The digital election campaign is well under way; tens of thousands of euro are being spent per day on online ads, and party leaders have embraced the high-octane canvassing montage video with an almost embarrassing ardour. But the first viral moment of the election, courtesy of arch-provocateur Michael O’Leary, shows what a fickle ally social media can be.
A clip of the Ryanair boss issuing disparaging remarks about teachers, while launching Fine Gael TD Peter Burke’s re-election campaign, appeared everywhere at the weekend. Whatever air of digital choreography surrounded the early days of campaigning, it was soon punctured by indignant responses from teaching unions. Some teachers themselves responded with videos and content of their own; this is a profession that has, not least as a consequence of their proximity to young people and having been virtual workers during much of the pandemic, some “very online” members.
The video was cut from footage of a five-minute speech that first came to light on the Westmeath Examiner’s TikTok page. The longer video also included dehumanising comments about “the Greens”, whom O’Leary called “weeds”, a comment that fizzled while the teacher remarks scorched a path across first the internet, then print and broadcast.
It is tempting to put the virality down purely to the fact that the group targeted by O’Leary was teachers, who number about 120,000 people and whom we can also presume are high-propensity voters and typically engaged in their communities.
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Yet there is also something different about the teacher remarks, compared with, for example, those about the Green Party. No one is surprised to hear a known provocateur who is chief executive of Europe’s most polluting airline, according to analysis by green group Transport & Environment, dismissing the party that has used its time in power to limit carbon emissions and prevent the worst impacts of climate change. The Greens even embraced the comments, with one TD commenting “weeds are resilient ... it sounds like we’ve made all the right people angry”.
Teachers have not, to the best of our knowledge, done anything to warrant the ire of O’Leary. When he goes toe-to-toe with a minister such as Eamon Ryan, it has the air of a fair fight. But a man who drops in and out of the billionaire rich list going after teachers, a famously modestly paid profession, feels like punching down. O’Leary, a long-time adherent to the maxim that all publicity is good publicity, predictably doubled down on his comments, suggesting the “pile on” from “unions, Sinn Féin and all the left-wing tree-huggers” means he “must have said something right”.
Another reason why this has come to dominate the discussion is that the video is perfect “capital C” content. The teacher comments are self-contained in a clip just 30 seconds long. The Fine Gael logo is visible in the shot, both on a screen beside O’Leary and on the official-looking party fleece of a person in the frame for much of the video. All of this makes it easy for the viewer to quickly grasp the context and to connect the comments not just to the airline, but to the party. No need to worry about Ronald Reagan’s adage, “if you’re explaining, you’re losing”.
The video also has all of the hallmarks of a clandestinely filmed moment; the viral-ready aesthetic of something that was not choreographed for sharing. It is camera phone footage, taken with a shaky hand and the backs of heads visible in the shot – the kind of portrait-mode clip where broadcasters have to blur the edges of the TV screen. The Ógra Sinn Féin TikTok account leans into this, layering the video with the phrase “Leaked Video Exposes Fine Gael”. This all adds up to the highest prize in content creation – looking and feeling authentic.
And then there is the laugh. Fully half of the 30-second clip is the crowd at the event laughing at the remarks. The full video shows that the audience had been warmed up to this with a series of jokes, and that the event is taking place in a bar. There is also a nervousness in the laughter – a “did he just say that?” physiological reaction among the whooping. But taken out of context, whether for social media content or a news bulletin, the laugh makes those present seem complicit in the remarks. It makes it harder for the protestations of the party leadership that this does not represent the views of Fine Gael to cut through. These claims might have landed differently had the joke met a more staid reaction.
Whether this makes a difference in the election remains to be seen. A cynical observer might suggest it has even increased name recognition for Burke among the kind of voters who claim to appreciate O’Leary’s “telling it like it is” persona. In reality, such is the pace of election campaigns in the digital era that by the time you read this, the controversy will have entered its next phase: either the backlash-to-the-backlash era, with its “he has a point actually” hot takes, or the whole thing will have fizzled and the attention moved on to the next gaffe.
Research suggests that scandals make a difference to public opinion and voting intentions when they align with, and reinforce, negative perceptions that people already have about a candidate or party. So the impact that this will have may depend on whether it seeps into the cracks of doubt voters who are on the fence about Fine Gael may have. The Social Democrats in their response leaned into the laughing immediately, and Mary Lou McDonald repeated that the moment was “demeaning and jeering”, perhaps intuiting that this could align with a perception that the party is “out of touch”.
Fine Gael is banking big on Simon Harris bringing a new and more personable touch to public perceptions of the party. The party spent more than €40,000 in the few days before the election was called on social media ads that put the Taoiseach at the heart of its brand. Whatever about the actual teacher vote, the wider impact of this viral moment will come down to whether that branding exercise is successful, and if Harris is seen as far enough away from “demeaning and jeering” events with the mega-wealthy.
Liz Carolan works on democracy and technology issues, and writes at TheBriefing.ie
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