Applied Journalism Research Project: Social Media & Politics

8/8/2019 Applied Journalism Research Project: Social Media & Politics

1/68

Has social media made politics more accessible? Or is it just another platform for party politics?

Danny Saxby

Applied Journalism Research

Project

Has social media made politics more

accessible? Or is just another

platform for party politics?


2/68


1. Introduction.

Over recent months we have seen, in rather dramatic scenes, why it would be folly to disregard such

tools as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as mere fads. The Obama campaign revolutionised the use ofsocial media as a political tool. Two Parliamentary candidates have been sacked because of their use of

twitter, and huge viral campaigns seem to burst into life through facebook and twitter. Often breaking

into the tabloid press and television.

Whilst this research is intended to examine the effect of social media upon political debate it is worth

explaining why the majority of the word count has been set aside for one social media website in

particular. Twitter is a relatively new and basic medium for communication. And on first inspection itseems, almost in every aspect, to be fundamentally unfit for the purpose of intellectual debate. Users

are restricted to only 140 characters per tweet, seriously limiting ones capacity for vigorous

discussion. The majority of the twitter community are younger people, to whom politics is a redundant

concept that does not require their input.

Yet despite its obvious flaws the BBCs Question Time, The Daily Politics and This Week, have also

jumped aboard the Twitter bandwagon. It is likely that the motivation for this originates in the younger

demographic of the behind the scenes production staff. But nonetheless it is of importance.

2. Literature Review

Due to the nature of the subject finding literature that is both up to date and relevant is difficult. There

are many books which discuss the wider issues of politics and the internet, not so many discussing

social media. Books such as theRoutledge Handbook of Internet Politics (2009) andInternet Politics

(2006) discuss many of the issues around how formal politics has adapted in the internet age. Both

books discuss the potential of the internet to take politics out of the hands of elites and to widen


3/68


Debates and Question Time. Both journals found that twitter lends itself to reactionary opinion driven

discussion rather than in-depth debate. However, Anstead and OLoughlin (2010) did find that just

over 40% of all tweets around Nick Griffins appearance on Question Time were interactive, suggesting

a sharing of ideas and opinion.

3. Methodology

This piece of research uses both quantitative data collection and qualitative data analysis in order to

fully understand a relatively new field of study; how are our politicians are using social media.

For a duration of seven days from 18th

January 2010 until 24th

January 2010 I recorded each Tweet

broadcast by every Member of Parliament on Twitter, of whom there were 107 (see appendix I) at that

time. Each Tweet was categorised into one of the following;

Party Political An attack on another democratic party or individual associated with

another democratic party or view.

Party Rhetoric Hyperbole involving the party of the author.

Party Policy An attempt to promote or discuss party policy.

Minutiae Insubstantial utterances of the authors daily life and routine. For example the

contents of their lunch or waiting for a train.

News Comments on a news event/story.

Blog Advertising their blog.

Constituency Comments regarding the authors constituency.

Parliamentary Anything involving Parliamentary business.

Other Tweets which have an unclear topic or subject and are therefore cannot be

categorised.

Each Tweet can only be allocated to one category, so for those Tweets that could be placed into more

than one category I ensured that they were placed into the most salient category, and that this action

remained consistent throughout the data collection process.

As well as recording the contents of the Tweets, the following types of Tweet were also recorded;


4/68


Data analysis is then used to come to comprehensive conclusions. Expert interviews were also used for

this purpose, although they were difficult to secure because of the timing of 2010 General Election.

4. How our politicians use Twitter.

The following graph shows the break down of MPs on Twitter by their party affiliations.

What is noticeable is that the Labour party has over 60% of the twittering MPs. Therefore we would

expect to see, in further data analysis, that the Labour party output, as a percentage of the total output

by all the MPs, would be around 60% also. However the Labour MPs far overreach this. As the

following charts show, Labour MPs dominate Twitter in relation to interaction.

Links by Party

13%14%

Number of MP's using Twitter

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Cons

erva

tive

Labo

ur

LibDem

Plaid

Cym

ruSN

P

Resp

ectSD

LP

Political Party

NoofMP's


5/68


73% of all links posted over the seven days came from Labour MPs. This is important to note because

twitters 140 character limit can be a severe restriction.

Therefore the use of links as a means of sharing ideas and alerting people to commentary and debates

is essential in order to ensure depth and quality of discussion.

Retweeting the process of publishing other peoples tweets to your followers, with attribution to the

original author is another important way of communicating ideas.

Once again it is the Labour party which dominates, with 92% of the retweets over the seven days

coming from Labour MPs.

Replies are a way of directing tweets at other users by using their @-prefixed username. This can be in

order to conduct a conversation, to mention another user for example, I have been canvassing today

with @JohnSmith - or to direct a tweet to another users attention. For example, @JohnSmith you

might find this link interesting.

RT's by Party

6%

92%

2%

Conser vat iv e Labour Lib Dem

Replies by Party

3%7%


6/68


This chart shows that over the seven days 90% of the replies came from Labour MPs. What these

three charts show is that, whilst they make up just over 60% of the MPs on twitter, the Labour MPs

are producing between 70%-90% of the interactivity on twitter. So it is the Labour Members of

Parliament who are interacting most with their followers. Andrew Walker, co-founder of Tweetminster,

a website which collates politicians tweets, comments;

Labour have less of a strong central message going out through social media, but they have a

lot more activists out there tweeting and retweeting. The Lib Dems are pretty even handed,

theyve got some great bloggers and theyve got a fairly active party stream but there arent

that many of them by volume so I guess thats why they dont feature heavily in the numbers.(Andrew Walker, 2010)

What is also clear is that, although many of the tweets from the dataset fall into the parliamentary

and constituency categories, a large amount concerns party political statements and party rhetoric. As

the following graph shows.

This would suggest that, although politicians recognise the need to be accountable and accessible

about what they are doing in Parliament and addressing local constituency issues, they are using the

Tweets

0100200

300400500600700800

Party

Politic

al

Party

Rhe

toric

Polic

y

Mun

dane

News Bl

og

Cons

tituen

cy

Parlia

menta

ryOt

her

Tweet Category

No

ofTweets


7/68


content of the link, and therefore the tweet is without meaning. That isnt to say that the other

category should be ignored as merely a collection of redundant tweets to which a category cannot be

assigned. What it indicates is, not just a lack of general understanding of the medium, but also an

underlying superficiality. Shane Greer, executive editor of Total Politics magazine, surmises;

The short format encourages simplification. But ultimately, thats what political campaigns

are about. Theyre not about substantive discussion, theyre about condensing a message.

(Shane Greer, 2010)

Another important element of social media, aside from content and interaction, is audience. Twitter

allows users to see other users tweets by following them. The five most followed MPs (as of 18th

January 2010) are as follows;

MP Followers

John Prescott 15,379

David Milliband 9,243

Nick Clegg 8,512

Tom Watson 7,851Grant Schapps 7,383

The mechanics of twitter are such that, essentially, an audience must be earned, and that audience will

be drawn towards you because of the subject matter and content of your tweets;

if you follow the right people and they supply the right content then youre more likely to

enjoy the stuff theyre giving to you. Its a self-selecting mechanism, you know, youre filtering

through people whose opinion you trust(Andrew Walker, 2010)

For MPs without name recognition they have to build up that audience through posting good quality

content, it can therefore be concluded that a high level of followers is recognition of a good use of the

medium.

Theoretically the politicians with most followers have the most influence on twitter as they have the

largest audiences. But the audience is not necessarily passive, they have the potential to be active. So

perhaps it would be wiser to think of those Members of Parliament who interact most with their

audience as more influential. As the table below shows, the most interactive MPs are, once again, all

Labour;


8/68


people is advantageous, but that does that mean that, through retweeting, those with less followers

cannot reach an audience beyond what is immediately available to them.

However, those MPs who do take a more interactive approach, may well find twitter a much more

valuable resource. Many politicians are using twitter as a broadcast medium when, through interaction

with others, twitters allows for a measuring of the public mood, to see which issues are really worrying

people and for what reasons (Andrew Walker, 2010). For example;

The Digital Economy Bill, its been huge on twitter and none of the campaigns have referenced

it, I havent seen Brown or Cameron or Clegg or any of the senior party figures on the TV

talking about this bill, which is, potentially, going to be limiting peoples broadband access

hardly any MPs have leveraged that to make their campaign more effective, to reach out

there. And that is the problem youve got thousands and thousands of people screaming

about an issue in the public, right in the public eye, in a very public medium. And actually, its

reaching out and reaching the press in other countries its so big. And yet here in the UK the

politicians arent doing that, theyre pushing out oh check out my manifesto

(Andrew Walkers, 2010)

Although the data analysis shows that it is Labour MPs who appear to be the most interactive we must

remember that there are individuals from the other parties who also interact with their audiences;

I would say, taking a step back from that, it is very much about the individual. Lynne

Featherstone for the Lib Dems, Jo Swinson for the Lib Dems, outstanding in terms of how they

tweet and blog. Compared with Douglas Carswell, whos active with his tweeting, but he never

replies to people.

(Andrew Walker, 2010)

The table below clearly shows that, although the Conservative MP Douglas Carswell is using twitter as

a tool for advertising his blog, he isnt then interacting with his followers. He is using it purely as a

broadcast medium. Where as Lynne Featherstone and Jo Swinson demonstrate a better use of the tool,

as a means of interaction as well as directing traffic.

Douglas Carswell Lynne Featherstone Jo Swinson

Blog Replies Blog Replies Blog Replies

Monday 1 0 2 0 0 0

Tuesday 1 0 2 0 0 0

Wednesday 1 0 2 1 0 0

Thursday 1 0 3 1 0 0

Friday 0 0 2 2 1 0


9/68


10/68


Theyve [the other candidates] gone for a kind of candidature approach to social networking

and, you know, thats ok, that works with someone with the face recognition of Michael Foster,

the sitting MP I thought, well, how do we tap peoples enthusiasm for social networking in

a way which isnt going to be a real turn-off. And what I decided to do was to try and get it to

help the campaign I was running, rather than getting people to say, oh Nick Perry, I want to be

his fan, or whatever.

(Nick Perry, 2010)

Nick Perry has set-up facebook groups concerning parking charges at the local hospital, and the future

of the local fishing fleet which is under threat due to fishing quotas. Both are key issues in the

constituency he is campaigning in and both of these groups have around thirteen hundred members

(Nick Perry, 2010).

Facebook is a very different social media tool, connections between users are symmetrical and so there

is instantly a two-way conversation. This may be of more use to politicians wishing to reach a mass

audience. And, because of the type of content people put onto their facebook profiles, it is much easier

to target people (Walker, 2010).

There is often an argument as to whether twitter can be regarded as part of the public sphere, a new

place for people o debate and engage with issues. And perhaps, while twitter is not a new public

sphere in itself, it could be said to be an extension of the existing public sphere;

a public sphere that has democratic significance must be a forum, that is, a social space in

which speakers may express their views to others and who in turn respond to them and raise

their own concerns.

(After Habermas,2005, p.133)

This central tenet, a public forum on which views and ideas can be shared and argued between users, is

the basic function of twitter.

And as a compliment to the existing public sphere, of broadcast and print journalism, twitter is proving

to be a useful bolt-on. Before twitter, Question Time Viewers could text in their comments, and other

Question Time viewers could see those comments by using ceefax. Now, using twitter, not only can

other viewers see the comments, but they can reply to them and start a debate, or retweet in agreement,

after which someone else might come back with a reply. This has created a whole new level of

interaction around political events, not just like Question Time and the Prime Ministerial Debates, but

also around breaking news, press conferences and Parliamentary business. This is an instantaneous

commentary;


11/68


some evidence of debate topics being discussed, the communication was more so

reactionary and evaluative. For example, the most frequent term during the opening segment

from twitter was drinking we assume people were inventing drinking games to play along

with the debate. Later in the debates we see terms like -5 or +2 becoming salient where

people were keeping score on which candidate won which point.

(Churchill, Kennedy & Shamma, 2009, p.6)

Once again, we can conclude from this analysis, that twitter is not a tool for in-depth debate. But, its

power lies in being able to tap into a huge, instant, reaction to live events. Yes, that reaction may be

superficial, low level opinion, but it does allow you to see what people think.

In their academic journal, The Emerging Viewertariat: Explaining Twitter Responses to Nick Griffins

Appearance on BBC Question Time (2010), Nick Anstead and Ben OLoughlin observe that,

throughout the duration of the programme, a total of 55,962 tweets were published which, in some

way, were related to Question Time; of which 26.76% were replies and 15.81% were retweets (Anstead

& OLoughlin, 2010). From this they conclude;

that interaction through real time digital technology such as microblogging will

increasingly be combined with more traditional modes of media consumption to create new

dynamics and modes of participation among citizens. Second, these forms of real time

participation in political events present an opportunity to explore individuals political relations,

understandings and motivations.

(Anstead & OLoughlin, 2010)

But this still doesnt address the question of engaging a new audience with politics. Bill Thompson, a

journalist who regularly blogs on technology and social media, declares;

I dont think twitter will really do much for engagement. Those who tweet and arent interested

in politics will ignore it, or stop following those who do engage.

(Bill Thompson, 2010)

Of course there will be people with views which reflect minority opinion, as Tweetminster observed

during Nick Griffins Question Time appearance, where four tweets per second were being posted in

connection with the event (Walker, 2010). People were agreeing with Nick Griffin, and perhaps they

should have the freedom to do so, but they were in the minority. This egalitarian, level-playing field,

perhaps makes twitter a very democratic place to discuss issues. And, as Andrew Walker observes,

social media has a great ability to self-regulate;


12/68


6. Reactionary, Superficial and Shallow: Does Twitter

encourage mob rule?

Early last year a Danish psychology lecturer, Anders Colding-Jorgensen, conducted an experiment in

an attempt to understand the psychology behind online viral campaigns. He tasked his students to

create a facebook group, with the express intention of getting as many followers as possible. Anders

also took part in the experiment himself, creating a group that protested at the alleged demolition of

Copenhagens landmark stork fountain. The group reached 27,500 members in just three days.

Fascinatingly, in the group forum, it was detailed that the group was in fact just an experiment and that

the beloved fountain was not under threat. And so, through some basic interaction, people joining the

group could discover that the cause was just an agent provocateur. What was found was that, although

some people did notice this, their ability to tell others is severely limited. Anders Colding-Jorgensen

surmises;

The result was depressing: it was very difficult for these people to communicate to others that

the group was not real. This was mainly because people didnt use the group for information,

but as a badge, to communicate their support for the cause to themselves and others

Some of them shared the group [with] friends or wrote a message on the wall, but very little

of the wall posts were containing direct messages or containing questions directed at otherpeople. Instead of discussion, the wall contained almost the same 5-6 messages, repeated over

and over again

(Virkeligheden.dk, 2009)

What was also noted was that, because of the rate of messages being posted (2-3 per minute), the few

messages which did attempt to communicate the real motives behind the group were very quickly

swamped by the repeated messages of shock and outrage at the supposed cause, and so, in further

analysis, it is concluded that 75% of the people who joined the group actually believed the fountain

was under threat. This illustrates that there is an element of superficiality to social media based viral

campaigns. And that large numbers hamper the ability for discussion.

The speed and the enormity of viral campaigns such as the We Love the NHS campaign where


13/68


It is assumed that these viral campaigns encourage a mob mentality. Illustrated recently by the anger

surrounding Jon Venables after he was taken back into custody;

There are hundreds of Venables-related groups on facebook, all hysterically shouting how he

must be hung!, should rot in jail 4eva!, should die, die, die!. Ah, modern technology.

Pros: iPods. Cons: Internet lynch mobs.

(The Guardian, 2010)

Anders Colding-Jorgensens facebook group experiment does prove that people arent always willing

to interact with the cause or subject in any depth; its merely about associating yourself with that cause.

And even more importantly, as the momentum builds behind a campaign there comes a tipping point

where debate and reflection is almost impossible, as so many people are posting comments and

messages that nobody can fully digest them or respond.

It is clear that what must not happen is that a mass viral protest on twitter must not be mistaken as the

debate. Rather, it is a basic recognition ofthe need for a debate, which must then cross over into the

public-sphere where it can be deliberated in-depth and for a significant period of time.Michael Burke has described social media as the collapse of the culture of deference (Moral Maze,

2010). Perhaps there has been a collapse in the culture of deference, though this shouldnt necessarily

be treated as a negative thing. Neurobiologist Kenan Malik responded to Buerks assertion by stating

that he is wary of the condemnation of twitter, for encouraging a mob rule mentality, because;

those denunciations are all to often an elitist argument against the democratic process.

(Moral Maze, 2010)

This assumes that any opening up of political debate, however reactionary or superficial, is, on the

whole, a good thing for society. After all, how many people discussing these issues in the local pub

have paid any more attention to the detail? (Andrew Walker, 2010) In that sense we must assume that

the collapse of the culture of deference is not because of social media but rather a reflection of society

in general.

The problem with social media is that it appears to represent a new public sphere for debate.

Journalist Brendan ONeill warns;

I am completely in favour of mass discussion and the public being genuinely involved in a

serious debate about the future, about the world, about politics. But twitter, and blogging to a


14/68


And she may well have wished that they still didnt because within hours Conservative tweeters and

bloggers had scoured Ellie Gellards tweet and blog archive, found a blog post where she called on the

Prime Minister to stand down, and alerted the press. Several newspapers ran with the story, The Times

even placing it on the front page;

Ellie Gellard, 20, who blogs as the Stilettoed Socialist, told Mr Brown after a by-election

defeat that it was time to get your coat and go. Yesterday she urged Labour to embrace the

power of the Internet, but by mid-afternoon the party was ruing her use of social media and

asking why no one had picked up on her remarks.

(The Times, 2010, p.7)

Andrew Keen highlights how social media has been used to attack political opponents, in a highly

personal way, in the USA;

During the November 2006 congressional elections, one of the most watched videos onYouTube was a campaign advertisement for Vernon Robinson, the Republican candidate for

North Carolinas Thirteenth Congressional District. The video was a distasteful attack on Brad

Miller, Robinsons Democratic opponent. Instead of spending money on cancer research, Brad

Miller has spent your money to study the masturbation habits of old men the commercial

announced.

(Keen, 2007, p.66)

Where as, only recently, platforms such as YouTube and facebook were being used as the tools to

deliver attacks on individuals. Social media has now become a rich source of stories, potentially

thousands of which lie waiting to be discovered, for traditional media.

7. Conclusions.

Data analysis clearly shows that the Labour party MPs have a more interactive approach to socialmedia though there are individuals from other parties who also do this well. This group could perhaps

be described as an elite. They are highly familiarised with the platform, mostly from the Labour

party, and though their following appears to be average it is most probably as indicated through the

MPs own high-level of interaction an active, rather than passive, audience.


15/68


Twitter is perhaps best described as a collection of networks rather than a single entity (Moral Maze,

2010). And twitters potential to bring people into political debate is centralised around events (Walker,

2010), such as Question Time, which have the potential to bring together the Westminster network - of

politicians, bloggers, activists and journalists and the majority who use twitter to connect with their

own networks of likeminded people. However, as has been illustrated over recent weeks, social media

cannot compete with power of television to broadcast a message to tens of millions of people. It is a

complement to that; facilitating the sharing of ideas and opinion, anchored around a central theme or

event, which non-partisan users can dip in and out of, and to which politicians can gauge opinion;

Recent research has even indicated a stimulus effect on political participation when discussion

among heterogeneous networks is combined with hard news media use.

(Chadwick & Howard, 2009, p.145)

And as more politicians and journalists join twitter it seems probable that a time will come when the

risk of politicians saying something offensive such as former Labour PPC Stuart MacLennon

(Guardian, 2010) - or not walking the party line, will become such that parties will either ban

politicians from social media or heavily restrict its use. The Ministerial Code requires that all

departmental announcements be cleared with Downing Street first (Ministerial Code, 2007), already

limiting the spontaneity of social media somewhat, for cabinet and junior ministers. And so although

social media has not yet come under the influence of the party machines in a centralised capacity. If

politicians continue to abuse the tool this does seem inevitable. And as people realise that there is a

partisan uniformity, in terms of content, people will be less and less engaged when they come into

contact with politicians through social media.

Word Count: 5,493


16/68


Bibliography.

Books

Barney, D. (2004). The Network Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Chadwick, A. (2006).Internet Politics: States, Citizens and New Communication Technologies. NewYork: Oxford University Press Inc.

Chadwick, A & Howard, P. (2009).Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics. London: Routledge.

Coleman, S & Blumer, J. (2009). The Internet and Democratic Citizenship: Theory, Practice and

Policy. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Crossley, N. (2005).After Habermas: New Perspectives on The Public Sphere. Oxford: Blackwell.

Keen, A. (2007). The Cult of The Amateur: How Todays Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting

our Economy. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

Sanders, K. (2009). Communicating Politics in The Twenty-First Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave

MacMillan

Journals

Coleman, S & Wright, S. (2008). Political Blogs and Representative Democracy.Information Polity.

13. (1). P.1-6.

Online Journals

Anstead, N & OLoughlin, B. (2010). The Emerging Viewertariat: Explaining Twitter Responses to

Nick Griffins Appearance on BBC Question Time. [Online] Available from:http://newpolcom.rhul.ac.uk/storage/Anstead_OLoughlin_BBCQT_Twitter_Final.pdf

[Accessed: 6th March 2010].

Boyd, D, Golder, S & lotan, G. (2010). Tweet, Tweet, Retweet: Conversational Aspects of Retweeting

on Twitter. [Online] Available from: http://www.danah.org/papers/TweetTweetRetweet.pdf

[Accessed: 7th March 2010]


17/68


Radio

Moral Maze. (2009). BBC Radio 4. Wednesday 4th November 2009.

Wesbites

Box UK (2009) Twitter Demographics [Online] Available from: http://www.boxuk.com/blog/twitter-

user-demographics [Accessed: 9th April 2010]

The Guardian (2010) Facebook Groups Are The New Lynch Mobs [Online] Available from:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/10/facebook-groups-internet-hadley-

freeman

[Accessed: 12th

march 2010]

Tweetminster (2010) Tweetminster[Online] Available from: http://tweetminster.co.uk/ [Accessed: 5th

January 2010]

Virkeligheden.dk (2009) Why Facebook Groups Are Not Democratic Tools. [Online] Available from:

http://virkeligheden.dk/2009/stork-fountain-experiment-1-facebook-groups-are-not-

democratic-tools/[Accessed: 11th December 2009]

YouTube (2010)Ellie Gellards Manifesto Launch Speech [Online] Available from:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKWk27SiyoI [Accessed: April 17th 2010]

Other

United Kingdom Ministerial Code. Cabinet Office. (2007).


18/68


Appendix.I. MPs on Twitter as of 18th January 2010

Conservative

Labour

Lib Dem

Plaid Cymru

SNP

Respect

SDLP

Adam Afriyie

Adam Price

Alison Seabeck

Alistair Carmichael

Andrew George

Andrew Gwynne

Andrew Rosindell

Andrew Slaughter

Andy Reed

Angus Robertson

Anne Snelgrove

Ann Keen

Ann Widdecombe

Anthony D Wright

Ben Bradshaw

Celia Barlow

Chris Bryant

Christopher Huhne

Crispin Blunt

Danny Alexander

Dari Taylor

David Cairns

David Chaytor

David Drew

Elliot Morley

Eric Joyce

Eric Pickles

Frank Field

George Galloway

Gillian MerronGisela Stuart

Graham Stuart

Grant Shapps

Greg Mulholland

Harriett Harman

Hazel Blears

Hywel Williams

Ian CawseyJames Brokenshire

James Plaskitt

James Purnell

Jim Knight

Jim Murphy

John Denham

John Prescott

John SpellarJo Swinson

Julia Goldsworthy

Kerry McCarthy

Kevin Brennan

Lembit Opik

Nadine Dorries

Nicholas Clegg

Norman Lamb

Parmjit Dhanda

Patrick McFadden

Paul Clark

Paul Rowen

Pete Wishart

Phil Willis

Phyllis Starkey

Sadiq Khan

Sandra Gidley

Sarah McCarthy-Fry

Shahid MalikSion Simon

Stephen McCabe

Stephen Timms

Steve Webb

Susan Kramer

Tessa Jowell

Tim Farron

Tom BrakeTom Harris

Tom Levitt

Tom Watson

Vera Baird

Vincent Cable


19/68


II. Face to face interview with Andrew Walker, Co-Founder of Tweeminster and founder of Thin

Martian Digital Creative Agency.

Thin Martian Offices, Cowper Street, Islington, London. Wednesday 14th April 2010.

DS: Danny Saxby

AW: Andrew Walker

DS: Do you think Twitter is a good tool for getting through to those people who arent interested in

politics? Because I think thats what the politicians think, theyre all going for it thinking, theres a load

of people there and I can broadcast to them. But obviously, its not that simple.

AW: No. Theres always this interesting argument between you know, theory versus reality. Theres

that thing about aftershave, theory and reality. The theory of aftershave is that you splash it on your

face and women come flocking out of the woodwork and you know, youre this fabulous dude. The

reality is that you splash it on your face, go oohhh, and it really stings, and you walk around with a red

face. And I think, taking that, with Twitter, especially with Twitter, but with social media in general,

what I think politicians have got wrong is that they think; ok its a younger demographic, we know that

its primarily, the most active group is sort of 25, sorry 24, to 35 age group. The fastest growing group

is 36 to 54. And the 18 to 24 age group is very active. Young people are disinterested in politics,

theres likely to be a low a turnout. So conventional wisdom would mean, hey if we go and use social

media we will reach younger people. What theyve don wrong with that of course is the fact that all of

our activity is tightly competed for. Your sharing your online time with your emails, with your mates

on Facebook, downloading movies and tracks and as a result, you know, theyre not reaching those

people because those people arent going to Twitter for their political fix. So yeah the theory is we can

talk to the kids, but thats not going to work, but something else has happened thats more practical.

Whats happened is this kind of organisation of, or collection, of influencers, which is very strong on

Twitter. Its what Paul Staines, who runs the Guido Fawlkes blog, calls the Westminster Bubble.

Youve got all the major journalists, columnists, editors, TV channels, mainstream media, pundits,


20/68


people than they did through the other media channels. Certainly everything thats said about

competing for time as far as TV advertising, to posters, to radio, to the newspaper. I mean how many

young people are going to pick-up the paper and go Im reading a leader by Peter Mandelson, or

someone like that. Again its quite small numbers. So I think you can also say that within the audience

they are reaching more younger people, getting more bang for their buck, than they would be

otherwise. But, you know, I dont think theyre reaching a new audience. And the other thing of course

is that I dont think theyre using the right way in trying to reach a new audience, thats the problem.

Theyre broadcasting, as opposed to actually using it to engage with people. And I think thats a big

challenge.

DS: The thing about Twitter is that, unlike Facebook, if Im following you youre not necessarily

following me, where as with Facebook the connection is symmetrical.

AW: Yeah.

DS: So do you think the mechanics of Twitter can be a boundary towards reaching people?

AW: And also there is nothing worse, for a certain kind of user, to me certainly, you follow someone,

you send them a few messages and if they dont follow you back, it breaks that connection, youre left

less interested in what they have to say. And I found it very interesting, and at Tweetminster of course

Im connected to loads of people whove got no idea who I am and if I send them messages from my

private account theyve got no idea who I am, and so they dont respond. You start to see that people

use Twitter for different tools. Sorry, getting back, youre right. With Facebook its more about

relationships. With Twitter its less about relationships, a lot of the people I follow, I dont have any

relationship with them and Ive no intention to. But Im interested in the link that they post. Thats

probably one of the most interesting uses of Twitter. Its a bit like a search engine for things you dont

know youre looking for. And certainly most people follow politicians and pundits and bloggers, less to

talk with them and engage with them, more to see the link that theyre looking at. So my Twitter feed

comes up, I might 20 or 30 links that during the course of the day are really interesting links that I

havent had to go out and search for. And search engines arent delivering the same results, because

there is so much data out there that they cant filter it fast enough Last week I was on holiday I wasnt


21/68


the UK it hasnt worked the same way, its much more about being able to tune into the pulse, you

know, whats happening right now in current affairs? What can we do about it? And what should our

position be? And I think politicians using it very effectively as a sort of opinion poll mechanism, thats,

yeah,

DS: So by following the right people youre filtering the right news towards you?

AW: Exactly yeah, if you follow the right people and they supply the right content then youre more

likely to enjoy the stuff theyre giving to you. Its a self-selecting mechanism; you know youre

filtering through people whos opinion you trust, and thats what makes them influencers. If you look

at the people who post links on bit.ly and you go to bit.ly and you see how many people have clicked

on that link, you know, you will see that some of them, you know, if I posted a link I might a few

people, I might a hundred people, click on it, look at it and say oh thats amazing, isnt that

interesting. I have a social media start-up so I post something about usability or tech then Ive got

people who are following me who are interested in that and Ive done a little bit of filtering with that

there. If I tweet hey look at this, this is an amazing article about something to do with politics no ones

that interested, if politicians tweet that you see a huge amount of clicks. So its not just about the

filtering, its about people who are good at filtering different things. Youll probably follow geeks, like

me I guess, if you want someone whos going to be following links about tech. Follow politicians and

youll see stuff about politics. And bloggers and most people in-between, you know, will use it

different things. Its a great search engine like that, and in a way thats how politicians should be using

it more effectively, and not, you know, theyre pushing their message out there when its a really really

important tool for actually measuring the pulse of where things are going and seeing where

conversations are moving, seeing whats hot right now. Look at the Trafigura scandal, now thats a

classic example of twitter being a great catalyst for something really exciting. Now Private Eye had

already covered that story some weeks before, but its got a very small readership, it hasnt got out

there, and the people who read Private Eye are the people who read Private Eye, you know. If youre

every going to reach people in the states, as soon as enough people in the UK were talking about it it

started trending and then the US kicked in and it turned into this massive thing. Jan Moir, here article

about Stephen Gately, which is the other one which everyone always mentions. Again, massive

activism which lasted 48 hours where everyone got pissed off about something and posted about it on


22/68


AW: Thats very interesting because I would kind of expected the Lib Dems to feature more heavily in

that. Im not surprised how the Conservatives performed in these numbers. Because, what weve found

with our analysis, is that the parties use the tools differently. Labour have less of a strong central

message going out through social media, but they have a lot more activists out there tweeting and

retweeting. The Lib Dems are pretty even handed, theyve got some great bloggers and theyve got a

fairly active party stream but there arent really that many of them by volume so I guess thats why

they dont feature heavily in the numbers. The Conservatives, they are much less interactive, but, if you

look at the number of links theyre pushing out here, and you compare that with the number of retweets

and the number of replies, you see that theyre good at pushing stuff out but theyre not good at

responding and they tend not to be very interactive.

DS: These numbers are just the MPs, some people say the Tory activists are more influential than their

MPs.

AW Well Tory bloggers are a lot more influential, Id say than almost any other group youll find

online. Guido Fawlkes, Iain Dale, Tim Montgomerie are really really strong voices, and have much

more impact than the Labour bloggers. Even the sort of rising stars of blogging, like Ellie Gellard and

Will Straw, they just dont carry the clout that those guys have. I would say youre right though.

Conservative supporters and Conservative bloggers have a lot more clout than Conservative MPs

online, on twitter, certainly. Conservative MPs tend to be fairly strict. There are two that stand out.

One is Grant Schapps who is, you know, I think an excellent tweeter, very accessible; genuinely I think

he ranks up there as being a very good user of the technology. I think the other one that stands out, for

less positive reasons, is Nadine Dorries, who has tended to get into a lot of arguments on twitter with

people and can be very forthright with her views. And its very entreating, especially the clashes shes

had with Kerry McCarthy. Its very entertaining, and in a way its a good use of the mechanism but is

also shows the danger of using it because, you know, getting into arguments inn a stream of micro-

posts, you cant really follow the argument and its just like a stream of angry tweets. But these figures

are great, really interesting stuff. And it does bear out. The only thing I would say is, probably off the

record but do feel free to record it, when you publish these numbers the Tories and the Lib Dems who

read this are going to come back and say oh you working for the Labour party. And unfortunately one

of the really interesting things weve found is that when you push out figures you push data out there


23/68


market place to operate in because there are these sort of rational agendas which of course means that

the power of the medium is quite challenging. Because the real strength of social media analysis is

what youve done here. You can look at this and you can actually draw meaningful conclusions about

each parties communications strategy from the way that they are using twitter. Thats very interesting.

The problem is that, if you then, you know, use that data as part of your analysis, as part of your

research and push it out there, you know, the responses will be oh yes, but youre a member of the

Labour party. But there is one other thing which is interesting here though, that it would be interesting

to do an analysis on facebook because the Conservatives have been very active on facebook, and the

reason for that is because they feel theyve got to be demographically targeting. So if you facebook you

know you can reach a group of 50 year-olds or, you know, a group of OAPs or grandmothers or

mothers or what have you. Where as with twitter its difficult to know who people are. So, you know,

youll probably find that in terms of posting messages on facebook groups the picture is kind of

reversed. So what we might be seeing here is a picture, this is through one channel, and on facebook

its the other way. But yeah, its very, its very interesting.

DS: Would you say facebook is a better tool for getting at people and getting them engaged in politics?

Because you can target demographics?

Andrew: Yeah, I think it is. I think for only one reason. The examples Ive seen which are very good,

the Lib Dems, people say Jo Swinson, shes very active on twitter. She has a facebook group where

you can contact her and ask her questions through her facebook page. She say, through doing that, she

can reach more people than can come to her surgeries. She says its just a way to through put more

people, its a way I can more interactive, I reach more people. So, you know, shes found facebook to

be very affective. The Lib Dems also have consultations in the West Country about road planning and

new bridges and stuff like that. Where they create these groups and gather peoples opinions. In twitter

theyre not using it the same way, you know, theyre seeing it more as a sort of chat and broadcast

medium. But you can channel a lot more opinion. So its not qualitative, but quantitatively its very

valuable. So if you want to know what people think in depth, with a sort of qualitative analysis,

facebooks the way to go. If you want to know what 20,000 opinions are about a major event, positive

or negative, fairly base level stuff, thats the way to go with twitter. The difference is that neither one

can do the whole picture but what were finding is that our polls on twitter track to with a couple of


24/68


of people screaming about an issue in the public, right in the public eye, in a very public medium. And

actually, its reaching out and reaching the press in other countries its so big. And yet here in the UK the

politicians arent doing that, theyre pushing out oh check out my manifesto, look at this, were on

the chancellors debate and etc etc.

AW: I think these figures back it up as well, these are the most followed MPs and these are the MPs

who posted the most replies over the seven days. Its all Labour again.

AW: Yes they are more interactive. Now Andrew Gwynne, Manchester, hes very very active. Very

popular with the grass roots. If you follow Grace Fletcher-Hatwood, Andrew Gwynnes been heavily

involved with her in the creation of MobMonday. Which is a great use of social media, were they

organise a phone back and they organise people through twitter to do telephone canvassing, great.

Kerry, obviously shes Labours new media spokesperson, shes always been very active and she has a

high profile. Tom Watsons a very interesting guy. He and Tom Price were the first two MPs to be on

twitter. And infact it was Tom Watson, a conversation between him and my business partner Alberto,

that lead to the creation of tweetminster. Tom Watson as saying I think this is very interesting, I think

we should get politicians on it. Tom has pushed an awful lot of activity round the DE bill. Whats

interesting is, if you look at it, he has more followers than the official spokesperson, and more

followers than the most active and interactive politicians. Part of that is because he always taps into the

issues. He recently, the week before last, blocked the passage of the libel act, the amendment of the

libel bill, a lot of people can out to say why and he used the platform brilliantly to say look, this

amendment is addressing one problem in the system but its not addressing all those issues around

copyright, things that have been raise by the pressure groups. And by doing that hes drawn an awful

lot of attention to it. But Tom Harris, he doesnt reply to as many people, but hes very important

because he was the minister who tried to blog and tweet whilst having a ministerial position. And had

to resign eventually over various things he put out there, and has said ever since, you cant be a

government minister and a blogger and a tweeter. Obviously Ed Balls, the Milibands have tried to get

along, but obviously they have a very safe, very controlled policy. Weve meet Tom a few times and he

feels that the value in it is about building trust and I think thats very important But yeah, roughly these

figures are working at as about the same here. Youve got three times as many Labour MPs. We

actually did some analysis looking a people who followed parties And when we took out all the


25/68


an impact in the, you know, Ellie Gellard situation. You know, journalists find breaking stories and its

a way for people to draw their battle lines. It has been very negative, in some respects. The reason its

been so negative is because its a very close race. And, ultimately, parties have got a certain amount of

safe support and theyre squabbling, or theyre campaigning, very hard for that 10% in the middle that

they need to convert. And because of that strategists have told me, in confidence so naming no names,

that when its such a close race its the wrong time to go out there with big ideas, its the right time to

try and discredit the other party. Thats the logic behind the sort of negative campaigning, focusing

very much on the opponents shortcomings as opposed to focusing on your own positives. So weve

seen a bit of grass roots activism, weve also seen a bit of fighting and bitching and what have you.

Weve also seen, this year, which is very different, is the role of twitter in combination with TV. In the

chancellors debate we saw about 20,000 tweets in that hour. You saw there how people were reacting

in real time and how people were doing. And at the end of it all the parties claimed victory, what we

saw, and this is where twitter is important, is that based purely on the poll side of it, we can see that

Cable was the most popular, Darling was second and Osborne came third. Which is what we expected

to see, because we know cable is supremely popular. However the analysis is really interesting. What

we found is that the sentiment score for Osborne went up a little bit, but he was pretty much the same

when he finished. For Cable, his sentiment score went right up, but the next day came right back down.

And with Darling the same thing, he sort of went up and down through the show. By the end of it he

was right up and the next day he was back down. Osborne remained steady and strong. So actually who

won the debate? Its easy to be popular and get a good hour on TV but the next day, you know, youre

back down in the dumps. Thats what happened really for Cable, and thats kind of what happened for

Darling. Osborne? He came out of that just as strong as he went in. So although he came third in the

popularity steaks, he didnt nearly as bad as the press were predicting. In fact he did much better. So

Osborne probably won the debate, even though he didnt put in as good a show as the others. But the

interaction between social media and other mediums, social media and newspapers, thats where a lot

of the links come from, social media and TV, thats where all the conversations start. What are people

talking about on twitter? Theyre talking about what they watched on telly. You know, what theyveseen on the news or read in the papers. So its role in the election, its power in the election is this ability

to connect people together and drive a conversation. I think the other thing thats important is that its

all about whats happening right now. Someone asked me about posters, do you think political posters

will make a really big difference? My answer to that is well they do for probably a couple of days In


26/68


AW: There are two answers for that. Good question, great question. Firstly anything that limits

politicians ability to waffle is a great thing. And we have seen that there is a real value in having 140

characters, from a data mining point of view, which is that in 140 characters its quite easy to spot key

words. So as a way of communicating its very efficient but of course you cant have a long, deep, rich

debate. Its not the right mechanism for that. And its the same as, you know, you cant have a row with

your girlfriend, boyfriend, over text. It doesnt work, you need to get on the phone and have a phone

call. However, thats, I think, ok, because, you know, in the same way, sorry, let me put this another

way. You cant have a debate over twitter, no thats true you cant. But you can draw attention to a

debate, you can direct people to a debate, you can have all the banter around a debate and the debate

can take place somewhere else. Also, it makes you aware of these debates. Ill be honest; the Digital

Economy Bill hadnt passed me by by any means. You know I wasnt in a position, time-wise to

investigate the bill, when I first heard about it. When people started posting links about it on twitter,

thats when I got more involved. And I got the depth from watching the clips on youtube and the blog

posts, thats where I formed the opinion. That wouldnt have happened if it hadnt of come onto my

radar through twitter. You cant fulfil a debate through it, but you can start one. And starting a debate

is, in many respects, half the battle.

DS: Once you start a debate, where would you take it then?

AW: Yeah, thats kind of where it falls down a little bit because, you know, twitter has a short attention

span. Trafigura, lets not forget that was massive. It forced the over turning of an injunction that was

highly suspect, it broke the story into the mainstream media. It was terrible PR for Carter Ruck, and a

week later everyone was talking about something else. The people meanwhile, in the Ivory Coast, who

were dieing and having their environment destroyed by this shipping accident, this oil, those people,

that situation is still ongoing. So the debate doesnt go on for very long on twitter. So you start the

debate on twitter, but it go on very long.

DS You mentioned Trafigura and Jan Moir. There is an argument that its to easy to join in these

debates. You know, you join the facebook group or retweet and youre in the numbers. How many of

those people took the time to read the articles? Is it to superficial?

i l di d li i ibl ? O i i j h l f f li i ?


27/68


methodology, and said all were doing is testing the method used in the Japanese experiment. And our

initial projection gave Labour a one point lead over the Conservatives, suggesting a small labour

majority or a hung parliament. Since then weve released two sets of figures, one giving a small

conservative lead over Labour, and one this week showing Conservatives and Labour about level and a

bit of boost for Plaid and the Greens. Ok, so it should have been an academic experiment. The press

release went out, most of the papers picked it up, ITN did a piece on it and people say oh can twitter

predict the election? Tweetminster predicts the results of the election. Actually were not, were

testing out a predictive model. Then you get people saying this is crazy, of course the Conservatives are

going to win, of course theres going to be a hung parliament. We had one guy, a blogger called Tory

Bear, whos not a fan of Tweetminster, started saying that, you know, those lefties t Tweetminster

predict a Labour win. You have to sit there and take it on the chin, but on the other hand you have to

accept that people dont read it, people didnt read the methodology and go oh this is a predictive

model from data mining company. They read oh heres some guy whos thrown some tea leaves in a

bowl and is now telling the result of an election labour cant possibly win. You know everyones got

an opinion. Christ, get in a taxi and listen to some of the crazy stuff they come out with. Where do they

get their opinions from?

DS: One of the things about twitter is that it gives everyone a level playing field, is that a good thing?

AW: Well, you know, look at Nick Griffin when he was on Question Time. We were monitoring all the

tweets and there was a real storm of tweets, three times as many as there were during the chancellors

debate. Which shows you how engaged the public were. We were registering about four tweets a

second. And what we saw was that there were a couple of people of said give the man a chance, you

know, and hes got a point there. Clearly out of step with the views of everyone else and some people

were tweeting saying dont you love your country, dont you want to stand up for Britain?, echoing

the points that Nick Griffin was making, which to a lot of people dont make sense. You know, its like

the BNPs idea that there is a black police officers association so there should be a white police officersassociation. And you know, it doesnt take a genius to work out that the white police officers

association is the police. So theres some basic logical misunderstanding. And what we found was that

there were some people saying, no, hes right. And they should be able to get up there and say their

piece but they should also expect to get shouted down by the majority who say no youre wrong I

H i l di d liti ibl ? O i it j t th l tf f t liti ?


28/68


with chatrooms they could all get together and be racist, they had these sort of dark, dingy meeting

rooms where they got together, so I think its a good thing.

DS: There is a theory about twitter that, through the process of retweeting, people who arent interested

in politics can be accidentally exposed to political ideas and debate. Do you agree with that?

AW: Yeah, retweeting is interesting. With my agency hat on, we did the campaign for the Anvil DVD.

The rock band Anvil. We did a lot of measuring of retweeting there. And what was really interesting

was, if you were a certain age, middle-aged man, and youre into heavy metal, youll like Anvil. But

whats interesting is that your friends will like Anvil. Anvil has, over 6 months, Anvil had about 400

hundred retweets. But when we added all that up we reached a couple of million people through that

retweeting. Now admittedly, about million of those were from Coldplay retweeting because theyve got

a lot of followers. But, from 400 hundred people retweeting, we reached somewhere in the region of

25-30,00 ordinary Joes. All of whom were interested in rock music. And for politicians, having their

stuff retweeted is, yeah, its an excellent way to expose people to politics. Because everyone is political

about something. However, what I suspect is that, and this needs to be studied, is that if you retweet

something about the environment, people are much more engaged. If you retweet something about

party politics, people will switch off. You know, party politics is not interesting in a way in which the

environment, the economy and that kind of stuff is. And so its single-issue politics that I think is good

for retweeting, Im not sure that party politics goes the same way. David Wright calls the Tories scum

sucking pigs and then claims his tweets had been edited, which, technically, is impossible. And then

he tries to delete his tweets but people have already got it, and the link is already out there. Peopled

used our search engine, unfortunately for him, to bring up his whole archive of tweets, to see that, you

know, the words scum, sucking, Tory and pigs feature in various combinations regularly. More

regularly than perhaps they should.

DS: And there was the Labour PPC who recently got sacked because of what he said on twitter.

AW: Ahh yes, as I said, recently Ive been out of the loop I bit.

DS: I was just wondering if you think because of that parties are going to ban their MPs from using



29/68


the Lib Dems. Or, and there are politicians like Grant Schapps and Nick Clegg doings this as well, who

have tried to speak more to people, to be more engaged. Because you know, theyre aware of the fact

that they need to be talking to people to rebuild that trust. The jury is still out on which is the right way

to go. I think that, youre voting for youre local MP, so for a local MP its a no brainer to talk to the

local people, one-to-one, to be more accessible. And also that is good for democracy, to have your

elected representative where you can reach them, it doesnt matter if, you know, only one in a thousand

communications gets through to them and they get back. Its still more, its more accessibility, and I

think its a good thing. I think the flip side of it is though yeah, youre going to have people whop

embarrass you, but you need to train people more effectively. And for some reason, and you know

weve seen this on other forms of social interaction, you know, people will get naked on a webcam

with a total stranger, in a way they never would if they met them in a bar. People will give people their

bank account details and their passwords in chatrooms in a way you never would in the real world. And

with twitter politicians will say stupid, crazy off the leash remarks, which they would never dream of

saying on TV or in a newspaper article, but they say it on twitter. Ultimately theyve got to get wiser

about it, an I think we are seeing less and less of it. At the moment were in a situation were probably a

lot of people will voting in protest at the Labour government rather than voting for their local politician

who can deliver them excellent services and I think you need to rebuild that trust between people and

politicians and I think you do that by being more accessible.

DS: And at the moment you would agree that the Labour party is by far the better party at that?

AW: I would say yeah. The numbers, the numbers youve got here and the numbers weve got, show

theyre more interactive.

DS: Is that because they let their MPs just get on with it?

AW: Well, yeah. Theyve been less organised in controlling the message. Maybe less now, we areseeing a bit more party control. But yes they have been more interactive, I think the Lib Dems as well

have been more interactive. Both Labour and the Lib Dems have been more interactive the

Conservatives. Some Conservatives have been very strong in their communication; Im thinking Grant

Schapps and Nadine Dorries The numbers game tells us Labours better at it but I would say talking a



30/68


AW: The best advice I heard was Krishnan Guru-Murthys advice, which is, if youve got a twitter

strategy, its probably rubbish. My advice would be probably, dont tweet so much what youre having

for lunch. Let people know where you are, what youre doing and they want to know where you stand

on the issues. Use the tool for that. In the same way that you would use print journalism or broadcast

journalism. But also use it to follow up your other communications in an integrated format. What

twitter does, what facebook does is it allows you to stitch together TV, radio, constituency meetings;

its a sort of communications glue. You can bring all this tuff together, and by doing that you extend

the life of each piece. You know, I did a piece on the radio tell me what you think about it, on twitter,

you know. Use it to add to the value of existing communication channels, be interactive with people,

and also, you know, dont let it rule you. Dont think you have to answer every message because you

dont. And remember that jokes, in text form, are more misunderstood. You know, were having a

conversation and with realising it you can smell me, you can see my skin colour change; you can see

my posturing and facial expressions. Im giving you a huge amount of data about whether Im being

positive or negative. And Kerry McCarthy says the she hates using emoticons, she think that theyre

twee and she doesnt like using them. She thinks that she could because people are getting when shes

being serious and humorous. So thats the important thing, dont try and be funny, be honest with

people, be accessible.

III: Face to face interview with Liberal Democrat PPC for Hastings and Rye, Nick Perry.

Hastings and Rye Liberal Democrat Constituency Office. Hastings, East Sussex. Friday 9th April 2010.

DS: Danny Saxby

NP: Nick Perry

DS: How important is the Internet to your campaign? You said when we were arranging this interview

that it was useful because it was free?

NP: The Internet is crucial in terms of our campaign, I mean, Ive got a thirtieth possibly of the funds,

or campaign donations anyway, that Labour and the Tories have got. So theyre looking at sixty, sixty



31/68


DS: I see youve got a Facebook group in support of the Hastings fishermen, which is really tapping

into a local issue.

NP: Yeah. I dont know if the other politicians would say the same but they havent really done it the

same way. Theyve gone for a kind of candidature approach to social networking and you know, thats

ok, that works with someone like the face recognition of Michael Foster, the sitting MP. I think hes

got something like five hundred people on his network and Amber, the Tory, has something like three

hundred I think. Interestingly I think Amber has support from all over the country rather than

particularly local. And I tried the same initially, you know I set up a page for myself and, you know,

my Dad and his cat were on it. You know, that was it. And I thought, well, how do we tap peoples

enthusiasm for social networking in a way which isnt going to be a real turn-off. And what I decided

to do was to try and get it to help the campaign that I was running, rather than getting people to say,

ooh Nick Perry I want to be his fan, or whatever. Because relatively speaking, as somebody whos

quite new to the area, its going to take time to build the kind of profile that Michaels got, you know,

after living here for sixty years, sixty five years. Erm, and having various different roles in the local

and the county council. So, erm, I just had to decide what campaigns are important to me and what

difference I wanted to make, and err, I chose those, and then use the social networking to try to develop

peoples awareness of those campaigns. And thats been quite successful, you know, sort of sort of

, you know, we want fairer parking at the Conquest Hospital, and we have about thirteen hundred

members, similarly for the fishermen site. So, errr, thats really important to me this week because that

means that Ive been able to, when I , Ive got a separate kind of bulletin email, which has about 900members on it, thats means that, you know, Ive been able to reach three and a half thousand people.

Quite err and you know on the list there are some kind of key opinion formers in different areas of

the constituencies life. So, just by the touch of a button and without any cost to us I can reach three and

a half thousand people, which, you know, for a party like ours is incredibly important. So yeah, there

you go, social networking has been a real change in the capacity of the smaller parties since the last

election, erm, I dont think there was anywhere near as wide a usage of proficient usage of these sortsof technologies in 2005.

DS: Have you thought about how youre going to turn those three and a half thousand people into

votes?



32/68

p j p p y p

and see exercise to see what difference it makes to our vote share, when we get the results on May 7th,

May 6th.

DS: And youve got a blog as well?

NP: Yeah, Ive got a blog, also free. Provided by Wordpress. And so err, we have a constituency

website, paid for, which is run by a company based in Folkestone, ermm, which provides quite a lot of

the Liberal Democrat websites across the country. Erm, so for the constituency party we have a website

and I have my blog, and thats probably had about twelve thousand hits, over a two year period, and I

dont know how good or not that is but it certainly, erm, its viewed regularly.

DS: Do you get much feedback on the blog?

NP: Yeah I, not necessarily about the content of the blog, the blog is a filter for people to get in touch

with me, and what Ive tried to do is erm, yeah so what Ive tried to do with the blog is to encourage

people to contact me by email, and the more emails we get the more easier it is for us to communicate.

DS: And youve got a Twitter account?

NP: I mean, I do tweet. I probably, during the election campaign Ill probably tweet once a day or

something to tell people what Im doing. That isnt the biggest source of following I dont think,theres probably about eighty or ninety people following me, Im not quite sure. I dont use twitter

much myself, in terms of following other people particularly so I dont really know how people use

twitter themselves to follow me. Erm you knw, I put things up there incase people are interested but it

hasnt been as big a, err, campaign as the blog really

DS: When starting your campaign did you think about how to use these tools? Did you think we canjoin twitter, start a blog and then use twitter to direct people to the blog?

NP: Erm, yes, I mean its a case of trying to cross refer, er, and I also, up until the election campaign I

also had a weekly column on the local papers website which I would direct people to my blog and also



33/68

additionally to that is an encouragement to use it because it is, you know, its a good way of contacting

people, it what seems to work about social networking is people remain relatively anonymous in the

way that they contact you, so you do it by the network rather than by email address

IV: Face to face interview with Hilary Benn MP, Secretary of State for Food and Rural Affairs. Leeds

Town Hall, Leeds, West Yorkshire. Monday 18th

January 2010

DS: Danny Saxby

HB: Hilary Benn

DS: Do you think that connecting to a new generation of voters through technology is necessary, such

as social network sites as twitter?

HB: I dont tweet myself; I have colleagues who do though. You cant get your message across in, is it

only 140 characters? But it is essential to communicate with young voters but presentation of yourpolicy, meeting and speaking to people in person by knocking on doors is still the best way.

DS: Do you think its a good thing for politicians to be on twitter?

HB: I dont know you tell me. Some of my colleagues are on it. Im not sure.

DS: But what being connected with your constituents? Directly?

HB: Yes, I suppose that is a good point. I always get emails saying, Dear Mr Benn, or whoever is

reading this because people expect my secretary not me, to be reading and replying. I always reply

letting people know that it was me who read it, I think thats important. So anything that allows us to

be direct is a good thing yes.

V: Email interview with Alberto Nardelli, Co-Founder of Tweetminster. 5th March 2010.

DS: Danny Saxby



34/68

DS: Do you think it has played a role in encouraging politicians to use Twitter?

AN: I would hope so. I think it made it easier and speeded up the rate of adoption. Twitter's growth,

use by media and the upcoming election of course all helped too.

DS: Do you think Twitter is a useful tool for engaging those people who normally don't engage with

politics?

AN: Yes and no - Twitter helps those already engaged to better connect and share information with

people who are interested in issues, but maybe not so actively interested in politics directly. Meaning it

puts people in touch with politically relevant information far more quickly. The majority of the

population isn't though on Twitter, yet I wouldn't underestimate the influence Twitter has on

mainstream media and in helping people organise activities which have an impact offline.

DS: And do you see some politicians taking their same old message onto Twitter and expecting to

reach a new audience which isnt there. (After all people will only follow you if you say something

worth listening to)

AN: All politicians use Twitter differently - some are engaging, others only broadcast their message.

The more compelling ones though have both more followers and reach than others.

DS: Is Twitter, and its 140 characters, a good tool for debate?

AN: Twitter is communications platform, not a debating tool.

DS: We've seen how the Obama campaign utilised social media to co-ordinate an old fashioned grassroots organisation. Do you think this where the advantage of Twitter lays? As a tool for organising

rather than debating?

AN: Absolutely even if in the UK we're seeing it more used as space to attack political opponents than



35/68

against Trafigura and Jan Moir and the we love NHS campaign. How many of those people who

retweeted comments and used the hashtags had actually read up on the incidents and come to their own

conclusions?

AN: While there is a number of people who simply retweet messages, it's also true that within the

stream of information there are alternative voices and sources of information - this makes it much

easier actually for people to discover alternative view points than if they read only one newspaper for

example. The masses aren't of course always right, but that's besides the point - in an open platform

competitive view points more easily compete. As a rule of thumb, opens always beats closed.

DS: Is Twitter an aid to democracy? Or is too superficial to have any real impact?

AN: Think previous answer replies to this too - as a yes.

VI: Email Interview with Shane Greer, Executive Editor of Total Politics Magazine. 16th

April 2010.

DS: Danny Saxby

SG: Shane Greer

DS: Do you think Twitter is a useful tool for engaging those people who normally don't engage withpolitics? And do you see some politicians taking their same old message onto Twitter and expecting to

reach a new audience which isn't there. (After all people will only follow you if you say something

worth listening to)

SG: Generally, no. The biggest issue in that regard is that many of the people engaged in political

discussions on Twitter are already political. So, in a direct sense, it's not a great for directly engagingwith non-political people. But it is a great medium for spreading a message further (for example, if the

media pick something up from Twitter (consider how Henry MacRory uses Twitter to spread the

Conservative message to the media)). But there are some exceptions to this. Consider Sarah Brown.

She has over 1 1 million followers and the vast majority will not be political She clearly can spread



36/68

DS: We have seen how the Obama campaign used social media to create a grassroots organisation and

to encourage people to donate millions of dollars. Are the British political parties using social media in

a similar way? Or are they letting their members work out how to best use social media on their own?

SG: The British political parties are, but to varying degrees of success. The LibDems aren't doing very

well at all. Labour have a site called MembersNet which connects activists and helps them mobilise

and organise. But it's the Conservative Party which is really leading the way online.

MyConservatives.com is the centrepiece of the Tory operation, helping them recruit new activists,

organise current ones, raising money for candidates online etc. Nobody in the UK is coming close to

achieving the success that Obama did, but I think that's more down to the inability of British political

parties to innovate in the way US campaigns do.

DS: Would you agree that vast number of people who follow politicians and political commentators on

Twitter are already politically active? If so, how can it be use to reach those people who aren't

politically active?

SG: Yes. I think my answer to the first question pretty much covers this.

DS: Are the British political parties using social media to its full potential? Which political party would

you say is the most active and competent online?

SG: See my answer to the third question.

DS: Over the past few days we have seen a Labour PPC sacked because of Twitter, and Labour activist

@BevaniteEllie attacked in national newspapers for a blog she wrote 18 months ago. Whats your view

of these stories?

SG: Labour were right to sack the PPC, but they should have done it sooner (his Tweets were over aperiod of time, and some senior Labour people were following him). I think this was perhaps the first

great example of a British politician really messing up online, and I think we'll see a lot more of it in

the years ahead. As for Ellie Gellard, I don't have a problem with someone changing their mind. But

i liti h t b f l b t h t ' id i th t it h t i th f t



37/68

DS: Danny Saxby

BT: Bill Thompson

DS: Do you think Twitter is a useful tool for engaging those people who normally don't engage with

politics? And do you see some politicians taking their same old message onto Twitter and expecting to

reach a new audience which isn't there. (After all people will only follow you if you say something

worth listening to)

BT: I don't think Twitter will really do much for engagement. Those who tweet and aren't interested in

politics will ignore it, or stop following those who do engage. I think it can be valuable for reinforcing

connections, for spreading news quickly and for asking questions of those putting forward positions or

points of view.

DS: Is Twitter, and its 140 characters, a good tool for debate?

BT: Twitter can be used to engage in debate, but the problem is not so much the lack of space - 140

characters is ok to express a view - but the complexity of extracting tweets relating to a specific topic

from the flow, threading them in any reasonable way and keeping up with what's going on. It's more

appropriate for a quick back and forth on a topic than a longer form conversation - and that has limitedvalue in the political process, I fear.

DS: We've seen how the Obama campaign utilised social media to co-ordinate an old fashioned grass

roots organisation. Do you think this where the advantage of Twitter lays? As a tool for organising

rather than debating?

BT: I don't think Twitter is good at this - too few people are connected, there is no guarantee tweets

will be received and tweets are too public, in general. A lot of work has been done over many years to

make email delivery reliable and many more people can receive email on the move than use Twitter



38/68

though they may do a lot to raise awareness that could then be capitalised on by proper campaigning.

Tom Watson's book Causewired is a good examination of the potential of the network to galvanise

causes.

DS: Is Twitter an aid to democracy? Or is too superficial to have any real impact?

BT: Any tool that helps people communicate directly is an aid to democracy, however small the impact

it may have. Twitter has a lot to offer, but it's not going to save the world.

VIII: FOI Request to UK Cabinet Office

Dear Sir/Madam,

Please acknowledge receipt of this letter as a Freedom of Information request. I am writing to you in

order to obtain copies of any documents/memos/E-Mails, issued by any Government departments,

setting out protocols/guidelines on the use of Social Media by both Ministers and backbench MPs.

By Social Media I mean websites such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, as well as blogs.

Yours Sincerely,

Danny Saxby

(Results included Civil Service guide to social media and a copy of the UK Ministerial Code)

VIIII: FOI Request to Mayor of London Offfice



39/68

Dear Mr. Saxby,

Thank for your inquiry on 10 March 2010.

The Mayor communicates with Londoners using every appropriate and practical tool possible,

including twitter. He also receives more than 6000 pieces of correspondence every month. This is

clearly a considerable logistical challenge and a small team of people who process these exchanges

help the Mayor. All communications however reflect his personal views and the authentic voice of the

Mayor.

Thank you again for your interest.

Kind Regards

Debbie MazsMarketing

G

Documents

Applied Journalism Research Project: Social Media & Politics