Slides delivered at the fringe event at Green Party Spring Conference 2014 in Liverpool.

1. Spreading Green Party ideas
among the Facebook generation
Glyn Thomas and Chris Henderson
Green Party Spring Conference
St George’s Hall, Liverpool
Monday 3rd March 2014

2. • Why online campaigning and using social
media can be effective for political parties
• The psychology of how to do it well
• Putting it into practice as the Green Party

6. Online campaigning
• None of the conventional rules apply
• Don’t need lots of activists / budget
• Bypass traditional media and reach potential
voters
• Set the agenda ourselves
• Engage people where they are
• Other UK political parties behind
• Raise awareness of Green policies
• A credible alternative

10. Online campaigning
Inform:
“I didn’t know the Green Party thought that”
Engage:
Dialogue and discussion – openness
Activate:
Sign a petition
Recruit:
Gain email address / contact details
Fundraise:
People who take action 4x more likely to donate

12. Trends in political activity
‘Conventional’ forms of political participation have been in long-
term decline:
• Voting in elections
• Signing petitions
• Attending political meetings
• Writing to politicians
BUT less formal kinds of ‘political activity’ have been growing:
• Boycotting products… and/or buying ethical/green products
• Using social media
• Engaging in illegal protests
People who engage in informal ‘political activity’ may be among
the most disengaged from ‘formal’ politics – e.g. Russell Brand

13. ‘Doing politics’ – a simple conceptual grid
This allows us to think about ‘doing politics’ as a 2-by-2 grid:
Issues on the mainstream
political agenda
Issues not on the mainstream
political agenda
Doing politics
formally
• Voting
• Party membership
• Writing to MP/councillor
• Petitioning to get issues taken up
• Anti-globalisation protests at G8 summits etc
Doing politics
informally
• Choosing not to vote
• Building grass-roots coalitions on issues
• Posts opposing Government policy on
Facebook/Twitter
• Ethical consumerism
• Posting ‘politically’ on Facebook/Twitter
about issues ignored by Government and main
opposition parties
Implications for the Green Party
• The three big parties differ so little in their policies that the right-hand
side of this grid is largely out of play to all of them
• They are so immersed in their ‘political bubble’ that they also mostly
spend little time thinking about the bottom-left corner
• The Green Party is ideally placed to cover all four corners of the grid in
our campaigning – as a grass-roots, anti-establishment, radical party

14. Understanding what we should be
trying to do
• A good place to start in designing successful new ways of
campaigning: an understanding of how the minds of voters
actually work!
• Overwhelming evidence from psychology: most people's
political brains are emotional brains
• We do NOT have a 'dispassionate mind‘ weighing evidence
and reasoning its way to the most valid conclusions

15. What evolutionary psychology tells us
• Emotions lead us towards or away from things, people or
actions associated with positive or negative states
• Organisms survived for millions of years without
consciousness or reason
• Emotion is one of the most potent sources of motivation that
drives human behaviour
In evolutionary terms, emotional reactions generally 'work':
• We feel scared or angry when someone attacks us or our
family
• We feel admiration when someone shows courage or altruism
• We feel guilt when we have wronged another person

16. What evolutionary psychology tells us (2)
Natural selection has incentivised us to develop specific emotional
responses:
• When parents hear their baby cry, they feel distress - so they care for their
baby… meaning the baby stays alive
• Favours animals which care for close relatives - 'inclusive fitness'... [Most
people will rescue their sibling ahead of their cousin]
• Favours animals that practise reciprocal altruism - helping each other
out, when the benefits of co-operation are likely to exceed costs over time:
• e.g. birds that 'swarm' predators are more likely to survive than
solitary species
• For humans, being part of a larger community gives advantages in
mutual protection, food gathering, culture and mating...
• -> Emotions involved in friendship, sympathy, compassion and
even justice/injustice (sense of whether others are pulling their
weight) are part of our evolutionary heritage.

17. Understanding motivation
Emotions motivate us to behave in ways ultimately in our
interest and the interests of those within our sphere of
care/concern. They lead us to:
• protect ourselves and our family
• nurture our children
• reward others who are generous or honourable, and
• repair relationships we have damaged.

18. Motivating people to support us!
Helpful to give some thought to the way humans have evolved
as we craft messages and select images:
• Messages about the welfare of our children are likely to be
particularly effective
Then in descending order of emotional potency come:
• our extended family
• local community
• the nation

19. How emotion works in the human brain
What tends to "drive" people are their wishes, fears and values.
Emotion is central to all three:
1. We wish for a desired state of affairs - associated with
positive emotion
2. We fear an unpleasant state of affairs - associated with
negative emotion, particularly anxiety
3. Values are emotion-laden beliefs about how
things should or should not be - morally, inter-personally or
aesthetically.

20. The elements of political persuasion
Two key elements in political persuasion: networks and narratives
1. Networks of associations
Bundles of thoughts, feelings, images and ideas that have become
connected over time.
Think about Barack Obama: what comes to mind when you think about him
for a few moments?
• knowledge about him
• images of his face and speeches
• recognition of the sound of his voice
• feelings towards him - positive and negative
• memories (e.g. seeing his inauguration)
• Positive associations from the campaign - hope ("yes we can", "change we
can believe in") and a triumph for equality
• Negative associations from the ways in which he has disappointed us in
office?

21. 1: Networks of mental associations
• Much of our behaviour reflects activation of emotion-laden
networks of association
• Emotional processes can be activated and shaped outside of
awareness
• Therefore choice of
words, images, sounds, music, backdrop, tone of voice etc likely
to be as significant to electoral success of a campaign as its
content
• Must also pay close attention to the positive and negative
images and emotions becoming associated with candidates in
the minds of voters (whether they are aware of it or not)
• Activating one part of a ‘network’ tends to spread activation
to other parts of the network

22. 1: Networks of mental associations (2)
Central to political persuasion is creating, solidifying and
activating networks which create primarily positive feelings
toward your candidate/party, and negative feelings towards
the opposition

23. 2: Compelling narratives
• We do not pay attention to arguments unless they engender our
interest, enthusiasm, fear, anger or contempt.
• We don't bother to debate policies if they don't touch on the emotional
implications for ourselves, our families, or things we hold dear
We are not moved by politicians with whom we don't feel emotional
resonance
The more purely 'rational' an appeal, the less likely it is to activate the
emotion circuits regulating voting behaviour
Instead, we need 'stories' to help establish emotional salience of our
message to voters
The three Democrats to have been elected US President since 1964 are the
ones who offered compelling emotional messages:
• Jimmy Carter was elected by promising to restore faith in government after
Watergate
• Bill Clinton AND Barack Obama were elected by promising to restore hope
to the American dream

24. Selling our message
The Green Party does have a consistent platform based on a
coherent set of principles…
THIS IS A MASSIVE ADVANTAGE OVER THE MAINSTREAM
PARTIES, not least in social media campaigning!!
The political agenda is set by the people who are seen
talking, not by people who are not seen talking:

25. Getting Green Party ideas into consciousness
We have a range of positions clearly distinct from the mainstream
parties and likely to be highly popular with our target voters – on:
• the economy
• housing
• welfare
• transport
• drug law reform
• workers' rights
• peace and defence... the list goes on!
If we can simply spread wider awareness of these positions amongst voters
and journalists, this is likely to pull political debate to the left almost
automatically…
…a counter-balance to the rightward lurch in discourse caused by the
impact of UKIP

26. Putting it together, here and now
Political science data is clear: people vote for the party which
has elicited the right feelings…
…not necessarily the party which presents the best arguments
Every appeal is ultimately an emotional appeal to:
• voters' interests (what's good for them and their families), or
• voters' values (what matters to them morally).
Elections are decided by whether appeals are good ones or
faulty ones.

27. Don’t lose the wood for the trees…
Even well informed ordinary citizens can't possibly keep up
with all the info on which aspects of which party policies are
likely to yield results conducive to their values and interests
An information-seeking educated voter might know the details
on three or four issues in a high-profile race.
Knowing more than that would be the full-time job of an
elected political representative, not a citizen!

28. The two most effective campaign goals
1. Define the party and its principles in an emotionally
compelling way, telling the story of what its members
believe in - and define opposition parties and their values
in ways undermining their capacity to resonate emotionally
with voters
1. Maximise positive feelings towards the candidate and
minimise negative feelings - and encourage the opposite set
of feelings toward the opponent.
Most important feelings are 'gut level' feelings (e.g. "I like
this person" or "She makes me proud to be British").

29. What to avoid
Policy positions should illustrate principles, not the other way round
- although important to engage on issues and offer some specific
positions
The trap to avoid is assuming voting decisions 'trickle up' from
voters' rational assessment of specific policies, collectively creating
an overall judgment of the ‘expected utility’ of electing one party or
another.

30. Our challenge
To absorb the evidence of what has made for
winning progressive campaigns…
…and take it onto the Internet and specifically
onto social media
Further reading:
• Drew Westen (2007), The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding
the Fate of the Nation
• Colin Hay (2007), Why We Hate Politics

31. Social media
• Reach lots of people quickly
• Cheap / free
• Reach people where they are eg on
Facebook or Twitter rather than needing
them to come to us eg our website
• Popular

32. Facebook & Twitter
24m 10m

33. Memes
“an idea, behaviour, or style
that spreads from person to
person within a culture.”

40. Green Party of Australia
100,000 Facebook followers
12% of the vote
9 seats in the Upper House (out of 76)
3rd biggest party in the Upper House
1 seat in the Lower House
Protest votes – but seen as an alternative

41. West Midlands Green Party

42. West Midlands Green Party

45. Technical
 Square images
 800 x 800 pixels
 Target posts
 Promoted posts
 Two posts per day max
 Schedule
 Advertising to recruit new followers

49. Discussion