a largely compliant mainstream media. For example, a Guardian journalist sent us sarcastic e-mails refusing to publish details of a list of 1,300 prominent artists and creatives who had signed a letter backing a Yes vote and we were constantly demonized as anti-English separatist nationalists and, at times, ‘fascists’ despite many of us being English, and some of us knowing the journalists personally. If they cannot win through an honest factual campaign, what does this say about their case?

Aside from the blatant smearing of anything Yes, sections of the press did something significantly more sinister. They controlled the dissemination of information, closed the space for Yes voices to be heard, and thus facilitated and legitimised the scaremongering onslaught from the No campaign. How many times did you hear that ‘there are just too many unanswered questions’, despite the questions being answered? How many times did you hear that people were voting No because they didn’t like nationalism, despite us not being nationalists? To suggest that British identity is in no way nationalistic derives from a neo imperialist mindset. How many times did you see Alistair Darling and Alex Salmond compared to Dennis Canavan? How many people do you honestly think were aware that Salmond wasn’t the leader of Yes? This was most evident during the last week of the campaign, when we saw the Telegraph stating that voting Yes was an insult to dead soldiers and their families. The establishment’s compliant media was the cherry on top of the cake; a systematic abuse of power.

Did we let this deliberate misrepresentation and demonisation take us down? No. We became the media. Stephen Paton released his #IndyRef Weekly Review, websites like National Collective and Bella Caledonia became a space for underrepresented Yes voices to be heard, and we took to social media to overcome the smear and spread our progressive visions. We should point out here that the Sunday Herald, in supporting Yes, demonstrated courage throughout this movement. It’s not easy to go against the tide of mainstream media opinions and portrayals. The Yes movement should be incredibly proud of our ingenuity and tireless determination and we mustn’t let it dwindle.

Within the political landscape of the No campaign, Scottish Labour provided the front whilst the Tories pulled the strings and supplied the funds. If they were honest democrats, Scottish Labour should have held an election within their party regarding which stance to take on the referendum. The Scottish Green Party for example voted on it, and maintained that members who supported No could speak freely on the matter. This was the first indication that Scottish Labour were about to ostracise those demonstrating autonomy in their party. And boy did that happen. They were openly seen and heard mocking Yes supporting Labour members at their party conference. Something tells us that they may regret these tactics in the near future.

Despite Scottish Labour supporting a No vote, around 38% of their voters supported Yes. The Scottish Labour Party ignored their own supporters, and instead blindly persued an agenda that panders to the Labour Party in Westminster, a party that is out of touch with the people of Scotland and one that they have overwhelmingly rejected. One of the results of this is that we are now witnessing memberships of the SNP, the Scottish Green Party and the Scottish Socialist Party skyrocket overnight. Scottish Labour have risked alienating 38% of their own vote in Scotland to preserve a failing Westminster elite. This highlights how little regard they have for the Scottish political landscape. True power, they believe, lies at Westminster.

Taking all of this into consideration, and acknowledging that we were challenging the full force of the British establishment, their corporate might and their compliant media, we did bloody well. If we were at the forefront of a campaign with that level of influence, power and money, we would see a 55% as an international embarrassment.

Part of the reason that we saw the groundswell of grassroots activism that we did is because there was a deadline, a common shared goal for September 18th 2014. Although the deadline has been removed, we still have that shared aspiration. The question now is how to we encapsulate and maintain the momentum of this progressive, diverse, grassroots movement?

The first means of achieving this is clear. The vast majority of the mainstream media have demonstrated their complete lack of autonomy and level of compliance to the British establishment and the corporate elite. We need to create and preserve alternative media channels. But there is little point in creating them as a protest to the mainstream media. These alternative channels must become the mainstream. To do so requires working together. There are some utterly brilliant and resourceful people in this movement. It’s time to unite.

Secondly, we need to organise ourselves with the common aim of holding Westminster accountable to the promises that they made to us. This starts with their pledges for further devolution. We expect that this won’t happen. 1 in every 4 No voters casted their vote under the promise of further devolution. If these promises fail to transpire, we will seek to secure a date for the next referendum on Scottish independence. We have various options as to how we can help make this happen, and we will update you on this later should it be required.

Thirdly, as stated above, the Yes movement seeks to make people think. It is our duty to continue to create a politically engaged, educated electorate. What Westminster want is a Yes movement that is so utterly deflated that it regresses into the shadows, it stops dreaming, it stops imagining that another Scotland is truly possible. There is a reason why the likes of Rupert Murdoch expressed concern at the influence of progressive Yes groups in Scotland.

We simply cannot afford to let our beautiful movement regress. 1.6 million of us stood up and dared to dream. We lost by the equivalent of the population of a small city. We can win this, we must win this, we will win this. When you get a popular revolution driven by hope and optimism like this, that energy will not dissolve into nothing. It can only grow. In the aftermath of a normal election, the losing party is disheartened and their supporters deflated. The difference here is that the whilst the official No campaign has finished and will no doubt try to delete all evidence of it ever existing, people still make the Yes movement and we will continue to campaign and dream. We will always put hope over fear.

Keep imagining a better Scotland.

Ross Colquhoun and Miriam Brett

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Photograph by Peter McNally