Political communication in the election- new Media or TV?

A lot has been said about 2010 being the social media election. But is this true? Others have argued that more interest is being provoked by the televised debates.
Yesterday Radio 4 Today had an interesting piece on new media and the elections - which discussed how the parties have been using online campaigning
It featured comment about the new Labservative website - an example of a site created by the Liberal democrats to spoof labour and conservative policies. More discussion about its purpose can also be read on Campaign online
The Hansard society has also discussed the theme of online political communication on its website and digital democracy blog. See this posting 'calm down its only a tweet' which tests the theory that (twitter in particular) is ephemeral by looking at reactions directly after the first leaders debate. The site also has some interesting feedback and comment from readers.Plus a whole collection of reports which discuss the use of new media by British political parties.
Some other good starting points for following this continuing debate on social media and the campaigns include.
LSE Election experts blog - which has a weekly round up of the political blogs which highlights, discusses and analyses key trends.

A number of PR sites also have their verdict on the types of marketing and promotion being used in the campaigns which make for interesting reading.
PR week has an online sentiment tracker which is measuring and anlysing the online campaigns. The site also includes other free articles discussing tactics

Marketing week has some articles and comment on the importance of the different type of campaigns.

Chameleon PR has an interesting blog discussing related issues. See this posting on why expressing political beliefs on Twitter is not a good idea! There is also some discussion of the Conservative party poster campaign and viral marketing

Campaign is also another good place for discussion of marketing techniques.

Finally
Tweetminster - is for the duration of the campaigns running what it calls a realtime sentiment tracker. This is measuring the number and type of tweets being sent about individual party leaders. Will the social media prediction reflect the real results next week?