Tag Archives: tweetminster

Do Tweets win seats? – Micro-blogging and politics

By Helen Duffett | Tue 28th September 2010 - 11:37 am

Politicos use Twitter to communicate with voters, activists and the media. It’s sociable and fashionable. It’s useful but it has its limits.

And if this was Twitter I’d stop there, for the paragraph above is a 140-character summary of the popular micro-blogging service and its emerging role in politics. Having the luxury of a whole chapter, rather than a couple of lines, I can expound a bit. But sometimes I relish Twitter’s brevity and the way it gives me both the discipline and the excuse not to write at length.

Twitter was to the 2010 General Election what blogging had been to the previous one: novel, topical, conversational, personal. Blogging, in long and short form, is good for quickly spreading campaign messages, news and rumours and it’s freely accessible for anyone with an internet connection.

When I first subscribed to the service a couple of years ago, few news outlets or political candidates were tweeting, although the three main parties were already using it to link to party information and election results.

Over the past year, Twitter has been increasingly taken up by MPs and councillors, bloggers and journalists, even government departments, but crucially by thousands of people who are none of the above, but want to converse with them on an equal footing.

The parties continue to tweet, but now candidates, MPs and party leaders themselves are using the medium, with varying degrees of skill.

Posted in Online politics and Op-eds | Also tagged #cashgordon, alberto nardelli, caron lindsay, david eaves, facebook, guido fawkes, john dixon, leaders tv debate, nick clegg, rachel gibson, richard osley, romford, sophocles, stella creasy, stuart maclennan, twitter and willie rennie | Leave a comment

When up is down and down is up

By Mark Pack | Mon 3rd May 2010 - 12:20 pm

A quick explanation for people who are new to pouring over the details of polls and, as several people have commented, are confused by the conflicting figures given for whether a party is up or down and if so by how much in a poll.

Different polling companies use different methods, so comparing – say – an ICM poll with a previous BPIX poll isn’t comparing like with like. Therefore when looking at a poll it makes sense to calculate up/down figures based on the previous poll by that polling firm.

However, polling firms often do work for more than one media …

Posted in Polls | Also tagged anthony well and mike smithson | 4 Comments

Lib Dem MPs on Twitter

By Alex Foster | Mon 12th January 2009 - 3:40 pm

I spent at least some time this weekend mentally upbraiding Iain Dale for his paranoia in thinking that technical faults that got in the way of a David Cameron interview with Andrew Marr stemmed from Labour supporting techies pulling the plug. Cameron had apparently insisted on being interviewed from home because the week before, Gordon Brown had been interviewed from 10 Downing Street. Iain tells us further the Beeb were none to happy with the arrangement but Cameron insisted.

So clearly, the only rational explanation was that peeved techies forced to do OB work on a Sunday combined with Aunty’s …

Posted in News | Also tagged andrew marr, david cameron, gordon brown, iain dale, Jo Swinson, lynne featherstone, rant, technology and twitter | 3 Comments

Social mobility: is the Coalition doing enough to encourage it?

Stephen Tall asks: "Did Nate Silver write in vain?"

Nick Clegg: "Of course the EU has to change"

"Mad, swivel-eyed loons": a top Tory on the Tories

Tag Archives: tweetminster

Do Tweets win seats? – Micro-blogging and politics

When up is down and down is up

Lib Dem MPs on Twitter

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Op-eds

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Social mobility: is the Coalition doing enough to encourage it?

Stephen Tall asks: "Did Nate Silver write in vain?"

Nick Clegg: "Of course the EU has to change"

"Mad, swivel-eyed loons": a top Tory on the Tories

Tag Archives: tweetminster

Do Tweets win seats? – Micro-blogging and politics

When up is down and down is up

Lib Dem MPs on Twitter

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