Digital Papers: Twitter: Communication tool or pointless vanity?
The social networking application Twitter has
become an increasingly relevant and much talked about tool for the digital
politician. As recently as December 2008 only two MPs were regularly
dispatching 140-character ‘tweets', as a twitter message is known. Today, this
has risen to 79 or just over 12% of MPs. That's about the same number with a
blog but fewer than the 30% with a presence on Facebook. This rapid rise has
led to the portrayal of Twitter as either revolutionary or a pointless fad. The
reality lies somewhere in-between, a continuation of the increasingly fast news
and information cycle that started with the printing press and evolved through
radio, TV and blogs. As Labour MP and the party's ‘Twitter tsar', Kerry
McCarthy, suggests, any MP who uses Twitter ‘is doing what we've always done in
a new setting'.
Labour MPs who account for 61% of
parliamentary twitterers and the Liberal Democrats, always early adopters of
new media in the House, have a quarter of their MPs twittering. Liberal
Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone was first in early 2008. Conservative MPs are
the least likely to use Twitter, which might not be surprising given David
Cameron's recent remarks on the subject. This reflects a strategy that places
less emphasis on digital campaign tools for incumbent MPs but much more for
prospective parliamentary candidates, where the Conservatives lead the league
table, just slightly ahead of Labour.
Twitter's 140 characters are most widely
used as a broadcast medium, replicating the other web tools. But it offers much
more and, used well, becomes a platform for engagement and to listen. Some say
that 40% of Twitter traffic is just ‘pointless babble' but are 60% of face-to-face
conversations meaningful? Abbreviating the message does not mean losing the
meaning but condensing what you say into a short, sharp 140 characters
(roughly, this sentence) is a real skill.
An MPs Twitter audience bears little
resemblance to their geographical constituency and, like blogs, Twitter's reach
is far wider. This dislocation from the traditional constituency can be a boon
for politicians wanting to raise their wider profile. As Labour MP Tom Harris
noted, it is a chance to have a say beyond the constituency and portfolio.
However, the extent to which the Twitter constituency is cultivated and
maintained clearly varies. In New Zealand, candidates used Twitter during their
2008 election campaign to rally support only to switch off afterwards, the
online presence of many going suddenly quiet.
There are benefits for the wider public
too. Twitter has given us a different view of Parliament. It is now common to
see MPs tweeting directly from the House during Prime Minister's Questions and
a considerable number of tweets were made from the chamber during the election
of the new Speaker in June. As we saw with the viral ‘#welovetheNHS' campaign,
Twitter gives ordinary people the chance to directly shape the political
agenda.
All of this highlights a challenge for
politicians: being effective on Twitter means following and listening as much
leading and talking. Citizens want their MPs to listen more but also prefer to
engage with them in relatively shallow ways. Those who are already online
prefer to connect online and so Twitter offers a new place for old style
street-corner politics, suiting MPs who want to feel the pulse of the
electorate. In Twitter, those who have always aimed to engage the public in
constructive discussion will find a new space and a valuable new tool but it's
not the ‘killer app' of digital politics and unlikely of itself to transform
the political landscape.