Matthew Freckleton: Tweet taste of success for a political newcomer

Of the 140 million Tweets a day, a great deal are concerned with politics; but what real impact does the service have on our lives, and on the people who govern our lives, our politicians?

It is certainly true that the way we interact with each other is changing, and this is especially true for Twitter’s largest demographic, people aged 18 to 24 years.

As with many new technologies, younger generations have been the first to embrace Twitter, letting their friends know what they are doing and thinking while connecting with people in a public conversation. This allows those interested in politics to establish connections with an online community of people who share their positions.

Concurrently, political campaigns are increasingly issue-based rather than party-based, and Twitter facilitates this. Meanwhile, the number of MPs using Twitter has risen drastically. In 2008, only four MPs had a Twitter account. Now over 220 are Tweeting, telling their constituents and anyone else who cares what their views are on policy, what they are doing to address the demands of the electorate and what is happening to our money. US politicians have been switched on to using social media to get their message across for a great deal longer than those in the UK. While less than 40 per cent of MPs use Twitter, over 70 per cent of Congress does.

What is strikingly different is the tone of messages; a great deal more UK politicians handle their accounts personally. While Barack Obama posted his very first Tweet the other Sunday, many MPs do not have a member of staff managing their account.

It was clear during the last US Presidential campaign that each candidate had a vast team deciding what would be posted on Twitter and each Tweet was taken extremely seriously.

This means two things; firstly, that UK content can be a lot more honest, as it is unlikely that it has undergone any kind of vetting procedure. Secondly, that a lot of it can be fairly irrelevant with regards to politics, for exactly the same reason. The influence of Twitter is on the up as well as its usage. Much of the coverage of the Arab Spring, especially events in Egypt, involved discussion of content posted on Twitter and other social media platforms.

It was even suggested that social media had been a catalyst for what took place – some decreed that without Twitter the revolutions would not have transpired at all. While the organisational benefits of the service were certainly positive, it may be too easy to overestimate the part it played. Ownership of Smart Phones is considerably lower in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya than in the UK.

Where one might consider Twitter to be a genuinely strong force is in those Western nations where politicians are Tweeting regularly. You need only look at the devastating impact of Anthony Weiner’s Twitter slip-up to see how detrimental misuse of the service can be. Rather than sending a lewd photo of himself privately, he posted it publicly and was subsequently forced to resign from Congress. There was a marked 30 per cent reduction in Tweets by US politicians in the following days.

Might this be quite a worrying trend however, in aiding an already established trend in public interest in the people in politics rather than their principles? For starters, it is hard to imagine any amount of significant analysis occurring in 140 characters. Twitter lends itself to the age of soundbite politics and self-promotion, as individuals become increasingly more important than ideas.

New technology can also be beneficial in increasing engagement in politics. While engagement with politics in the past may have required the fairly slow process of writing a letter and awaiting a response from your MP, Twitter operates at a much faster pace.

You can expect a response from a clued-up MP within the day, if not mere hours. This reduces the barriers of entry to politics, and encourages participation. Twitter also makes it easier to hold politicians to account. When they are putting out their thoughts at great frequency, it is easy to refer back to them when there is any deviation between what they have Tweeted and what has been put into practice. If used properly social media can make politics far more transparent.

There is, however, a danger in overuse of the service; as David Cameron has remarked, too much of it has the potential to make one a bit of a fool.

Whether Twitter is good or bad for politics, it is certainly here to stay and if our politicians want to communicate to voters effectively, then they should be embracing it to do so. It is up to the electorate to make sure that it does not result in deterioration in the quality of political debate and discussion.

* Matthew Freckleton is a student at the University of York and one of the founders of Yatterbox, a website that monitors politicans and their use

of social media.