PPCs and Twitter

Introduction
There has been a lot of hype about the use of Twitter. Although Alan Johnson may
have been the first UK politician to tweet during the Labour Party deputy leadership
March to June 2007, interest in the political possibilities in the UK have grown
slowly. The 2008 U.S. presidential election was a catalyst, where Barack Obama
attracted 118,107 Twitter followers compared to the 4,600 following McCain.
Twitter has been considered as either the latest bandwagon which politician’s have
jumped on to, or as a strategic communication channel which supports both
representative and campaigning functions. Content analysis was conducted in
November 2009 to identify how Prospective Parliamentary Candidates (PPCs)* were
currently utilising Twitter. The data was accessed through Tweetminster
http://tweetminster.co.uk/. Where Tweetminster listed 151 PPCs who claim to have a
Twitter account, only 129 were considered 'sticky', and so likely to encourage repeat
visitors. Stickiness was measured by whether they had tweeted during the month
studied. This report is designed to identify and explain key trends in the use of Twitter
by PPCs, and to make recommendations.

Who uses Twitter?

Of the 129 PPCs we can identify the following breakdowns:

Party N Margin N Gender N 2005 N MP N Other N Region N

Result tweets? PPCs
tweet?
Conservative 44 Marginal 30 Male 91 1st 17 Yes 15 Yes 24 London 23
Labour 43 Near- 27 Female 38 2nd 62 No 114 No 105 South 23
marginal East
Liberal 26 Safe 72 3rd 30 East 17
Democrat
Green Party 6 Other 20 South 15
West
UKIP 4 East 12
Midlands
Independent 3 North 12
West
LPUK 2 North 10
(Libertarian East
Perspective)
SNP 1 Scotland 9
West 5
Midlands
Wales 3

Tweeting Behaviour
Given the newness of this technology, the length of use varies enormously. A very
few (3) early adopters have used Twitter since 2007, whereas eleven joined only
within the previous 3 months. The mean average is close to 12 months. In the
month studied PPCs tweeted from between 1 to 1122 times. Twitter can be used as
both a one-way megaphone, whereby tweeters do not follow many other tweeters, or
it can encourage the sharing of ideas as tweeters follow others. The number of
followers that PPCs have varies from 30 to 3,048, and the number they are following
varies from 6 to 2,751. To give these figures some meaning we created a
follows/following ratio, which compares the number of followers they have as
opposed to the number they follow. Thirty six PPCs have a negative rating meaning

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that they follow more than follow them, so that for them Twitter seems largely about
listening to the views of others. Ninety one have a follower/following ratio of 10 or
under, suggesting that they use Twitter as a means of promoting their views, but do
look at what others have to say. Only 2 have a higher ratio than this implying that for
them Twitter is primarily a broadcast channel.

How PPCs use Twitter

The overall content of tweets suggests either a variety of communication objectives or
a lack of strategy. The instances of use, out of a possible 129, demonstrate a variety of
usages across our sample.

Usage Identified (in order of popularity) Number using

Discussing local issues 101
Promoting party 100
Promoting their own campaigns 89
Sharing non-news links 86
Discussing national issues 84
National negative campaigning 80
Political commentary 78
Personal life 77
Promotes personal website or weblog 73
Shares news links 68
Having dialogue on non-political issues 62
Discussing personal interests 62
Local negative campaigning 61
Having dialogue on national issues 58
Promoting positions in the constituency 54
Engaging with other MPs/PPCs 53
Promoting personal policy position 53
Referring to casework 53
Provides local information 45
Pointless drivel 43
Having dialogue on local issues 39
Humorous tweets 37
Requests for help 37
Promoting personal achievements 27
Promoting community activity 26
Seeks views on local issues 13
Links to press releases 11
Seeks views on national issues 8
Refers to own abilities 8
Helped people or organisations 6

Overall it would appear that Twitter is seen as a way of promoting self and party, as
well as reinforcing a constituency role. Few use it for two way communication.

On the whole usage seems to have little relationship with key political or demographic
characteristics, but a few observations do emerge:

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 1) Those representing the incumbent party are most likely to promote their own
campaigns, discuss local issues, share non-news links and provide political
commentary. They will also discuss national issues, promote the party, use
negative arguments and refer to both their own work in the constituency as
well as their personal lives.
2) Challenger PPCs are most likely to promote the party, discuss local issues and
promote their own campaigns. They also talk about their personal lives and act
as commentators, while sharing links to their own sites and weblogs as well as
those of others.
3) Gender might be expected to highlight differences in strategy, but largely does
not. Female tweeters are slightly more likely to ask for help, and their focus
seems to be more local. Males use more humour, and are most likely to act as
commentators and share news links more often.
4) The frequency of tweeting has a strong and significant relationship with the
number of follows (.386**) and followers (.364**). There also seems to be a
relationship between being followed and gaining followers (.866**)
suggesting that being active on Twitter gains you a following and following
other Twitter users strategically (based on their interests in politics nationally
or locally) may be effective, and that a network effect may be occurring within
Twitter.

The authors have not identified here any specific party trends, these are available on
request.

Strategic Use of Twitter

The data suggests that where PPCs are using Twitter strategically, they are either a)
promoting their party or b) promoting themselves as a local candidate. Several PPCs
use Twitter both as a partisan and self-promotional channel. We also note two key
factors that influence the potential audience reach of Twitter, namely the number of
tweets and the importance of following others. Not unsurprisingly those PPCs who
tweet most are more likely to have a high number of followers, and so build up an
online constituency. Less obvious is the fact that those PPCs who are following
others, are also more likely to have more followers. This suggests that to be effective
Twitter should not be viewed solely as a one-way broadcast media, but that the
continued building of networks is central to the impact of the medium.

Recommendations

1) Conduct an audit of how your party’s Tweeting PPCs (and MPs) use Twitter.
2) Provide PPCs with simple training and advice on how to use Twitter. The
standard of use varies enormously from those who offer interesting, regular
and interactive tweets through to those which are pointless.
3) Conduct research of Twitter users to identify who they are, why they follow
PPCs and if any impact can be detected?
4) The balance of tweets appears too weighted towards negative point-scoring,
and we would suggest that greater engagement through the @ key is likely to
build stronger relationships.

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 5) Whilst not as effective a recruitment and mobilising tool as private email lists,
and publicly open, tweets could reinforce national and local appeals for
donations and support.
6) Encourage candidates to introduce a policy for how they are going to use
Twitter during the campaign, and when and how they are going to use it.

Dr Nigel Jackson (University of Plymouth)

Dr Darren Lilleker (University of Bournemouth).
January 2009

*The authors conducted a similar research project of MPs use of twitter in June 2009.
The results are available on request.