We may not yet be living in an era where politicians are actively crowdsourcing to build their manifestos, or voting online with the click of a mouse (or the tap of a mobile screen), but it still had a huge role to play in this year's general election.

1. Creating interaction
 
Digital brought like-minded people together, creating a national playing field – a far cry from the 'local activism' elections of old. Digital has provided a forum for discussion of national issues. For the first time, political parties used social media through sites such as Twitter and Facebook to communicate with the electorate online.
 
2. Fuelling debate
 
The year 2010 has seen the birth of digital debates, in which people submitted questions to politicians that were then answered in the form of YouTube videos and watched more than 750,000 times. It has also fed offline news channels with fresh, up-to-the-minute data. Online discourse, then, has informed the wider debate, fuelling sentiment analysis and gaining column inches and broadcast minutes
 
3. Gauging opinion
 
Live online opinion polls that gauge the electoral mood, such as 10 Downing Tweets, have also played a key role. Though it may be only the Twitter and Facebook demographic involved, it's a wide demographic and it has arguably helped raise awareness in previously apathetic constituents.
 
4. Providing detail
 
Digital provided the much-needed meat on the bones beyond the billboards and sound bites and what was possible even with the first set of televised debates.
 
5. Aiding decision
 
Issues-based websites and blogs created by political parties, lobby groups and the people sprang up all over the web. Also the birth of handy little apps that asked users a series of issues-based questions and generated percentages that told users how firmly aligned to each party they were and therefore how they should vote.
 
6. Raising awareness
 
Political parties used Facebook to organise flashmobs. Sympathetic and derisory bloggers played mashed up party content and fed it out. Also, today's search engines serve up blog posts, images, videos and news, not just 'official' sites. They even show the ads political parties bought against their opponents' names. Even if only searching for mainstream news, you were exposed to 'social' content.
 
7. Permanence
 
Because all the information – each news story, video clip, live debate, advert and poll – is being permanently recorded by the web, it means the election was less transitory, less fleeting.
 
8. Convenience
 
I did not have to look around the house to find leaflets or call up to receive party manifestos as I would have done before – I had it all at my fingertips and, what's more, I could search on YouTube and see every candidate in action, the good, the bad and the ugly.
 
9. Transparency
 
The sheer speed of new media means 'facts' that stretch the truth are increasingly difficult to assert, because they can be almost instantly checked and another view pushed out (although the flip-side of this is that rumours spread just as quickly). The difference in style between the first TV debate and the second, after the politicians had learnt that anecdotes no longer wash, was clear; in the age of digital media, claims have to be able to stand up. This means digital has arguably fostered an improvement in the political system by introducing greater transparency and accountability. This time around the impact may have been small, but come the next election there will be ways of aggregating all of the information in even slicker ways.
 
10. Voter turnout
 
There has been a number of online campaigns to encourage registration and voting. But remember, the election calls for a two-step process in terms of a call to action: to register first, and then to go to the polling station to vote. Digital has the power to make those people who are already interested in politics more passionate and draw those on-the-fence, into the debate. Social media also has the power to increase despondency in the electorate, as truth – in the form of unfiltered, un-spun information about the political landscape – is made available. However, voter apathy is not something that can be solved with more social networking, or indeed more media exposure of any kind.
 
Rachel Clarke, Head of Social Media at digital agency twentysix