Malta’s latest election campaign must surely go down as the cleanest, most positive contests in recent memory.

That is not to say there weren’t controversies and eyebrow-raising moments.

There was Adrian Delia beefing with a security guard, Omar Rababah and the ‘slashed tyres’ issue, Robert Abela allegedly meeting a contrabandist, and Pierre Schembri Wismayer giving the finger to students.

Yet none of these incidents really managed to dominate the national conversation for too long, and that ugly sense of bitterness that that half the country could barely stand the sight of the other half was largely absent.

A lot of it is thanks to the political leaders themselves. Unlike previous elections, you never got the sense that Robert Abela and Alex Borg despise each other and their tones have been calmer and less confrontational.

However, it could also run deeper.

As Vincent Marmara pointed out on the WhosWho podcast, this election is the first where social media has become the main source of media consumption, and this is actually changing the way we think.

“In the past there would be a dominant issue, with certain emotions revolving around it, which would remain on the agenda for several days,” he said.

“Nowadays there is so much online content that you end up hearing one proposal after another and the brain just keeps waiting for the next one.”

Politics now exists inside an endless stream of short-form content. This landscape has transformed the modus operandi of media houses, with the focus shifting from breaking the next big story and building sustained narratives to producing or sharing the next piece of viral content. 

A lot of the content that tends to thrive on social media is that which feels original, personal, emotionally engaging, useful and relatable. While outrage can certainly be effective in terms of engagement, it is often transient in nature.

Sustained public outrage, which is crucial for confrontational political campaigns, is difficult to maintain if people are constantly getting distracted by the next piece of content.

Politics has had to adapt to capture the public attention, and there has been a bonanza of proposals intended to do just that.

A metro up and running in five years’ time, an annual €1,000 super bonus, the elimination of succession tax, more leave for parents – the list goes on.

I don’t agree with the arguments against politicians promising ‘goodies’ to the electorate; if the economy is doing so well, it is only right that the people benefit from it.

It’s also refreshing to see scandals take the backseat to proposals and to hear politicians debate the future of the country rather than which party is more corrupt.

The risk is if politicians might feel they can promise whatever they want, safe in the knowledge that most people will probably forget about these promises way before the end of the legislature anyway.

Does anyone even still remember PL’s landmark 2022 promise to build a large open space in the heart of San Ġwann, complete with an underground tunnel for passing traffic?

What about the pedestrianisation of Triq Sant’ Anna and the conversion of the Ħamrun milk factory into a garden?

If this is the future of politics, then it risks becoming flattened and superficial that it could begin to feel almost pointless.

Also, if all the focus goes into cutting through the noise, complex and important national challenges become hard to communicate effectively.

Economist JP Fabri touched on this issue in another WhosWho podcast when he flagged the absolute lack of discussion during the campaign on the global aviation fuel crisis, and this despite Malta being an island highly depend on air connectivity.

“Malta’s economic story is extremely strong, but the worst thing that could happen to us would be for us to take it as a given and for complacency to start settling in,” he warned.

If we just keep running on the spot in a changing world, the risk is that people will eventually feel the consequences – but it’s hard to have proper national conversations when public attention is fragmented into thousands of disconnected moments.

So this election may be remembered less for any single moment and more for what it might have revealed about the future of politics itself.

A less toxic political environment is obviously welcome, but if politics becomes completely driven by catering to short attention spans, there is a risk that no one will really take it seriously anymore. It will just become a fun national sideshow every few years.

Moving forward, the challenge for Malta will not just be keeping politics civil, but ensuring it remains meaningful.