Despite much chatter that the UK's upcoming May poll could be "the first social media election", such a thing is looking unlikely.

Analyst group Ovum says parties have only gone as far as using social web tools "aimed primarily at communication and collaboration within the established caste of politicians, journalists, and interest groups". That's not very inclusive.

"The parties acknowledge that social media can be used to mobilise activists, engage new audiences, or harvest a long tail of donators," says Ovum senior analyst Vuk Trifkovic. "However, unless the parties have a surprise up their sleeve, we do not believe that social media will play an integral part of the campaign efforts in the forthcoming elections."

Fishburn Hedges questioned more than 100 candidates likely to win or retain their seats at the next general election.

The agency found that Facebook already plays a central role in much of this generation's campaigning. The vast majority (83 per cent) of candidates are using Facebook in their campaigns, while 50 per cent use Twitter in the same way. Significantly, a massive 84 per cent also intend to use social networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs to communicate with their constituents if they are elected to the House of Commons.

Some 82 per cent of candidates also said that once an MP they would treat communications from constituents received through social media such as Twitter and Facebook with the same priority as those received by letter or email.