Mr Hannan's viral video (YouTube)

Who’d have thought it possible? The internet’s most popular video, apparently for rather more than the mythical 15 minutes of fame, at least in the UK, was this week a recording of a three minute speech by a Conservative MEP, sitting as a non-attached member in the European Parliament. 

Yes, that’s a speech by an MEP…  With 1.4 million views at the time of writing (thus in under four days).

The office is buzzing with exchanges, admittedly mainly between the Brits, about how on earth this was possible. Mr Hannan himself seems perplexed, pointing out that he has made many speeches in Parliament, many of them attacking Labour, without any of them making him an internet star. It helps of course that he was speaking directly to the UK Prime Minister, present in the chamber, who just had to sit and listen, but that hardly explains the phenomenon. UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, no oratorical slouch himself, also had a go, but somehow languishes in relative internet anonymity at present. The video, posted on YouTube, has attracted not only views, but also over 9000 comments, many of which call for him to become UK Prime Minister without further ado.

No-one quite knows why one virus catches and another does not, why one rampages through a population and another peters out in short order. It seems however to depend more on the ecosystem than on the virus itself. 

Suffice to say this is an internet communicator’s dream. The snag is that it is difficult to explain why it happened. Doubtless a spot of zeitgeist: there is no doubt that Mr Hannan voices the views of many on the right of politics about the political reaction to the recession being implemented in several countries. This view is supported by the fact that the video seems initially to have caught on with conservatives in the United States, whose views about Mr Brown are unlikely to be as personal and passionate as those of Mr Hannan, but who probably harbour similar feelings about the new US president and his policies. Mr Hannan doubtless also articulates the feelings of a strand of British opinion about their Prime Minister – the YouTube comments confirm this – but he is hardly the only one doing so.

Others have pointed out that the form of the speech, dictated by the rules and habits of the European Parliament, where speakers have brief, but uninterrupted, opportunities to distill their thoughts, lends itself very well to the YouTube format. Had he taken the floor for ten minutes, or suffered constant heckling or interruption, the video would have suffered considerably.

But we’re still not there, are we? Such considerations cannot really explain the extraordinary phenomenon we have witnessed. And I’m sorry, I can’t buy all the slightly heated stuff in the commentariat about Mr Hannan’s popularity representing some kind of mass groundswell of opinion against the liberal media establishment – even if there are many interesting points to be made about how the internet communicates political opinion independently of traditional media. The secret – and the mystery – are in the word which describes what has happened: viral. No-one quite knows why one virus catches and another does not, why one rampages through a population and another peters out in short order. It seems however to depend more on the ecosystem than on the virus itself. What we do know is that once a virus starts to spread, it does so exponentially. Thus it was with Mr Hannan. Most people have surely seen the video not so much because of its intrinsic merits but because hundreds of thousands of others had. It started off speaking powerfully to a small but influential group, but ended up, like the proverbial modern celebrity, by being famous for being famous. (That did not stop it, of course, from speaking powerfully to many of its later viewers too.)

This is not a reflection on the quality of the speech, without doubt a good one, though not one even its speaker considers exceptional, but on why it spread, which is a different question. As this episode shows, viral effects like this are surprises, they happen as often as not out of the blue, as surprising for their originators as for anyone else. What the initial spark was is unclear, but what is clear is that once the fire caught hold, it rampaged.

Whatever the explanations though, in terms of outcomes, Mr Hannan’s experience holds many lessons. First, it is more and more possible for political messages to reach a mass public without the intermediation of the organisations and individuals known collectively as the media. Possible, but not yet reliably so.

Second, traditional media ideas about what people are interested in and/or willing to consume in terms of political news are not always a reliable guide to reality. Exciteable internet chatter about the traditional media “suppressing” Mr Hannan’s speech is clearly wide of the mark, even the man himself started from the assumption that no-one very much would be interested. Few would have predicted, including among those now enthusing, that a three minute speech by an MEP would be of such great interest. Yet it sold like hot cakes.

How should the institution’s press and information services react to an event such as that we have seen this week? 

Third, though politicians and institutions cannot necessarily predict such viral effects, they can certainly not afford to ignore them either. This applies to those with a message, those with a counter-message and those whose job it is simply to inform the public about what happens in the European Parliament. Mr Hannan’s new-found exposure is great for him, of course, and great also for the European Parliament, but it remains only a part of the political and institutional story of that day. In the comments column on YouTube, several ask about Mr Brown’s response, there are requests that it be posted. There were of course other speakers in the debate. Though many are simply delighted or horrified, according to taste, to hear Mr Hannan’s words, for others, with a broad interest in the issues, the speech could be a way into the wider discussion. Thus, for his political opponents, it is vital to be able to react in kind, posting counter views, the Brown response, etc. (No. 10 Downing Street is, for the record, keen on internet communication – I watched with fascination its Twitter coverage of Mr Brown’s world tour this week). But for the Institution itself, and this is where your friendly neighbourhood web-editors come in, the key is to provide the back up information to satisfy the interest and curiosity aroused at such times. Where can internet users find the Brown reply, where can they listen to the other interventions in the debate, when, where, why and in what context did this debate take place? All this information is available on the EP website, and the entire debate, or separate parts of it, can be watched and/or downloaded (that indeed is where Mr Hannan’s video comes from). Unfortunately, as yet, some work is still required of the user, we cannot provide a url for particular video extracts from the session (though the facility is under development).

But as well as the technical possibilities and constraints, there are issues about organisation to be considered. How should the institution’s press and information services react to an event such as that we have seen this week? To me it seems clear that there is a job to be done, that of satisfying the interest in the Parliament generated by what occurred. Yes, this means providing the information on our website, but in the networked internet of today, it is also important to go where the punters are. Mr Hannan was, note, seen not on Parliament’s website – though he could have been – but on YouTube. Thus, Parliament too needs to be there, not only with an institutional presence in its own right (coming very soon to EUTube, by the way), but also in the comments columns, blogs and forums, responding to the express needs of users. There are limits, of course, both in terms of sheer manpower and in terms of the content, which must remain institutional (objective, accurate, reliable, non-partisan, etc.), but there can no longer be any excuses for not trying.