Charities could need to declare they are regulated organisations before being allowed to campaign online, the man leading the review of the Lobbying Act suggested yesterday.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (pictured), the man leading the government's review of the Lobbying Act, who was speaking at the NCVO Campaigning Conference in London yesterday, said that many adult Britons were influenced by social media. He said he felt society needed to look at measuring the effect this has on campaigning and electoral results.
“Data from Ipsos Mori show that 58 per cent of British adults regularly use social networking sites, with 55 per cent using Facebook and 17 per cent using Twitter,” he said. “It’s exceptionally hard to see just how much people’s decisions and opinions are influenced by what they see on social media.
“Should there be a requirement for a regulated organisation to refer to this fact. For example should there be on the website, or social media channel, a strapline saying that ‘we are registered campaigning organisation’ and, if so, what other information should there be?”
Hodgson also said that, due to the trust that the public put in the sector, charities can have a powerful influence on social media.
“One of the great thing about the charity sector is that they have a very high level of trust and thus are likely to be very influential in the social media area," he said.
“These are immensely powerful, influential issues which we don’t yet know how to measure but are undoubtedly something that we as a society need to be thinking about when we come to consider the transparency and integrity of our electoral system.“
Hodgson concluded his speech by asking how many people who work together and share information online might constitute a “campaigning organisation”:
“I am free, you are free, we are all free to say your views as citizens. But then me and this gentleman might get together and work on something and then we get together and we get together and we get together - when does the fact that we are a small group using Twitter, when does that mean we’ve moved from expressing the views of an individual to becoming a campaigning organisation?”
Hodgson - ‘I doubt whether Twitter will ever be regulated’
In response to a question from the audience which asked: “could the regulation you are suggesting lead to control of the internet?’ Hodgson responded that he doubted it could ever really be done and said that any law which was not accepted by the public would be a bad law.
“I doubt whether Twitter will ever be regulated,” he said. “We’re more concerned by the semi-permanent and less ephemeral way in which people set things out on the internet.
“To draft something into law that can’t be enforced is bad law making. The making of good law always includes an element of public acceptance.”
Hodgson also confirmed that he was looking to publish his review around Christmas time.
