Top tweets
Bubble — By Daran Hill on January 12, 2010 10:00 am
140 characters per tweet, but how many political characters tweet?
TWITTER is the biggest of life’s many distractions created just to deflect me from my real purpose. Following Twitter today, a medium warm topic today has been the number of elected and non-elected politicians who use the platform to communicate. They have assessed the risks, had the technology explained to them, and then taken the plunge. Sometimes with media worthy results…
It’s a growing trend. A year ago, it was an early adopter heaven, barely noticed, where a politician could vent their spleen in an environment far more private than it has become today. Twitter is a boom business.
Ever reliable Tweetminster (a sort of online cathedral for political tweeting acolytes) offers the following analysis of how Members of Parliament break down in terms of twitterers:
Labour 59%
Liberal Democrat 21%
Conservative 15%
Scottish National Party 2%
Plaid Cymru 1%
Other 2%
Thankfully no breakdown is provided of tweet numbers per twitterer, but the statistics are striking. Especially so since today Tweetminster revealed the breakdown for the main UK parties’ Prospective Parliamentary Candidates in terms of twitterers. The variation is quite striking (apart from Lib Dems that is):
Conservative 38%
Labour 29%
Liberal Democrat 21%
All of which leads to two obvious Welsh questions – how many Assembly Members now tweet and how many PPCs from Wales are on Twitter?
I feel a little qualified to attempt to the assess the first category, spending so much time on bleeding Twitter, so here goes:
Labour – 5
@AlunDaviesAM
@carlsargeant
@huwlewis
@JeffCuthbert
@LeightonAndrews
Liberal Democrats – 4
@eleanorburnham
@jennyranderson
@KirstyAM
@peterblackwales
Plaid Cymru – 3
@bethanjenkins
@LeanneWood
@NerysEvans
Conservatives – 3
@AlunCairns
@DarrenMillarAM
@JonMorganAM
I make that 15 out of 60, or 25% of the total. Apologies to anyone I’ve missed out (let me know and I’ll add you), and I’ve also not included dormant accounts that have never been tweeted through.
But what about PPCs from Wales? Well, that one’s over to you. Just comment on this post with a name, a constituency and your Twitter identity and we’ll publish the information. You never know, it might get you some extra followers.
(And yes, I know I follow some of you already, but it’s taken me long enough to write this post already!)
Tags: 2010 General Election, candidate selection, Twitter
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8 Comments
@carylwynjones
Plaid Cymru PPC for the Vale of Clwyd
So 1% of Plaid MPs use Twitter, eh?
Assuming that this is rounded to the nearest percentage point, the precise figure can at most be 1.49% … which would mean that just one out of our 67 MPs twitters.
I’m only glad that so many MPs have crossed the floor to join us. When are they going to announce it to the media?
There is a great deal of difference between being a Twitterer and having an account. The former necessitates active communication. The latter tends to make people think that they are “with it” technically.
Alan – as you can see, I deliberately left out AMs with a Twitter account who have never posted. Far be it from me to make any subjective judgement on the others.
Not sure whether the Tweetminster figures covered those with an account, an account that has been used, or, by your definition, being an active Twitterer
And of course for keen tweeters there is
@amnestywales – human rights headlines
@walesvawgroup – updating the campaign for an strategy to tackle violence against women in Wales and
@cpghr – the Cross Party Group on Human Rights
I have an account but never twitted cos i dont know how to start ,maybe thats a bonus !
@mh – I’ve worked it out now, it is of the total, I.e. of all the mps on twitter, lab make up 59 percent of the total, not 59 percent of lab mps are on twitter. Discounting plaid and the snp, for whom their percentages could mean anything between one or all of their mps being on twitter, this suggests that lib dem mps are most likely to be on twitter, followed by labour with the tories trailing. I presume the ppc figures are worked out the other way, ie. Percentages of total ppc’s who tweet. Interesting nonetheless.
Dom – both your maths and your conclusions seem sound to me.
And you’ll realise, of course, why I indicated Welsh twitterers in absolutes rather than percentages. It causes less headaches.
In other news, some PPCs from Wales are already being aggregated through @tweetminster/wales. Thanks to the good people at Twitter for pointing this out.
And to Welsh PPCs: come on, share your twitter accounts. It could get you some extra traffic! (And I’m including regular contributors like @ReneKinzett and @JonathanPlaid in that – even though I probably don’t need you to point out your account addresses to me now…)