Birds of a feather?

Following Tweetminster's analysis of the state of play in ‘Twitter and UK Politics', Iain Dale updated his list of top 20 political twitterers from each the two main parties. Dale is annoyed that the Labour twitterati have jumped on the Tweetminster comment about Twitter being the tool of the ‘Tory machine' and ‘Labour's grassroots activists'. He raises a good question that neither he nor the Tweetminster paper answers, ‘how representative of the party are the comments posted on Twitter?' In reality, the answer exists in a continuum between @Conservaties and @DanHannanMEP populated by @ericpickles, @grantshapps, @mayoroflondon and @torybear!

A purely quantitative ‘follower' count is interesting but inherently problematic. Not least, we know that Twitter is notorious for ‘follower spam' and it is difficult to assess the quality of listening or level of engagement (if any) - which is what matters. Tweetminster has the advantage of having lots of data and so can take a much more nuanced and robust view of Twitter usage. They focus on reach by analysing not only followers but more importantly the number of times an account has been retweeted (forwarded by another Twitter user) or mentioned in a third-party Tweet. Where this analysis falls short is looking at the nature of mentions and retweets; positive or negative!

Dale puts Sarah Brown at the top of Labour Twitterers. But her tweets aren't political, certainly not party-political. Indeed, it's likely that her popularity is exactly because she is not seen as a politician (Tweetminster include her too). She might be associated with the Labour Party but clearly is not pushing a party message, policy agenda or anti-Tory rhetoric. Kerry McCarthy on the other hand clearly does all of the above and ranks 9^th in Dale's list of followers. McCarthy, Labour's ‘Twitter Tsar', is first by a huge margin in terms of most mentioned and retweeted MP (but McCarthy has also suffered from negative Twitter campaigns, so again it is difficult to suggest value from this).

In Tweetminster's Top 10 mentions for MPs are two Liberal Democrats and one Conservative (Nadine Dorries, who ranks 15^th in Dale's list).  For re-tweets, Eric Pickles makes the top 10 and only Nick Clegg (2^nd) remains for the Liberal Democrats. In both lists all other places are taken by Labour MPs.

Previous Hansard Society research on Twitter shows that Labour MPs were taking to Twitter in much greater numbers than Conservatives in Westminster but this levels out for PPCs. Tweetminster data shows about 75% more tweets from PPCs than MPs in the last year but both remain dwarfed by tweets emanating from news sources, journalists and political bloggers. It also shows that Labour-supporting Tweeters have considerably more followers than other parties. Tweetminster's findings echo our own in terms of Conservative PPCs being more effective users of Twitter than their MP counterparts. Louise Bagshawe and René Kinzett (PPCs for Corby and East Northants and Swansea West respectively) rank second and third for mentions, although Labour's Paul Smith comes first. Outside the top three, Esther Rantzen's decision to stand as an independent candidate makes her the 6^th most mentioned PPC and Ian Parker-Joseph, standing for the Libertarian Party ranks 9^th. Again, the other places are filled with Labour candidates.

And let's not forget, the public has yet to engage with Twitter, fewer still use it as a tool for following politics. Preliminary data from our soon to be published Audit of Political Engagement 7 suggests that only 2% of the public surveyed use Twitter to follow a political group or politician (twice as many use Facebook). Most of those using social media do so to keep in contact with friends and family or follow celebrities. Worse still, feedback from Hansard Society focus groups suggests that the public are sceptical of politicians using social media; that they are doing this ‘to look cool' or ‘to curry favour' and because ‘some adviser that has told them to do it'.

So what influence can Twitter have beyond the Westminster bubble? To what degree can it shape political debate in election year? In terms of followers, Downing Street has 1.7 million and Sarah Brown has 1.1 Million but, by contrast, the top UK elected politician by far is Boris Johnson with 64,000 followers and the top MP is John Prescott, who has 14,000 followers. Further afield Barack Obama has 3.2 million followers and Britney Spears 4.2 million - almost one thousand times more than Kerry McCarthy!

This isn't to write off Twitter as an important tool simply to contextualise reach of political twitterers as narrow and their ability to influence at this stage limited to political activists, insiders and the media. Kerry McCarthy is clearly the politician with the greatest digital reach, but that's largely because of her role within the Labour Party and her influence beyond these circles is perhaps limited. And, as McCarthy knows only too well, not all coverage on Twitter is positive, so measuring retweets and mentions only goes part of the way to determining influence. Influence in fact would appear to be determined by two things. Primarily it's about an established real-world profile (either within or outside established party structures) and, second, an ability to say something controversial (preferably at odds with or which could embarrass the party). Examples in the former category include @nick_clegg and @johnprescott and in the latter, @danhannanmep. For this election at least, it's all about creating a profile amongst the media commentators who follow Twitter and it is through this filter bed of mainstream media that twittering has its ultimate but limited potential to influence the election. Twitter's value is going to be as a conduit to the mainstream media or as a foil for the story itself - launching an otherwise uninteresting policy in Twitter can make it news!

Andy Williamson