Election by-pass leaves us stuck up an Ulster boreen

The televised debates have injected new life into British politics to a degree none of the media pundits could have predicted.

Viewing figures confirm the electorate wants direct communication with politicians and expects straight answers to big questions.

By contrast, Northern Ireland is stuck in the past with megaphone debating, tired poster campaigns and predictable Press conferences which exclude the voter.

While Britain is overtaking in the fast lane of the information superhighway, Northern Ireland is stalled in the slow lane of an information boreen. It remains to be seen if tonight's head-to-head debate between Ulster's party leaders is as compelling as last week's.

This election will tell us much about UK society in the 21st century and its dynamic media for the old black art of 'manufacturing consent' has changed dramatically in the generation since we last witnessed such a hard-to-call campaign.

In the period from Kinnock to Cameron the hustings have moved from the soapbox and Fleet Street to the podcast and cyberspace.

The Government White Paper, A New Future for Communications, in 2000 promised "an explosion of information" which would fuel a "democratic revolution of knowledge and active citizenship". There is little evidence that this has happened. There is, however, much to suggest the citizen is suffering from information overload and has switched off politics.

The turnout in general elections has fallen from 84% in 1950 to just 59% in 2001. In 1992 the political historian AJ Davies observed: "More adults play the National Lottery each week than bother to vote once every four or five years."

A decade later former Prime Minister Sir John Major added: "At the grassroots, our political parties are shrinking in membership from mass movements to the size of special interest groups. The broad mass of the nation is detached from politics and many feel a distaste for it."

Once, national newspapers alone could turn the tide in a campaign. Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express was the nation's most powerful opinion former until 1945 when it was replaced by Hugh Cudlipp's Daily Mirror and, as late as 1992, Rupert Murdoch could boast, "It's The Sun Wot Won it''. The 1990s and the Noughties were the age of the television interrogator which reached a high point in 1997 when the BBC's Jeremy Paxman asked Conservative Michael Howard the same question 12 times without receiving a satisfactory answer. A grateful public made interrogators such as Paxman and John Humphries into national treasures.

New Labour's landslide victory that year was widely recognised as a triumph of modern multi-media communication. Leaders dodged the interrogators and made skilful use of smaller broadcasters, publishers and the internet, in addition to a range of invisible tools for sampling and shaping views.

Today we live in an ill-defined and ever-shifting media landscape with 24-hour news channels supplemented by well-placed or well-informed bloggers, flickrs, twitters, tweeters and texters.

For the politician getting the message across is an increasingly time-consuming and expensive business. For the journalist keeping up with the message is an increasingly time-consuming and frustrating business.

For the citizen selecting a relevant message and working out its meaning is increasingly time-consuming and demanding. In this context head-to-head TV debate between the party leaders is a powerful tool which has injected some excitement and focus into campaigning.

Presidential elections in the US have featured such debates since 1960 when 70 million watched Nixon and Kennedy. Today they are commonplace throughout the democratic world. Instead of the whispering on street corners which much of the new media represents, they give the contenders a chance to put policies before the entire electorate and the mainstream media and voter a chance to assess how effective they might be and how sincerely the views are held.

In the aftermath of the damaging Cash-for-Amendments affair in the Lords and the John-Lewis-List expenses revelations in the Commons, British politics has found a way to enthuse the electorate.

Northern Ireland must take this lead.

Maurice Neill is a journalist and course co-ordinator for newspaper journalism at Belfast Metropolitan College