Following Ed Miliband and Diane Abbott’s recent Twitter faux pas I wanted to analyse the burgeoning and ever growing relationship between Twitter and politics. Over the last few years Twitter has become an essential tool for politicians and parties alike to spread their message and increase their following, both on the ‘Twittersphere’ and in the real world.
But is Twitter simply a further appendage of the press we already have? A place where politicians just tow the party line as they always have done? Many senior politicians (both in age and position) have been outspoken in their derision of the micro-blogging site, suggesting it is a vacuous fad. But at its best Twitter has re-engaged people in politics, providing access to a platform for discussion and contact with politicians that has never before been seen.
So is Twitter a good thing or a bad thing for politics? I’m sure I know in which camp Ed ‘Blackbuster’ Miliband and Diane ‘divide and rule’ Abbott sit at this present moment. But aside from the blunders and ‘foot in mouth’ typos, what has been the real influence of Twitter on politics and has it been positive?
One of the most prolific political ‘Tweeters’ has been Barack Obama. Obama’s influence of online social media in the 2008 presidential election has been well documented. During the peak of his campaign the current US president employed a team of over 100 staff to help him maneuver the political ‘Twittersphere’ in his favor. In July 2011 Obama became the first US president to live tweet in his #askObama ‘Town Hall’ project. White House Communications Director Dan Pfieffer described the Obama administration’s use of Twitter as “similar to what previous presidents did with more traditional outlets like the networks and major papers.”
But that’s not quite true. Whilst Obama uses it to further his political agenda, Twitter is a completely different animal to the aforementioned “traditional outlets”. The days of the five minutes on TV of ‘This is a party political broadcast’ seem very much in the past. These saccharine, clichéd pieces of rhetoric are outdated and politicians and their parties have found news ways of influencing the electorate.
Research has shown that these new ways are proving effective. ‘Retweets’, for those unfamiliar with Twitter, are where users repost another users message to their own followers. Out of 250,000 political ‘Retweets’ analysed by researchers in one study, the majority were along party lines, not against them.
The rise of politicians on Twitter has also seen the rise of the political celebrity. In recent times British politics has become increasingly presidentialised and the success of the bigger personalities, rather than the better policies has become prevalent. Whether politics on Twitter is a cause or effect in this situation is up for debate. Probably both. But does the social networking site cheapen politics by this? Or does it increase the electorates understanding of their politicians? Perhaps simply by showing they are human like the rest of us, it does.
The popular Tory heartthrob Louise Mensch is one such Twitter political celebrity. Scrolling down my Twitter account recently I saw she had Tweeted “Have hit 44,000 followers… I note that is one more than @EdBallsMP #comeonyoublues 
” For a moment the cynical, ‘grumpy young man’ part of me inwardly groaned as I pondered whether this is what politics had become. Had Twitter turned politics into a competition over who could gain more people to follow the banalities of their life? I scrolled down further and noticed someone else had Tweeted that it was William Gladstone’s birthday. I imagined the ‘Grand Old Man’ of Victorian politics rolling in his grave at what the noble profession had become.
Then I remembered Gladstone’s other nickname ‘The People’s William’. Gladstone became famous in the 19th Century for his mass rallies, his tours of the country, his speeches in front of tens of thousands of voters. Gladstone was the first British politician to really recognize the influence of engaging the electorate personally; exactly what Twitter does! So perhaps he would have approved.
For all the gaffes and for all the pointless pieces of information we hear from politicians in those 140 characters, Twitter has re-engaged people in politics. Whilst I am wary of politics becoming over-simplified and too much about style and less about substance, I shall continue to Tweet and continue to believe Twitter is a force for good in the political world.