Applied Journalism Research Project: Social Media & Politics

Has social media made politics more accessible? Or is it just another platform for party politics?
Danny Saxby
Applied Journalism Research
Project
Has social media made politics more

accessible? Or is just another
platform for party politics?
Danny Saxby JOU3142 Pg1

1. Introduction.
Over recent months we have seen, in rather dramatic scenes, why it would be folly to disregard such
tools as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as mere fads. The Obama campaign revolutionised the use of
social media as a political tool. Two Parliamentary candidates have been sacked because of their use of
twitter, and huge viral campaigns seem to burst into life through facebook and twitter. Often breaking
into the tabloid press and television.
Whilst this research is intended to examine the effect of social media upon political debate it is worth
explaining why the majority of the word count has been set aside for one social media website in
particular. Twitter is a relatively new and basic medium for communication. And on first inspection it
seems, almost in every aspect, to be fundamentally unfit for the purpose of intellectual debate. Users
are restricted to only 140 characters per ‘tweet’, seriously limiting ones capacity for vigorous
discussion. The majority of the twitter community are younger people, to whom politics is a redundant
concept that does not require their input.
Yet despite its obvious flaws the BBC’s Question Time, The Daily Politics and This Week, have also
jumped aboard the Twitter bandwagon. It is likely that the motivation for this originates in the younger
demographic of the behind the scenes production staff. But nonetheless it is of importance.
2. Literature Review
Due to the nature of the subject finding literature that is both up to date and relevant is difficult. There
are many books which discuss the wider issues of politics and the internet, not so many discussing
social media. Books such as the Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics (2009) and Internet Politics
(2006) discuss many of the issues around how formal politics has adapted in the internet age. Both
books discuss the potential of the internet to take politics out of the hands of elites and to widen
engagement. In The Cult of The Amateur Andrew Keen (2007) argues that this shift in power from
experts – in the traditional ‘public-sphere’ - towards amateurish part-timers – such as bloggers - is
potentially dangerous. The very technologies which encourage engagement with politics allow us to
consume low-level opinion, masquerading as fact, for free, rather than paying to read expert views and
discussion. This undermines the idea of an informed electorate.
In chapter 4 of The Network Society Darin Barney (2004) outlines how communication networks have
been key to the formulation of political ideas. It is also highlighted that modern communication
technologies have created a politics that is overwhelmingly about information control.
Shama, Kennedy and Churchill in Tweet The Debates (2009) and Anstead and O’Loughlin (2010), in
The Emerging Viewertariat, investigated the use of twitter alongside political such as the Presidential

Debates and Question Time. Both journals found that twitter lends itself to reactionary opinion driven
discussion rather than in-depth debate. However, Anstead and O’Loughlin (2010) did find that just
over 40% of all tweets around Nick Griffins appearance on Question Time were interactive, suggesting
a sharing of ideas and opinion.
3. Methodology
This piece of research uses both quantitative data collection and qualitative data analysis in order to
fully understand a relatively new field of study; how are our politicians are using social media.
For a duration of seven days – from 18th January 2010 until 24th January 2010 – I recorded each Tweet
broadcast by every Member of Parliament on Twitter, of whom there were 107 (see appendix I) at that
time. Each Tweet was categorised into one of the following;
• Party Political – An attack on another democratic party or individual associated with
another democratic party or view.
• Party Rhetoric – Hyperbole involving the party of the author.
• Party Policy – An attempt to promote or discuss party policy.
• Minutiae – Insubstantial utterances of the authors’ daily life and routine. For example the
contents of their lunch or waiting for a train.
• News – Comments on a news event/story.
• Blog – Advertising their blog.
• Constituency – Comments regarding the author’s constituency.
• Parliamentary – Anything involving Parliamentary business.
• Other – Tweets which have an unclear topic or subject and are therefore cannot be
categorised.
Each Tweet can only be allocated to one category, so for those Tweets that could be placed into more
than one category I ensured that they were placed into the most salient category, and that this action
remained consistent throughout the data collection process.
As well as recording the contents of the Tweets, the following types of Tweet were also recorded;
• Link - A link to another URL
• Reply – A Tweet which mentions another Twitter users @username.
• ReTweets – A process whereby users copy and paste other users Tweets and publish
themselves, attributing them to their original author. This can be to assimilate thee Tweet
to another audience, or to add comment, or as a sign of agreement.
It is important to record this data so we can see not just what MP’s are broadcasting, but how they are
broadcasting it. A high level of Links, Replies and Retweets would indicate not just a use of Twitter as
a tool, but a real interaction with it and its users.

Data analysis is then used to come to comprehensive conclusions. Expert interviews were also used for
this purpose, although they were difficult to secure because of the timing of 2010 General Election.
4. How our politicians use Twitter.

The following graph shows the break down of MP’s on Twitter by their party affiliations.
Number of MP's using Twitter
70
60
No of MP's
50
40
30
20
10
0
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LP
P
iv
SN
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ym
bo
at
SD
D
es
La
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se
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Li
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Pl
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Political Party
What is noticeable is that the Labour party has over 60% of the twittering MP’s. Therefore we would
expect to see, in further data analysis, that the Labour party output, as a percentage of the total output
by all the MP’s, would be around 60% also. However the Labour MP’s far overreach this. As the
following charts show, Labour MP’s dominate Twitter in relation to interaction.
Links by Party
14% 13%
73%
Conservative Labour Lib Dem

73% of all links posted over the seven days came from Labour MP’s. This is important to note because
twitters 140 character limit can be a severe restriction.
Therefore the use of links as a means of sharing ideas and alerting people to commentary and debates
is essential in order to ensure depth and quality of discussion.
Retweeting – the process of publishing other people’s tweets to your followers, with attribution to the
original author – is another important way of communicating ideas.
RT's by Party
2% 6%
92%
Conser vat ive Labour Lib Dem
Once again it is the Labour party which dominates, with 92% of the retweets over the seven days
coming from Labour MP’s.
Replies are a way of directing tweets at other users by using their @-prefixed username. This can be in
order to conduct a conversation, to mention another user – for example, “I have been canvassing today
with @JohnSmith” - or to direct a tweet to another users attention. For example, “@JohnSmith you
might find this link interesting”.
Replies by Party
7% 3%
90%
Conser vat ive Labour Lib Dem

This chart shows that over the seven days 90% of the replies came from Labour MP’s. What these
three charts show is that, whilst they make up just over 60% of the MP’s on twitter, the Labour MP’s
are producing between 70%-90% of the interactivity on twitter. So it is the Labour Members of
Parliament who are interacting most with their followers. Andrew Walker, co-founder of Tweetminster,
a website which collates politicians tweets, comments;
‘Labour have less of a strong central message going out through social media, but they have a
lot more activists out there tweeting and retweeting. The Lib Dems are pretty even handed,
they’ve got some great bloggers and they’ve got a fairly active party stream but there aren’t
that many of them by volume so I guess that’s why they don’t feature heavily in the numbers.’
(Andrew Walker, 2010)
What is also clear is that, although many of the tweets from the dataset fall into the ‘parliamentary’
and ‘constituency’ categories, a large amount concerns party political statements and party rhetoric. As
the following graph shows.
Tweets
800
700
No of Tweets
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
cy
ric
ry
al
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y
og
lic
ew
ic
ta
en
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to
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lit
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itu
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am
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M
rty
on
rty
rli
Pa
Pa
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Pa
Tweet Category
This would suggest that, although politicians recognise the need to be accountable and accessible
about what they are doing in Parliament and addressing local constituency issues, they are using the
medium as a means of attacking other parties and individuals associated with other parties and views.
As Albeto Nardelli, co-founder of Tweetminster, accepts;
‘…we’re seeing it more used as space to attack political opponents than to organise around
ones own party.’
(Alberto Nardelli, 2010)
It must also be observed that an overwhelming number of tweets in the dataset fall into the ‘other’
category. The reasons for this are probably threefold; firstly a large number of tweets form parts of
conversations and without tracking those conversations individual tweets can appear to be superficial
or without meaning. Secondly, it probably highlights the skill required to form a coherent message
using just 140 characters. And thirdly, when posting links, some twitter users fail to describe the

content of the link, and therefore the tweet is without meaning. That isn’t to say that the ‘other’
category should be ignored as merely a collection of redundant tweets to which a category cannot be
assigned. What it indicates is, not just a lack of general understanding of the medium, but also an
underlying superficiality. Shane Greer, executive editor of Total Politics magazine, surmises;
‘The short format encourages simplification. But ultimately, that’s what political campaigns
are about. They’re not about substantive discussion, they’re about condensing a message.’
(Shane Greer, 2010)
Another important element of social media, aside from content and interaction, is audience. Twitter
allows users to see other users tweets by following them. The five most followed MP’s (as of 18th
January 2010) are as follows;
MP Followers
John Prescott 15,379
David Milliband 9,243
Nick Clegg 8,512
Tom Watson 7,851
Grant Schapps 7,383
The mechanics of twitter are such that, essentially, an audience must be earned, and that audience will
be drawn towards you because of the subject matter and content of your tweets;
‘…if you follow the right people and they supply the right content then you’re more likely to
enjoy the stuff they’re giving to you. It’s a self-selecting mechanism, you know, you’re filtering
through people whose opinion you trust…’
For MP’s without name recognition they have to build up that audience through posting good quality
content, it can therefore be concluded that a high level of followers is recognition of a good use of the
medium.
Theoretically the politicians with most followers have the most influence on twitter as they have the
largest audiences. But the audience is not necessarily passive, they have the potential to be active. So
perhaps it would be wiser to think of those Members of Parliament who interact most with their
audience as more influential. As the table below shows, the most interactive MP’s are, once again, all
Labour;
MP Replies Followers
Andrew Gwynne 184 1417
Kerry McCarthy 154 5211
Tom Watson 120 7851
Tom Harris 57 3122
Eric Joyce 35 1307
What requires further study is an analysis of whether a higher number of followers allows for greater
influence than a more interactive approach to social media. Certainly being able to tweet to 15,000

people is advantageous, but that does that mean that, through retweeting, those with less followers
cannot reach an audience beyond what is immediately available to them.
However, those MP’s who do take a more interactive approach, may well find twitter a much more
valuable resource. Many politicians are using twitter as a broadcast medium when, through interaction
with others, twitters allows for a measuring of the public mood, to see which issues are really worrying
people and for what reasons (Andrew Walker, 2010). For example;
‘The Digital Economy Bill, its been huge on twitter and none of the campaigns have referenced
it, I haven’t seen Brown or Cameron or Clegg or any of the senior party figures on the TV
talking about this bill, which is, potentially, going to be limiting peoples broadband access…
…hardly any MP’s have leveraged that to make their campaign more effective, to reach out
there. And that is the problem… …you’ve got thousands and thousands of people screaming
about an issue in the public, right in the public eye, in a very public medium. And actually, its
reaching out and reaching the press in other countries its so big. And yet here in the UK the
politicians aren’t doing that, they’re pushing out “oh check out my manifesto”…’
(Andrew Walkers, 2010)
Although the data analysis shows that it is Labour MP’s who appear to be the most interactive we must
remember that there are individuals from the other parties who also interact with their audiences;
‘…I would say, taking a step back from that, it is very much about the individual. Lynne
Featherstone for the Lib Dems, Jo Swinson for the Lib Dems, outstanding in terms of how they
tweet and blog. Compared with Douglas Carswell, who’s active with his tweeting, but he never
replies to people.’
The table below clearly shows that, although the Conservative MP Douglas Carswell is using twitter as
a tool for advertising his blog, he isn’t then interacting with his followers. He is using it purely as a
broadcast medium. Where as Lynne Featherstone and Jo Swinson demonstrate a better use of the tool,
as a means of interaction as well as directing traffic.
Douglas Carswell Lynne Featherstone Jo Swinson

Blog Replies Blog Replies Blog Replies
Monday 1 0 2 0 0 0
Tuesday 1 0 2 0 0 0
Wednesday 1 0 2 1 0 0
Thursday 1 0 3 1 0 0
Friday 0 0 2 2 1 0
Saturday 0 0 0 0 1 8
Sunday 0 0 1 0 0 2
Total 4 0 12 4 2 10

5. An aid to democracy: Engaging the disengaged.

Because of its major demographic - the average twitter user being between the ages of eighteen and
twenty one (Box UK, 2009) – it does appear to have the potential to allow politicians to reach out to a
group of people who don’t engage with politics. And this may well be the motive for many Members of
Parliament signing up and starting twitter accounts. However, social media would appear to be not up
to this task; it must be recognised that the mechanics of twitter are not designed for mass broadcast;
‘…the site [Twitter] also contains social networking elements, as users can ‘follow’ other
users. Unlike sites such as Facebook though, this relationship can be asymmetrical. User A can
follow User B, but the reverse relationship does not have to exist.’
(Anstead & O’Loughlin, 2010, p.6)
So, if a politician starts to follow fifty users, there is no guarantee those users will receive the
politician’s tweets. They would need to follow the politician for that to happen, and the only people
who are likely to go and actively follow politicians are people who are already politically active;
‘…many of the people engaged in political discussions on twitter are already political. So, in a
direct sense, it’s not great for directly engaging with non-political people.’
(Shane Greer, 2010)
In this sense, it can be described as an extension of the ‘Westminster Bubble’ (Walker, 2010).
But this is not to say that political debate cannot reach the disengaged. Through the process of
retweeting ideas and links, debate can be spread quickly. It may originate from politicians and activists
but within a couple of clicks, people who aren’t following the politicians but following the people who
follow the politicians, can be accidentally exposed to some form of political debate. Anstead and
O’Loughlin (2010) investigated the use of twitter, and retweeting, alongside Nick Griffin’s appearance
on Question Time;
‘During the programme there were 6,914 retweets in the dataset, amounting to some 15.81 per
cent of the sample.’
(Anstead and O’Loughlin, 2010, p.10)
It may represent less than a quarter of the dataset, but this does illustrate close to 7000 views,
comments, arguments and debating points being forwarded on to another audience which may not be
directly engaged with the event. Although retweeting may be an important tool for pushing political
debate towards the disengaged, it may be worth noting that it is often party politics which disinterests
people.
And a BBC poll in 2005 showed that 87% of the British public do not trust politicians (Sanders, 2009).
It can only be assumed that that has increased, after the recent expenses scandal. Thus, people are
prepared to come together in mass viral campaigns online, but less so in support of political parties.
Some politicians are trying to make the best of this situation. Nick Perry, Liberal Democrat PPC for
Hastings and Rye, describes his social media campaign;

‘They’ve [the other candidates] gone for a kind of candidature approach to social networking
and, you know, that’s ok, that works with someone with the face recognition of Michael Foster,
the sitting MP… …I thought, well, how do we tap people’s enthusiasm for social networking in
a way which isn’t going to be a real turn-off. And what I decided to do was to try and get it to
help the campaign I was running, rather than getting people to say, oh Nick Perry, I want to be
his fan, or whatever.’
(Nick Perry, 2010)
Nick Perry has set-up facebook groups concerning parking charges at the local hospital, and the future
of the local fishing fleet – which is under threat due to fishing quotas. Both are key issues in the
constituency he is campaigning in and both of these groups have around thirteen hundred members
(Nick Perry, 2010).
Facebook is a very different social media tool, connections between users are symmetrical and so there
is instantly a two-way conversation. This may be of more use to politicians wishing to reach a mass
audience. And, because of the type of content people put onto their facebook profiles, it is much easier
to target people (Walker, 2010).
There is often an argument as to whether twitter can be regarded as part of the ‘public sphere’, a new
place for people o debate and engage with issues. And perhaps, while twitter is not a new ‘public
sphere’ in itself, it could be said to be an extension of the existing ‘public sphere’;
‘…a public sphere that has democratic significance must be a forum, that is, a social space in
which speakers may express their views to others and who in turn respond to them and raise
their own concerns.’
(After Habermas,2005, p.133)
This central tenet, a public forum on which views and ideas can be shared and argued between users, is
the basic function of twitter.
And as a compliment to the existing public sphere, of broadcast and print journalism, twitter is proving
to be a useful ‘bolt-on’. Before twitter, Question Time Viewers could text in their comments, and other
Question Time viewers could see those comments by using ceefax. Now, using twitter, not only can
other viewers see the comments, but they can reply to them and start a debate, or retweet in agreement,
after which someone else might come back with a reply. This has created a whole new level of
interaction around political ‘events’, not just like Question Time and the Prime Ministerial Debates, but
also around breaking news, press conferences and Parliamentary business. This is an instantaneous
commentary;
‘…it’s not qualitative, but quantitatively it’s very valuable… …if you want to know what 20,000
opinions are about a major event, positive or negative, fairly base level stuff…’
This kind of action, around a real-time event, was investigated in the journal article, Tweet the Debates
(2009), which analysed the use of twitter around the American Presidential debates during the 2008
election. The data analysis highlighted;

‘ …some evidence of debate topics being discussed, the communication was more so
reactionary and evaluative. For example, the most frequent term during the opening segment
from twitter was “drinking” – we assume people were inventing drinking games to play along
with the debate. Later in the debates we see terms like “-5” or “+2” becoming salient where
people were keeping score on which candidate won which point.’
(Churchill, Kennedy & Shamma, 2009, p.6)
Once again, we can conclude from this analysis, that twitter is not a tool for in-depth debate. But, its
power lies in being able to tap into a huge, instant, reaction to live events. Yes, that reaction may be
superficial, low level opinion, but it does allow you to see what people think.
In their academic journal, The Emerging Viewertariat: Explaining Twitter Responses to Nick Griffins
Appearance on BBC Question Time (2010), Nick Anstead and Ben O’Loughlin observe that,
throughout the duration of the programme, a total of 55,962 tweets were published which, in some
way, were related to Question Time; of which 26.76% were replies and 15.81% were retweets (Anstead
& O’Loughlin, 2010). From this they conclude;
‘…that interaction through real time digital technology such as microblogging will
increasingly be combined with more traditional modes of media consumption to create new
dynamics and modes of participation among citizens. Second, these forms of real time
participation in political events present an opportunity to explore individuals political relations,
understandings and motivations.’
(Anstead & O’Loughlin, 2010)
But this still doesn’t address the question of engaging a new audience with politics. Bill Thompson, a
journalist who regularly blogs on technology and social media, declares;
‘I don’t think twitter will really do much for engagement. Those who tweet and aren’t interested
in politics will ignore it, or stop following those who do engage.’
(Bill Thompson, 2010)
Of course there will be people with views which reflect minority opinion, as Tweetminster observed
during Nick Griffins Question Time appearance, where four tweets per second were being posted in
connection with the event (Walker, 2010). People were agreeing with Nick Griffin, and perhaps they
should have the freedom to do so, but they were in the minority. This egalitarian, level-playing field,
perhaps makes twitter a very democratic place to discuss issues. And, as Andrew Walker observes,
social media has a great ability to self-regulate;
‘There are people willing to stick their neck out on facebook and make offensive remarks. If you
look back to the days of chat rooms, there was some really offensive stuff going on. All that stuff
is weakened with social media because simply so many people are there. If people go on twitter
and say, what’s the BNP expression? “Don’t unpack, you’re going back”, that’s the posters
they sell. You know, people should do that and see how quickly they get slapped back into place.
Or how quickly they get told their opinions are out of step with society. That’s, I think, quite a
healthy measure.’

6. Reactionary, Superficial and Shallow: Does Twitter

encourage mob rule?
Early last year a Danish psychology lecturer, Anders Colding-Jorgensen, conducted an experiment in
an attempt to understand the psychology behind online viral campaigns. He tasked his students to
create a facebook group, with the express intention of getting as many followers as possible. Anders
also took part in the experiment himself, creating a group that protested at the alleged demolition of
Copenhagen’s landmark stork fountain. The group reached 27,500 members in just three days.
Fascinatingly, in the group forum, it was detailed that the group was in fact just an experiment and that
the beloved fountain was not under threat. And so, through some basic interaction, people joining the
group could discover that the cause was just an agent provocateur. What was found was that, although
some people did notice this, their ability to tell others is severely limited. Anders Colding-Jorgensen
surmises;
‘The result was depressing: it was very difficult for these people to communicate to others that
the group was “not real”. This was mainly because people didn’t use the group for information,
but as a “badge”, to communicate their support for the cause to themselves and others…
…Some of them shared the group [with] friends or wrote a message on the wall, but very little
of the wall posts were containing direct messages or containing questions directed at other
people. Instead of discussion, the wall contained almost the same 5-6 messages, repeated over
and over again’
(Virkeligheden.dk, 2009)
What was also noted was that, because of the rate of messages being posted (2-3 per minute), the few
messages which did attempt to communicate the real motives behind the group were very quickly
swamped by the repeated messages of shock and outrage at the supposed ‘cause’, and so, in further
analysis, it is concluded that 75% of the people who joined the group actually believed the fountain
was under threat. This illustrates that there is an element of superficiality to social media based viral
campaigns. And that large numbers hamper the ability for discussion.
The speed and the enormity of viral campaigns such as the ‘We Love the NHS’ campaign – where
twitter users were encouraged to declare their support for the NHS after continued damnation from
American media - and the almost instantaneous attacks against the Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir over
her article concerning the death of Stephen Gately – in which she implied his death was due to his
homosexual lifestyle - suggest a lack of perspective and reflection. What one must question is, of the
thousands of people who used twitter and facebook to declare their disgust at Jan Moirs article, how
many took the time to actually read the offending article? As Bill Thompson illustrates, these
campaigns require very little from people;
‘The tools that make democratic engagement easier also devalue the very participation they
encourage – signing an email petition hardly means anything.’
(Bill Thompson, 2010)

It is assumed that these viral campaigns encourage a mob mentality. Illustrated recently by the anger
surrounding Jon Venables after he was taken back into custody;
‘There are hundreds of Venables-related groups on facebook, all hysterically shouting how he
“must be hung!”, “should rot in jail 4eva!”, should “die, die, die!”. Ah, modern technology.
Pros: iPods. Cons: Internet lynch mobs.’
(The Guardian, 2010)
Anders Colding-Jorgensen’s facebook group experiment does prove that people aren’t always willing
to interact with the cause or subject in any depth; it’s merely about associating yourself with that cause.
And even more importantly, as the momentum builds behind a campaign there comes a tipping point
where debate and reflection is almost impossible, as so many people are posting comments and
messages that nobody can fully digest them or respond.
It is clear that what must not happen is that a mass viral protest on twitter must not be mistaken as the
debate. Rather, it is a basic recognition of the need for a debate, which must then cross over into the
‘public-sphere’ where it can be deliberated in-depth and for a significant period of time.
Michael Burke has described social media as the collapse of the culture of deference (Moral Maze,
2010). Perhaps there has been a collapse in the culture of deference, though this shouldn’t necessarily
be treated as a negative thing. Neurobiologist Kenan Malik responded to Buerks assertion by stating
that he is wary of the condemnation of twitter, for encouraging a mob rule mentality, because;
‘…those denunciations are all to often an elitist argument against the democratic process.’
(Moral Maze, 2010)
This assumes that any opening up of political debate, however reactionary or superficial, is, on the
whole, a good thing for society. After all, how many people discussing these issues in the local pub
have paid any more attention to the detail? (Andrew Walker, 2010) In that sense we must assume that
the collapse of the culture of deference is not because of social media but rather a reflection of society
in general.
The problem with social media is that it appears to represent a new ‘public sphere’ for debate.
Journalist Brendan O’Neill warns;
‘…I am completely in favour of mass discussion and the public being genuinely involved in a
serious debate about the future, about the world, about politics. But twitter, and blogging to a
certain extent, are a parody of those thing, it gives the impression that people are involved in a
serious discussion… [but]…its not a real public space in which people can engage meaningfully
in debate.’
(Moral Maze, 2010)
The mob mentality of social media is not only evident as a manifestation of public opinion, but also a
new weapon for political parties. For example, at the launch of the labour party manifesto. A young
activist, Ellie Gellard, an influential Labour tweeter and blogger, was invited to introduce Gordon
Brown. Gellard began;
‘How we share our ideas, our policies and our values is changing. When we last launched our
manifesto YouTube was three months old, facebook and twitter didn’t exist..’
(YouTube, 2010)

And she may well have wished that they still didn’t because within hours Conservative tweeters and
bloggers had scoured Ellie Gellard’s tweet and blog archive, found a blog post where she called on the
Prime Minister to stand down, and alerted the press. Several newspapers ran with the story, The Times
even placing it on the front page;
‘Ellie Gellard, 20, who blogs as the “Stilettoed Socialist”, told Mr Brown after a by-election
defeat that it was time to “get your coat” and go. Yesterday she urged Labour to embrace the
power of the Internet, but by mid-afternoon the party was ruing her use of social media and
asking why no one had picked up on her remarks.’
(The Times, 2010, p.7)
Andrew Keen highlights how social media has been used to attack political opponents, in a highly
personal way, in the USA;
‘During the November 2006 congressional elections, one of the most watched videos on
YouTube was a campaign advertisement for Vernon Robinson, the Republican candidate for
North Carolina’s Thirteenth Congressional District. The video was a distasteful attack on Brad
Miller, Robinson’s Democratic opponent. “Instead of spending money on cancer research, Brad
Miller has spent your money to study the masturbation habits of old men” the commercial
announced.’
(Keen, 2007, p.66)
Where as, only recently, platforms such as YouTube and facebook were being used as the tools to
deliver attacks on individuals. Social media has now become a rich source of stories, potentially
thousands of which lie waiting to be discovered, for traditional media.
7. Conclusions.
Data analysis clearly shows that the Labour party MP’s have a more interactive approach to social
media – though there are individuals from other parties who also do this well. This group could perhaps
be described as an ‘elite’. They are highly familiarised with the platform, mostly from the Labour
party, and though their following appears to be average it is most probably – as indicated through the
MP’s own high-level of interaction – an active, rather than passive, audience.
The highest concentration of tweets comes under the ‘other’ category and so are essential without
meaning or ambiguous. This suggests that the majority of the MP’s are infrequent users who have
trouble forwarding succinct ideas in less than 140 characters (Hansard, 2009). But, a lot of measurable
content is part political based (18%). Concluding that the majority of this content is being generated by
just a small ‘elite’ of twittering MP’s it does illustrate the extent to which MP’s are followed by people
who are already partisan (Greer, 2010). Most people are willing to engage with a wider debate but are
apathetic towards tribal partisan politics (Sanders, 2010). As such, a-political figures such as Sarah
Brown – with over one million twitter followers – have a far greater influence in terms of audience
than any elected politician (Greer, 2010).

Twitter is perhaps best described as a collection of networks rather than a single entity (Moral Maze,
2010). And twitters potential to bring people into political debate is centralised around events (Walker,
2010), such as Question Time, which have the potential to bring together the Westminster network - of
politicians, bloggers, activists and journalists – and the majority who use twitter to connect with their
own networks of likeminded people. However, as has been illustrated over recent weeks, social media
cannot compete with power of television to broadcast a message to tens of millions of people. It is a
complement to that; facilitating the sharing of ideas and opinion, anchored around a central theme or
event, which non-partisan users can dip in and out of, and to which politicians can gauge opinion;
‘Recent research has even indicated a stimulus effect on political participation when discussion
among heterogeneous networks is combined with hard news media use.’
(Chadwick & Howard, 2009, p.145)
And as more politicians and journalists join twitter it seems probable that a time will come when the
risk of politicians saying something offensive – such as former Labour PPC Stuart MacLennon
(Guardian, 2010) - or not walking the party line, will become such that parties will either ban
politicians from social media or heavily restrict its use. The Ministerial Code requires that all
departmental announcements be cleared with Downing Street first (Ministerial Code, 2007), already
limiting the spontaneity of social media somewhat, for cabinet and junior ministers. And so although
social media has not yet come under the influence of the party machines in a centralised capacity. If
politicians continue to abuse the tool this does seem inevitable. And as people realise that there is a
partisan uniformity, in terms of content, people will be less and less engaged when they come into
contact with politicians through social media.
Word Count: 5,493

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Other
United Kingdom Ministerial Code. Cabinet Office. (2007).

Appendix.
I. MP’s on Twitter as of 18th January 2010
Conservative
Labour
Lib Dem
Plaid Cymru
SNP
Respect
SDLP Elliot Morley Nadine Dorries
Eric Joyce Nicholas Clegg
Eric Pickles Norman Lamb
Adam Afriyie Frank Field Parmjit Dhanda
Adam Price George Galloway Patrick McFadden
Alison Seabeck Gillian Merron Paul Clark
Alistair Carmichael Gisela Stuart Paul Rowen
Andrew George Graham Stuart Pete Wishart
Andrew Gwynne Grant Shapps Phil Willis
Andrew Rosindell Greg Mulholland Phyllis Starkey
Andrew Slaughter Harriett Harman Sadiq Khan
Andy Reed Hazel Blears Sandra Gidley
Angus Robertson Hywel Williams Sarah McCarthy-Fry
Anne Snelgrove Ian Cawsey Shahid Malik
Ann Keen James Brokenshire Sion Simon
Ann Widdecombe James Plaskitt Stephen McCabe
Anthony D Wright James Purnell Stephen Timms
Ben Bradshaw Jim Knight Steve Webb
Celia Barlow Jim Murphy Susan Kramer
Chris Bryant John Denham Tessa Jowell
Christopher Huhne John Prescott Tim Farron
Crispin Blunt John Spellar Tom Brake
Danny Alexander Jo Swinson Tom Harris
Dari Taylor Julia Goldsworthy Tom Levitt
David Cairns Kerry McCarthy Tom Watson
David Chaytor Kevin Brennan Vera Baird
David Drew Lembit Opik Vincent Cable
David Evenett Liam Byrne Virendra Sharma
David Jones Linda Gilroy Willie Rennie
David Kidney Linda Riordan
David Lammy Louise Ellman
David Miliband Lynne Featherstone
David Mundell Malcolm Bruce
David Wright Mark Durkan
Derek Wyatt Michael Fabricant
Diana Johnson Michael Foster
Douglas Carswell Michael Meacher
Edward Balls Michael Moore
Edward Davey Michael Weir
Edward Miliband Mike Gapes
Edward Vazey Mike O'Brien

II. Face to face interview with Andrew Walker, Co-Founder of Tweeminster and founder of Thin
Martian Digital Creative Agency.
Thin Martian Offices, Cowper Street, Islington, London. Wednesday 14th April 2010.
DS: Danny Saxby

AW: Andrew Walker
DS: Do you think Twitter is a good tool for getting through to those people who aren’t interested in
politics? Because I think that’s what the politicians think, they’re all going for it thinking, there’s a load
of people there and I can broadcast to them. But obviously, its not that simple.
AW: No. There’s always this interesting argument between you know, theory versus reality. There’s
that thing about aftershave, theory and reality. The theory of aftershave is that you splash it on your
face and women come flocking out of the woodwork and you know, you’re this fabulous dude. The
reality is that you splash it on your face, go oohhh, and it really stings, and you walk around with a red
face. And I think, taking that, with Twitter, especially with Twitter, but with social media in general,
what I think politicians have got wrong is that they think; ok it’s a younger demographic, we know that
its primarily, the most active group is sort of 25, sorry 24, to 35 age group. The fastest growing group
is 36 to 54. And the 18 to 24 age group is very active. Young people are disinterested in politics,
there’s likely to be a low a turnout. So conventional wisdom would mean, hey if we go and use social
media we will reach younger people. What they’ve don wrong with that of course is the fact that all of
our activity is tightly competed for. Your sharing your online time with your emails, with your mates
on Facebook, downloading movies and tracks and as a result, you know, they’re not reaching those
people because those people aren’t going to Twitter for their political fix. So yeah the theory is we can
talk to the kids, but that’s not going to work, but something else has happened that’s more practical.
Whats happened is this kind of organisation of, or collection, of influencers, which is very strong on
Twitter. It’s what Paul Staines, who runs the Guido Fawlkes blog, calls the Westminster Bubble.
You’ve got all the major journalists, columnists, editors, TV channels, mainstream media, pundits,
politicians, candidates, organisations, brands and you know, they’re all focusing their political output
around social media tools. With political blogging being the more traditional one and Twitter being the
really hot one for breaking news, with journalists looking for stories, and the thing is, you know as I
think Paul Staines put it really succinctly, when he Tweet’s he’s not Tweeting to reach a major
audience, he’s Tweeting to reach the newspapers, the politicians, the people who are following that
Westminster Bubble. And with politicians I think it’s the same thing, they’re Tweeting, you know, less
about reaching people, it less about, you know, mobilising people or getting people to vote. It’s much
more about us being seen by the right people to generate stories and to get your message out. Sorry it’s
a very long-winded answer, so in answer to the question, they probably thought they could use this to
reach people. And I think with the people they are reaching, they are probably are reaching more young

people than they did through the other media channels. Certainly everything that’s said about
competing for time as far as TV advertising, to posters, to radio, to the newspaper. I mean how many
young people are going to pick-up the paper and go I’m reading a leader by Peter Mandelson, or
someone like that. Again its quite small numbers. So I think you can also say that within the audience
they are reaching more younger people, getting more bang for their buck, than they would be
otherwise. But, you know, I don’t think they’re reaching a new audience. And the other thing of course
is that I don’t think they’re using the right way in trying to reach a new audience, that’s the problem.
They’re broadcasting, as opposed to actually using it to engage with people. And I think that’s a big
challenge.
DS: The thing about Twitter is that, unlike Facebook, if I’m following you you’re not necessarily
following me, where as with Facebook the connection is symmetrical.
AW: Yeah.
DS: So do you think the mechanics of Twitter can be a boundary towards reaching people?
AW: And also there is nothing worse, for a certain kind of user, to me certainly, you follow someone,
you send them a few messages and if they don’t follow you back, it breaks that connection, you’re left
less interested in what they have to say. And I found it very interesting, and at Tweetminster of course
I’m connected to loads of people who’ve got no idea who I am and if I send them messages from my
private account they’ve got no idea who I am, and so they don’t respond. You start to see that people
use Twitter for different tools. Sorry, getting back, you’re right. With Facebook it’s more about
relationships. With Twitter its less about relationships, a lot of the people I follow, I don’t have any
relationship with them and I’ve no intention to. But I’m interested in the link that they post. That’s
probably one of the most interesting uses of Twitter. It’s a bit like a search engine for things you don’t
know you’re looking for. And certainly most people follow politicians and pundits and bloggers, less to
talk with them and engage with them, more to see the link that they’re looking at. So my Twitter feed
comes up, I might 20 or 30 links that during the course of the day are really interesting links that I
haven’t had to go out and search for. And search engines aren’t delivering the same results, because
there is so much data out there that they can’t filter it fast enough. Last week I was on holiday, I wasn’t
Tweeting; I went cold turkey for the week. I tried to have nothing to do with business at all, and that
was the week that Ellie Gellard, Bevanite Ellie as she’s know on Twitter, I’ve been following her for
years, you know, introduces Gordon Brown and then the Tories do some digging and find out that
years ago she wrote a blog post where she didn’t support him and all of this explodes on Twitter and
it’s in the newspapers and I didn’t buy the newspapers, I avoided the news, I had a total week under the
radar and I miss the major event. Fortunately everyone else at the business has been covering it. But
that’s kind of a big value of Twitter, that injection of breaking news, that’s fantastic. That is really I
think, right now its biggest power. Much more for politicians than campaigning or encouraging
activism or any of the great examples of using social media that came out of the Obama campaign. In

the UK it hasn’t worked the same way, its much more about being able to tune into the pulse, you
know, whats happening right now in current affairs? What can we do about it? And what should our
position be? And I think politicians using it very effectively as a sort of opinion poll mechanism, that’s,
yeah,
DS: So by following the right people you’re filtering the right news towards you?
AW: Exactly yeah, if you follow the right people and they supply the right content then you’re more
likely to enjoy the stuff they’re giving to you. It’s a self-selecting mechanism; you know you’re
filtering through people who’s opinion you trust, and that’s what makes them influencers. If you look
at the people who post links on bit.ly and you go to bit.ly and you see how many people have clicked
on that link, you know, you will see that some of them, you know, if I posted a link I might a few
people, I might a hundred people, click on it, look at it and say ‘oh that’s amazing, isn’t that
interesting’. I have a social media start-up so I post something about usability or tech then I’ve got
people who are following me who are interested in that and I’ve done a little bit of filtering with that
there. If I tweet ‘hey look at this, this is an amazing article about something to do with politics’ no ones
that interested, if politicians tweet that you see a huge amount of clicks. So its not just about the
filtering, its about people who are good at filtering different things. You’ll probably follow geeks, like
me I guess, if you want someone who’s going to be following links about tech. Follow politicians and
you’ll see stuff about politics. And bloggers and most people in-between, you know, will use it
different things. It’s a great search engine like that, and in a way that’s how politicians should be using
it more effectively, and not, you know, they’re pushing their message out there when it’s a really really
important tool for actually measuring the pulse of where things are going and seeing where
conversations are moving, seeing whats hot right now. Look at the Trafigura scandal, now that’s a
classic example of twitter being a great catalyst for something really exciting. Now Private Eye had
already covered that story some weeks before, but its got a very small readership, it hasn’t got out
there, and the people who read Private Eye are the people who read Private Eye, you know. If you’re
every going to reach people in the states, as soon as enough people in the UK were talking about it it
started trending and then the US kicked in and it turned into this massive thing. Jan Moir, here article
about Stephen Gately, which is the other one which everyone always mentions. Again, massive
activism, which lasted 48 hours, where everyone got pissed off about something and posted about it on
twitter. Now both of those things by-passed the mainstream press, until they got onto twitter and then
they got huge. That’s a great example of how this filtering of links can, that mechanism, can be really
powerful. And that’s what politicians, I think, need to use it more effectively for. Rather than just
pushing their messages out they should be using it to capitalise on this mass opinion and to really keep
a focus on the debate issues.
DS: My resreach shows that Labour party MP’s are by far the most interactive party in terms of posting
links, retweets and @replies. Do you think that’s advantageous?

AW: That’s very interesting because I would kind of expected the Lib Dems to feature more heavily in
that. I’m not surprised how the Conservatives performed in these numbers. Because, what we’ve found
with our analysis, is that the parties use the tools differently. Labour have less of a strong central
message going out through social media, but they have a lot more activists out there tweeting and
retweeting. The Lib Dems are pretty even handed, they’ve got some great bloggers and they’ve got a
fairly active party stream but there aren’t really that many of them by volume so I guess that’s why
they don’t feature heavily in the numbers. The Conservatives, they are much less interactive, but, if you
look at the number of links they’re pushing out here, and you compare that with the number of retweets
and the number of replies, you see that they’re good at pushing stuff out but they’re not good at
responding and they tend not to be very interactive.
DS: These numbers are just the MP’s, some people say the Tory activists are more influential than their
MP’s.
AW Well Tory bloggers are a lot more influential, I’d say than almost any other group you’ll find
online. Guido Fawlkes, Iain Dale, Tim Montgomerie are really really strong voices, and have much
more impact than the Labour bloggers. Even the sort of rising stars of blogging, like Ellie Gellard and
Will Straw, they just don’t carry the clout that those guys have. I would say you’re right though.
Conservative supporters and Conservative bloggers have a lot more clout than Conservative MP’s
online, on twitter, certainly. Conservative MP’s tend to be fairly strict. There are two that stand out.
One is Grant Schapps who is, you know, I think an excellent tweeter, very accessible; genuinely I think
he ranks up there as being a very good user of the technology. I think the other one that stands out, for
less positive reasons, is Nadine Dorries, who has tended to get into a lot of arguments on twitter with
people and can be very forthright with her views. And its very entreating, especially the clashes she’s
had with Kerry McCarthy. Its very entertaining, and in a way it’s a good use of the mechanism but is
also shows the danger of using it because, you know, getting into arguments inn a stream of micro-
posts, you can’t really follow the argument and its just like a stream of angry tweets. But these figures
are great, really interesting stuff. And it does bear out. The only thing I would say is, probably off the
record but do feel free to record it, when you publish these numbers the Tories and the Lib Dem’s who
read this are going to come back and say ‘oh you working for the Labour party’. And unfortunately one
of the really interesting things we’ve found is that when you push out figures, you push data out there
into the public domain, you find the parties who come out in second and third place tend to turn around
and say ‘well you’re working for the other guy’. We’ve had a hilarious thing where we had the
Conservatives say we’re working, you know we’re sympathetic to Labour, because Labours got more
followers on twitter. And when we published that figures, you know we’ve done our analysis and
Labour’s more active on twitter and they say ‘oh you’re lefties and you’re supporting Labour’. We’ve
had the Labour party say to use we’ve done to many interviews with Lib Dem MP’s and with Nick
Clegg, so they think that we’re Lib Dem supporters. But actually Nick Clegg’s easier to get an
interview with in comparison to Brown and Cameron. And the we’ve had the Lib Dems say we tweet
to much stuff about David Cameron and so we must be working for the Tories. So, it’s a very difficult

market place to operate in because there are these sort of rational agendas which of course means that
the power of the medium is quite challenging. Because the real strength of social media analysis is
what you’ve done here. You can look at this and you can actually draw meaningful conclusions about
each parties communications strategy from the way that they are using twitter. That’s very interesting.
The problem is that, if you then, you know, use that data as part of your analysis, as part of your
research and push it out there, you know, the responses will be ‘oh yes, but you’re a member of the
Labour party’. But there is one other thing which is interesting here though, that it would be interesting
to do an analysis on facebook because the Conservatives have been very active on facebook, and the
reason for that is because they feel they’ve got to be demographically targeting. So if you facebook you
know you can reach a group of 50 year-olds or, you know, a group of OAP’s or grandmothers or
mothers or what have you. Where as with twitter it’s difficult to know who people are. So, you know,
you’ll probably find that in terms of posting messages on facebook groups the picture is kind of
reversed. So what we might be seeing here is a picture, this is through one channel, and on facebook
it’s the other way. But yeah, its very, its very interesting.
DS: Would you say facebook is a better tool for getting at people and getting them engaged in politics?
Because you can target demographics?
Andrew: Yeah, I think it is. I think for only one reason. The examples I’ve seen which are very good,
the Lib Dems, people say Jo Swinson, she’s very active on twitter. She has a facebook group where
you can contact her and ask her questions through her facebook page. She say, through doing that, she
can reach more people than can come to her surgeries. She says its just a way to through put more
people, it’s a way I can more interactive, I reach more people. So, you know, she’s found facebook to
be very affective. The Lib Dems also have consultations in the West Country about road planning and
new bridges and stuff like that. Where they create these groups and gather peoples opinions. In twitter
they’re not using it the same way, you know, they’re seeing it more as a sort of chat and broadcast
medium. But you can channel a lot more opinion. So its not qualitative, but quantitatively its very
valuable. So if you want to know what people think in depth, with a sort of qualitative analysis,
facebook’s the way to go. If you want to know what 20,000 opinions are about a major event, positive
or negative, fairly base level stuff, that’s the way to go with twitter. The difference is that neither one
can do the whole picture but what we’re finding is that our polls on twitter track to with a couple of
percentages of YouGov, ComRes and Mori and different pollsters using traditional polling techniques.
And that’s the big value of twitter, and they’re not really using that to its best advantage and I think its
were I think politicians should be looking more carefully. I’ll give you a very good example. The
Digital Economy Bill, its been huge on twitter and none of the campaigns have reference it, I haven’t
seen Brown or Cameron or Clegg or any of the senior party figures on the TV talking about this bill
which is, potentially, going to be limiting peoples broadband access. It’s the biggest anti-piracy move
this country’s ever seen, its huge. Its one of the biggest trending topics on twitter, it was trending for a
couple of weeks, really, right up the top. Hardly any MP’s have leveraged that to make their campaign
more effective, to reach out there. And that is the problem, is that you’ve got thousands and thousands

of people screaming about an issue in the public, right in the public eye, in a very public medium. And
actually, its reaching out and reaching the press in other countries its so big. And yet here in the UK the
politicians aren’t doing that, they’re pushing out ‘oh check out my manifesto’, ‘look at this’, ‘we’re on
the chancellors debate’ and etc etc.
AW: I think these figures back it up as well, these are the most followed MP’s and these are the MP’s
who posted the most replies over the seven days. It’s all Labour again.
AW: Yes they are more interactive. Now Andrew Gwynne, Manchester, he’s very very active. Very
popular with the grass roots. If you follow Grace Fletcher-Hatwood, Andrew Gwynne’s been heavily
involved with her in the creation of MobMonday. Which is a great use of social media, were they
organise a phone back and they organise people through twitter to do telephone canvassing, great.
Kerry, obviously she’s Labour’s new media spokesperson, shes always been very active and she has a
high profile. Tom Watson’s a very interesting guy. He and Tom Price were the first two MP’s to be on
twitter. And infact it was Tom Watson, a conversation between him and my business partner Alberto,
that lead to the creation of tweetminster. Tom Watson as saying ‘I think this is very interesting, I think
we should get politicians on it’. Tom has pushed an awful lot of activity round the DE bill. Whats
interesting is, if you look at it, he has more followers than the official spokesperson, and more
followers than the most active and interactive politicians. Part of that is because he always taps into the
issues. He recently, the week before last, blocked the passage of the libel act, the amendment of the
libel bill, a lot of people can out to say why and he used the platform brilliantly to say look, this
amendment is addressing one problem in the system but its not addressing all those issues around
copyright, things that have been raise by the pressure groups. And by doing that he’s drawn an awful
lot of attention to it. But Tom Harris, he doesn’t reply to as many people, but he’s very important
because he was the minister who tried to blog and tweet whilst having a ministerial position. And had
to resign eventually over various things he put out there, and has said ever since, you can’t be a
government minister and a blogger and a tweeter. Obviously Ed Balls, the Milibands have tried to get
along, but obviously they have a very safe, very controlled policy. We’ve meet Tom a few times and he
feels that the value in it is about building trust and I think that’s very important But yeah, roughly these
figures are working at as about the same here. You’ve got three times as many Labour MP’s. We
actually did some analysis, looking a people who followed parties. And when we took out all the
people who followed all the parties, all the spammers, all the bots and all the porn-bots, we found that
Labour’s number of followers came down by about 45%, Conservative came down about 36% and the
Lib Dems came down about 32%. So we can also say from these figures, of all these peoples followers,
somewhere between 30 and 40% of them are probably non-partisan.
DS: How do you thin Twitter is going to affect this election?
AW: Well I that the way it has affected it is rather interesting. We’ve seen some sort of grass roots
activity. The Labour MobMonday is amazing, that’s very interesting. We’ve also seen that’s it having

an impact in the, you know, Ellie Gellard situation. You know, journalists find breaking stories and it’s
a way for people to draw their battle lines. It has been very negative, in some respects. The reason its
been so negative is because it’s a very close race. And, ultimately, parties have got a certain amount of
safe support and they’re squabbling, or they’re campaigning, very hard for that 10% in the middle that
they need to convert. And because of that strategists have told me, in confidence so naming no names,
that when its such a close race it’s the wrong time to go out there with big ideas, it’s the right time to
try and discredit the other party. That’s the logic behind the sort of negative campaigning, focusing
very much on the opponent’s shortcomings as opposed to focusing on your own positives. So we’ve
seen a bit of grass roots activism, we’ve also seen a bit of fighting and bitching and what have you.
We’ve also seen, this year, which is very different, is the role of twitter in combination with TV. In the
chancellors debate we saw about 20,000 tweets in that hour. You saw there how people were reacting
in real time and how people were doing. And at the end of it all the parties claimed victory, what we
saw, and this is where twitter is important, is that based purely on the poll side of it, we can see that
Cable was the most popular, Darling was second and Osborne came third. Which is what we expected
to see, because we know cable is supremely popular. However the analysis is really interesting. What
we found is that the sentiment score for Osborne went up a little bit, but he was pretty much the same
when he finished. For Cable, his sentiment score went right up, but the next day came right back down.
And with Darling the same thing, he sort of went up and down through the show. By the end of it he
was right up and the next day he was back down. Osborne remained steady and strong. So actually who
won the debate? Its easy to be popular and get a good hour on TV but the next day, you know, you’re
back down in the dumps. That’s what happened really for Cable, and that’s kind of what happened for
Darling. Osborne? He came out of that just as strong as he went in. So although he came third in the
popularity steaks, he didn’t nearly as bad as the press were predicting. In fact he did much better. So
Osborne probably won the debate, even though he didn’t put in as good a show as the others. But the
interaction between social media and other mediums, social media and newspapers, that’s where a lot
of the links come from, social media and TV, that’s where all the conversations start. What are people
talking about on twitter? They’re talking about what they watched on telly. You know, what they’ve
seen on the news or read in the papers. So its role in the election, its power in the election is this ability
to connect people together and drive a conversation. I think the other thing that’s important is that its
all about whats happening right now. Someone asked me about posters, do you think political posters
will make a really big difference? My answer to that is, well they do, for probably a couple of days. In
the world of social media, you know, you’re there you click on a link, you read something, you’re
debating, the next day you’re debating with someone else and so on. And so I think the biggest role of
twitter in this election is putting pressure on politician’s everyday to keep performing and keep the
campaign moving. This isn’t where you have a press conference every couple of days and slug it out
through the press. This is everyday lots and lots of activity, and we’ve never seen politicians under that
sort of pressure so that’s really interesting.
DS: A lot of people use twitter, like you say, whilst watching Question Time but I was wondering
whether you think 140 characters is enough for debate?

AW: There are two answers for that. Good question, great question. Firstly anything that limits
politician’s ability to waffle is a great thing. And we have seen that there is a real value in having 140
characters, from a data mining point of view, which is that in 140 characters its quite easy to spot key
words. So as a way of communicating its very efficient but of course you can’t have a long, deep, rich
debate. It’s not the right mechanism for that. And it’s the same as, you know, you cant have a row with
your girlfriend, boyfriend, over text. It doesn’t work, you need to get on the phone and have a phone
call. However, that’s, I think, ok, because, you know, in the same way, sorry, let me put this another
way. You can’t have a debate over twitter, no that’s true you cant. But you can draw attention to a
debate, you can direct people to a debate, you can have all the banter around a debate and the debate
can take place somewhere else. Also, it makes you aware of these debates. I’ll be honest; the Digital
Economy Bill hadn’t passed me by by any means. You know I wasn’t in a position, time-wise to
investigate the bill, when I first heard about it. When people started posting links about it on twitter,
that’s when I got more involved. And I got the depth from watching the clips on youtube and the blog
posts, that’s where I formed the opinion. That wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t of come onto my
radar through twitter. You can’t fulfil a debate through it, but you can start one. And starting a debate
is, in many respects, half the battle.
DS: Once you start a debate, where would you take it then?
AW: Yeah, that’s kind of where it falls down a little bit because, you know, twitter has a short attention
span. Trafigura, lets not forget that was massive. It forced the over turning of an injunction that was
highly suspect, it broke the story into the mainstream media. It was terrible PR for Carter Ruck, and a
week later everyone was talking about something else. The people meanwhile, in the Ivory Coast, who
were dieing and having their environment destroyed by this shipping accident, this oil, those people,
that situation is still ongoing. So the debate doesn’t go on for very long on twitter. So you start the
debate on twitter, but it go on very long.
DS You mentioned Trafigura and Jan Moir. There is an argument that its to easy to join in these
debates. You know, you join the facebook group or retweet and you’re in the numbers. How many of
those people took the time to read the articles? Is it to superficial?
AW: My argument is, you know, how many people down the pub, who are talking about it, have read
up on it? I mean here’s the interesting point. We’re doing a predictive modelling experiment at the
moment, where we’ve been looking at some Japanese research which shows that the Japanese
politicians who, in the post analysis, were mentioned the most on social media tended to be the ones
who won the seat. So actually, there’s a bit of a popularity contest and the person who’s best known
wins the popularity contest, there you go. So we started doing predicative modelling around that, by
looking at all constituencies that have been mentioned on twitter, and which candidate for each
constituency is mentioned the most. And we put out a press release, which clearly defined our

methodology, and said all we’re doing is testing the method used in the Japanese experiment. And our
initial projection gave Labour a one point lead over the Conservatives, suggesting a small labour
majority or a hung parliament. Since then we’ve released two sets of figures, one giving a small
conservative lead over Labour, and one this week showing Conservatives and Labour about level and a
bit of boost for Plaid and the Greens. Ok, so it should have been an academic experiment. The press
release went out, most of the papers picked it up, ITN did a piece on it and people say ‘oh can twitter
predict the election? Tweetminster predicts the results of the election.’ Actually we’re not, we’re
testing out a predictive model. Then you get people saying this is crazy, of course the Conservatives are
going to win, of course theres going to be a hung parliament. We had one guy, a blogger called Tory
Bear, who’s not a fan of Tweetminster, started saying that, you know, ‘those lefties t Tweetminster
predict a Labour win’. You have to sit there and take it on the chin, but on the other hand you have to
accept that people don’t read it, people didn’t read the methodology and go ‘oh this is a predictive
model from data mining company.’ They read ‘oh here’s some guy whos thrown some tea leaves in a
bowl and is now telling the result of an election labour can’t possibly win’. You know everyone’s got
an opinion. Christ, get in a taxi and listen to some of the crazy stuff they come out with. Where do they
get their opinions from?
DS: One of the things about twitter is that it gives everyone a level playing field, is that a good thing?
AW: Well, you know, look at Nick Griffin when he was on Question Time. We were monitoring all the
tweets and there was a real storm of tweets, three times as many as there were during the chancellor’s
debate. Which shows you how engaged the public were. We were registering about four tweets a
second. And what we saw was that there were a couple of people of said ‘give the man a chance’, you
know, and ‘he’s got a point there’. Clearly out of step with the views of everyone else and some people
were tweeting saying ‘don’t you love your country, don’t you want to stand up for Britain?’, echoing
the points that Nick Griffin was making, which to a lot of people don’t make sense. You know, it’s like
the BNP’s idea that there is a black police officers association so there should be a white police officers
association. And you know, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the white police officers
association is the police. So there’s some basic logical misunderstanding. And what we found was that
there were some people saying, no, he’s right. And they should be able to get up there and say their
piece, but they should also expect to get shouted down by the majority who say, no, you’re wrong. I
think that’s only fair. And, you know, there is some very weird stuff written on the Internet in general,
racist material, sexist material, its all out there. But I think its in the minority and I think the social
control is such that’s its less and less. There are very people who are willing to stick their neck out on
facebook and make offensive remarks. If you look back to the days of chatrooms, there was some
really offensive stuff going on. All that stuff is weakened with social media because simply so many
people are there. If people want to go on twitter and say, whats the BNP expression? ‘Don’t unpack,
you’re going back’, that’s the posters they sell. You know, people should do that and see how quickly
they get slapped back into place. Or how quickly they get told their opinions are out of step with
society, that’s, I think, quite a healthy measure. We should encourage more people to do that. Because

with chatrooms they could all get together and be racist, they had these sort of dark, dingy meeting
rooms where they got together, so I think it’s a good thing.
DS: There is a theory about twitter that, through the process of retweeting, people who aren’t interested
in politics can be accidentally exposed to political ideas and debate. Do you agree with that?
AW: Yeah, retweeting is interesting. With my agency hat on, we did the campaign for the Anvil DVD.
The rock band Anvil. We did a lot of measuring of retweeting there. And what was really interesting
was, if you were a certain age, middle-aged man, and you’re into heavy metal, you’ll like Anvil. But
whats interesting is that your friends will like Anvil. Anvil has, over 6 months, Anvil had about 400
hundred retweets. But when we added all that up we reached a couple of million people through that
retweeting. Now admittedly, about million of those were from Coldplay retweeting because they’ve got
a lot of followers. But, from 400 hundred people retweeting, we reached somewhere in the region of
25-30,00 ordinary Joes. All of whom were interested in rock music. And for politicians, having their
stuff retweeted is, yeah, its an excellent way to expose people to politics. Because everyone is political
about something. However, what I suspect is that, and this needs to be studied, is that if you retweet
something about the environment, people are much more engaged. If you retweet something about
party politics, people will switch off. You know, party politics is not interesting in a way in which the
environment, the economy and that kind of stuff is. And so its single-issue politics that I think is good
for retweeting, I’m not sure that party politics goes the same way. David Wright calls the Tories ‘scum
sucking pigs’ and then claims his tweets had been edited, which, technically, is impossible. And then
he tries to delete his tweets but people have already got it, and the link is already out there. Peopled
used our search engine, unfortunately for him, to bring up his whole archive of tweets, to see that, you
know, the words scum, sucking, Tory and pigs feature in various combinations regularly. More
regularly than perhaps they should.
DS: And there was the Labour PPC who recently got sacked because of what he said on twitter.
AW: Ahh yes, as I said, recently I’ve been out of the loop I bit.
DS: I was just wondering if you think, because of that, parties are going to ban their MP’s from using
twitter? In a personal capacity at least.
AW You see that is interesting. Politicians are always cocking-up. We’ve had the expenses scandal,
now we’ve had the cash for consultancy scandal. Right, noses in the trough, its not a good image for
politicians. And its what brought down the last conservatives government, and brought New Labour in.
The same thing’s happening again. Last year and this year politicians hit an old time low, politics, the
concept of career politicians hit an all time low. Its is a problem. And there are two ways to deal with
that. There’s controlling the message and keeping it very very remote, so that your people can’t screw
up, which is arguably more the sort of strategy being followed by Conservatives. And to a lesser extent

the Lib Dems. Or, and there are politicians like Grant Schapps and Nick Clegg doings this as well, who
have tried to speak more to people, to be more engaged. Because you know, they’re aware of the fact
that they need to be talking to people to rebuild that trust. The jury is still out on which is the right way
to go. I think that, you’re voting for you’re local MP, so for a local MP it’s a no brainer to talk to the
local people, one-to-one, to be more accessible. And also that is good for democracy, to have your
elected representative where you can reach them, it doesn’t matter if, you know, only one in a thousand
communications gets through to them and they get back. Its still more, its more accessibility, and I
think it’s a good thing. I think the flip side of it is though yeah, you’re going to have people whop
embarrass you, but you need to train people more effectively. And for some reason, and you know
we’ve seen this on other forms of social interaction, you know, people will get naked on a webcam
with a total stranger, in a way they never would if they met them in a bar. People will give people their
bank account details and their passwords in chatrooms in a way you never would in the real world. And
with twitter politicians will say stupid, crazy off the leash remarks, which they would never dream of
saying on TV or in a newspaper article, but they say it on twitter. Ultimately they’ve got to get wiser
about it, an I think we are seeing less and less of it. At the moment we’re in a situation were probably a
lot of people will voting in protest at the Labour government rather than voting for their local politician
who can deliver them excellent services and I think you need to rebuild that trust between people and
politicians and I think you do that by being more accessible.
DS: And at the moment you would agree that the Labour party is by far the better party at that?
AW: I would say yeah. The numbers, the numbers you’ve got here and the numbers we’ve got, show
they’re more interactive.
DS: Is that because they let their MP’s just get on with it?
AW: Well, yeah. They’ve been less organised in controlling the message. Maybe less now, we are
seeing a bit more party control. But yes they have been more interactive, I think the Lib Dems as well
have been more interactive. Both Labour and the Lib Dems have been more interactive the
Conservatives. Some Conservatives have been very strong in their communication; I’m thinking Grant
Schapps and Nadine Dorries. The numbers game tells us Labour’s better at it, but I would say, talking a
step back from that, it is very much about the individual. Lyn Featherstone for the Lib Dems, Jo
Swinson for the Lib Dems, outstanding in terms of how they tweet and blog. Compared with Douglas
Carswell, who’s active with his tweeting, but he never replies to people. Eric Pickles replies, and hes
the Conservative part chairman, so they’re there.
DS: And if an MP came to you and said ‘I’m starting up a twitter account’ what advie would you give
them?

AW: The best advice I heard was Krishnan Guru-Murthys advice, which is, if you’ve got a twitter
strategy, its probably rubbish. My advice would be probably, don’t tweet so much what you’re having
for lunch. Let people know where you are, what you’re doing and they want to know where you stand
on the issues. Use the tool for that. In the same way that you would use print journalism or broadcast
journalism. But also use it to follow up your other communications in an integrated format. What
twitter does, what facebook does is it allows you to stitch together TV, radio, constituency meetings;
it’s a sort of communications glue. You can bring all this tuff together, and by doing that you extend
the life of each piece. You know, ‘I did a piece on the radio tell me what you think about it’, on twitter,
you know. Use it to add to the value of existing communication channels, be interactive with people,
and also, you know, don’t let it rule you. Don’t think you have to answer every message because you
don’t. And remember that jokes, in text form, are more misunderstood. You know, we’re having a
conversation and with realising it you can smell me, you can see my skin colour change; you can see
my posturing and facial expressions. I’m giving you a huge amount of data about whether I’m being
positive or negative. And Kerry McCarthy says the she hates using emoticons, she think that they’re
twee and she doesn’t like using them. She thinks that she could because people are getting when she’s
being serious and humorous. So that’s the important thing, don’t try and be funny, be honest with
people, be accessible.
III: Face to face interview with Liberal Democrat PPC for Hastings and Rye, Nick Perry.
Hastings and Rye Liberal Democrat Constituency Office. Hastings, East Sussex. Friday 9th April 2010.
DS: Danny Saxby

NP: Nick Perry
DS: How important is the Internet to your campaign? You said when we were arranging this interview
that it was useful because it was free?
NP: The Internet is crucial in terms of our campaign, I mean, I’ve got a thirtieth possibly of the funds,
or campaign donations anyway, that Labour and the Tories have got. So they’re looking at sixty, sixty
five thousand and in donation terms we’re looking at two or three thousand. We have income from
selling things, and income, sometimes, from central office, but not very often. And that makes a real
difference in politics, you talk about buying seats and on the playing field, or unlevel playing field
we’ve got, that’s really true. There’s been such a hoohah about Ashcroft because of his influence in
marginals, this is a key marginal in the south east. So we’ve had to be a bit street-wise about what we
can use and how we use it. I mean, I was selected as the PPC here in October 2007, so I’ve had about
two, two and a half years in the role and really from day one it was important for me to get my Internet
presence significantly improved, because it was non-existant.

DS: I see you’ve got a Facebook group in support of the Hastings fishermen, which is really tapping
into a local issue.
NP: Yeah. I don’t know if the other politicians would say the same but they haven’t really done it the
same way. They’ve gone for a kind of candidature approach to social networking and you know, that’s
ok, that works with someone like the face recognition of Michael Foster, the sitting MP. I think he’s
got something like five hundred people on his network and Amber, the Tory, has something like three
hundred I think. Interestingly I think Amber has support from all over the country rather than
particularly local. And I tried the same initially, you know I set up a page for myself and, you know,
my Dad and his cat were on it. You know, that was it. And I thought, well, how do we tap people’s
enthusiasm for social networking in a way which isn’t going to be a real turn-off. And what I decided
to do was to try and get it to help the campaign that I was running, rather than getting people to say,
ooh Nick Perry I want to be his fan, or whatever. Because relatively speaking, as somebody who’s
quite new to the area, its going to take time to build the kind of profile that Michael’s got, you know,
after living here for sixty years, sixty five years. Erm, and having various different roles in the local
and the county council. So, erm, I just had to decide what campaigns are important to me and what
difference I wanted to make, and err, I chose those, and then use the social networking to try to develop
peoples awareness of those campaigns. And that’s been quite successful, you know, sort of… sort of…
, you know, we want fairer parking at the Conquest Hospital, and we have about thirteen hundred
members, similarly for the fishermen site. So, errr, that’s really important to me this week because that
means that I’ve been able to, when I… , I’ve got a separate kind of bulletin email, which has about 900
members on it, that’s means that, you know, I’ve been able to reach three and a half thousand people.
Quite err… and you know on the list there are some kind of key opinion formers in different areas of
the constituencies life. So, just by the touch of a button and without any cost to us I can reach three and
a half thousand people, which, you know, for a party like ours is incredibly important. So yeah, there
you go, social networking has been a real change in the capacity of the smaller parties since the last
election, erm, I don’t think there was anywhere near as wide a usage of proficient usage of these sorts
of technologies in 2005.
DS: Have you thought about how you’re going to turn those three and a half thousand people into
votes?
NP: Well, I’m in contact with these people, and I’ve been prompt to respond to any questions they
have. You know, you can’t, I mean, I don’t want… I want to use the technology to make people aware
they have another choice, erm, than just the two main parties. But because they’re signed up to a
campaign, and not necessarily a party political one, you know, I don’t want to abuse that. I want to
make them aware that, yes it was me who set it up and yes its, has been, me who has been doing work
with the subject that they’re interested in locally and therefore, you know, I want to be able to stake my
case. But I don’t want bombard them with stuff saying, you know, now its time for you to become a
member or whatever. Erm, we just have to wait and see. I mean, in some ways its just a bit of a suck it

and see exercise to see what difference it makes to our vote share, when we get the results on May 7th,
May 6th.
DS: And you’ve got a blog as well?
NP: Yeah, I’ve got a blog, also free. Provided by Wordpress. And so err, we have a constituency
website, paid for, which is run by a company based in Folkestone, ermm, which provides quite a lot of
the Liberal Democrat websites across the country. Erm, so for the constituency party we have a website
and I have my blog, and that’s probably had about twelve thousand hits, over a two year period, and I
don’t know how good or not that is but it certainly, erm, its viewed regularly.
DS: Do you get much feedback on the blog?
NP: Yeah I, not necessarily about the content of the blog, the blog is a filter for people to get in touch
with me, and what I’ve tried to do is erm, yeah so what I’ve tried to do with the blog is to encourage
people to contact me by email, and the more emails we get the more easier it is for us to communicate.
DS: And you’ve got a Twitter account?
NP: I mean, I do tweet. I probably, during the election campaign I’ll probably tweet once a day or
something to tell people what I’m doing. That isn’t the biggest source of following I don’t think,
there’s probably about eighty or ninety people following me, I’m not quite sure. I don’t use twitter
much myself, in terms of following other people particularly so I don’t really know how people use
twitter themselves to follow me. Erm you knw, I put things up there incase people are interested but it
hasn’t been as big a, err, campaign as the blog really
DS: When starting your campaign did you think about how to use these tools? Did you think we can
join twitter, start a blog and then use twitter to direct people to the blog?
NP: Erm, yes, I mean it’s a case of trying to cross refer, er, and I also, up until the election campaign I
also had a weekly column on the local papers website, which I would direct people to my blog and also
the fact that they could contact me via twitter if they wanted to, erm, and yes you point people towards
whats available for them to view definitely, but it, I mean, twitter probably became available to the
parties you know, only about eighteen months ago. These technologies are coming in all the time and
you have to think how to use them.
DS: Have you had any advice from Liberal Democrat HQ on using these tools?
NP: There is training available at the party conference, about how to use social networking sites. I
tended not to necessarily go to that because I’ve got the rudimentaries of how to use it, and kind of

additionally to that is an encouragement to use it because it is, you know, it’s a good way of contacting
people, it… what seems to work about social networking is people remain relatively anonymous in the
way that they contact you, so you do it by the network rather than by email address
IV: Face to face interview with Hilary Benn MP, Secretary of State for Food and Rural Affairs. Leeds
Town Hall, Leeds, West Yorkshire. Monday 18th January 2010
DS: Danny Saxby

HB: Hilary Benn
DS: Do you think that connecting to a new generation of voters through technology is necessary, such
as social network sites as twitter?
HB: I don’t tweet myself; I have colleagues who do though. You can’t get your message across in, is it
only 140 characters? But it is essential to communicate with young voters but presentation of your
policy, meeting and speaking to people in person by knocking on doors is still the best way.
DS: Do you think it’s a good thing for politicians to be on twitter?
HB: I don’t know you tell me. Some of my colleagues are on it. I’m not sure.
DS: But what being connected with your constituents? Directly?
HB: Yes, I suppose that is a good point. I always get emails saying, “Dear Mr Benn, or whoever is
reading this” because people expect my secretary not me, to be reading and replying. I always reply
letting people know that it was me who read it, I think that’s important. So anything that allows us to
be direct is a good thing yes.
V: Email interview with Alberto Nardelli, Co-Founder of Tweetminster. 5th March 2010.
DS: Danny Saxby

AN: Alberto Nardelli
DS: How did the idea for Tweetminster come about?
AN: The site was inspired by a tweet from Tom Watson MP about how congress men and women were
using Twitter in the States. We initially launched as a service to help people find and follow their MP
on Twitter, and then very quickly realised there was a lot more we could do, and in this sense we're still
scratching the surface really.

DS: Do you think it has played a role in encouraging politicians to use Twitter?
AN: I would hope so. I think it made it easier and speeded up the rate of adoption. Twitter's growth,
use by media and the upcoming election of course all helped too.
DS: Do you think Twitter is a useful tool for engaging those people who normally don't engage with
politics?
AN: Yes and no - Twitter helps those already engaged to better connect and share information with
people who are interested in issues, but maybe not so actively interested in politics directly. Meaning it
puts people in touch with politically relevant information far more quickly. The majority of the
population isn't though on Twitter, yet I wouldn't underestimate the influence Twitter has on
mainstream media and in helping people organise activities which have an impact offline.
DS: And do you see some politicians taking their same old message onto Twitter and expecting to
reach a new audience which isn’t there. (After all people will only follow you if you say something
worth listening to)
AN: All politicians use Twitter differently - some are engaging, others only broadcast their message.
The more compelling ones though have both more followers and reach than others.
DS: Is Twitter, and its 140 characters, a good tool for debate?
AN: Twitter is communications platform, not a debating tool.
DS: We've seen how the Obama campaign utilised social media to co-ordinate an old fashioned grass
roots organisation. Do you think this where the advantage of Twitter lays? As a tool for organising
rather than debating?
AN: Absolutely, even if in the UK we're seeing it more used as space to attack political opponents than
to organise around one's own party. I would also add that as a platform to amplify issues and share
media stories - it now plays a key role in the media cycle.
DS: Is there a fear amongst government and party leaders that Twitter has given back-bench MP's too
much freedom to say things they shouldn't be saying?
AN: You would need to ask them that question
DS: Has Twitter made it too easy to join in debates, we've seen the enormous reaction to campaigns

against Trafigura and Jan Moir and the we love NHS campaign. How many of those people who
retweeted comments and used the hashtags had actually read up on the incidents and come to their own
conclusions?
AN: While there is a number of people who simply retweet messages, it's also true that within the
stream of information there are alternative voices and sources of information - this makes it much
easier actually for people to discover alternative view points than if they read only one newspaper for
example. The masses aren't of course always right, but that's besides the point - in an open platform
competitive view points more easily compete. As a rule of thumb, opens always beats closed.
DS: Is Twitter an aid to democracy? Or is too superficial to have any real impact?
AN: Think previous answer replies to this too - as a yes.
VI: Email Interview with Shane Greer, Executive Editor of Total Politics Magazine. 16th April 2010.
DS: Danny Saxby

SG: Shane Greer
politics? And do you see some politicians taking their same old message onto Twitter and expecting to
reach a new audience which isn't there. (After all people will only follow you if you say something
worth listening to)
SG: Generally, no. The biggest issue in that regard is that many of the people engaged in political
discussions on Twitter are already political. So, in a direct sense, it's not a great for directly engaging
with non-political people. But it is a great medium for spreading a message further (for example, if the
media pick something up from Twitter (consider how Henry MacRory uses Twitter to spread the
Conservative message to the media)). But there are some exceptions to this. Consider Sarah Brown.
She has over 1.1 million followers, and the vast majority will not be political. She clearly can spread
messages beyond the political audience.
DS: Is 140 characters enough for meaningful debate? Does the character limit not encourage short and
abstract responses rather than an in-depth political debate?
SG: Not really. The short format encourages simplification. But ultimately, that's what political
campaigns are about. They're not about substantive discussion, they're about condensing a message.
Partly that's a reflection of the environment they operate in (limited time on the media etc), but it's also
a reflection of what motivates voters. Drew Weston's book, The Political Brain, makes that very
clear.

DS: We have seen how the Obama campaign used social media to create a grassroots organisation and
to encourage people to donate millions of dollars. Are the British political parties using social media in
a similar way? Or are they letting their members work out how to best use social media on their own?
SG: The British political parties are, but to varying degrees of success. The LibDems aren't doing very
well at all. Labour have a site called MembersNet which connects activists and helps them mobilise
and organise. But it's the Conservative Party which is really leading the way online.
MyConservatives.com is the centrepiece of the Tory operation, helping them recruit new activists,
organise current ones, raising money for candidates online etc. Nobody in the UK is coming close to
achieving the success that Obama did, but I think that's more down to the inability of British political
parties to innovate in the way US campaigns do.
DS: Would you agree that vast number of people who follow politicians and political commentators on
Twitter are already politically active? If so, how can it be use to reach those people who aren't
politically active?
SG: Yes. I think my answer to the first question pretty much covers this.
DS: Are the British political parties using social media to its full potential? Which political party would
you say is the most active and competent online?
SG: See my answer to the third question.
DS: Over the past few days we have seen a Labour PPC sacked because of Twitter, and Labour activist
@BevaniteEllie attacked in national newspapers for a blog she wrote 18 months ago. Whats your view
of these stories?
SG: Labour were right to sack the PPC, but they should have done it sooner (his Tweets were over a
period of time, and some senior Labour people were following him). I think this was perhaps the first
great example of a British politician really messing up online, and I think we'll see a lot more of it in
the years ahead. As for Ellie Gellard, I don't have a problem with someone changing their mind. But
in politics you have to be careful about what you've said in the past as it can hurt you in the future
unless you take steps to neutralise it.
VII: Email interview with Bill Thompson. Journalist and blogger. 29th March 2010.

DS: Danny Saxby

BT: Bill Thompson
politics? And do you see some politicians taking their same old message onto Twitter and expecting to
reach a new audience which isn't there. (After all people will only follow you if you say something
worth listening to)
BT: I don't think Twitter will really do much for engagement. Those who tweet and aren't interested in
politics will ignore it, or stop following those who do engage. I think it can be valuable for reinforcing
connections, for spreading news quickly and for asking questions of those putting forward positions or
points of view.
DS: Is Twitter, and its 140 characters, a good tool for debate?
BT: Twitter can be used to engage in debate, but the problem is not so much the lack of space - 140
characters is ok to express a view - but the complexity of extracting tweets relating to a specific topic
from the flow, threading them in any reasonable way and keeping up with what's going on. It's more
appropriate for a quick back and forth on a topic than a longer form conversation - and that has limited
value in the political process, I fear.
DS: We've seen how the Obama campaign utilised social media to co-ordinate an old fashioned grass
roots organisation. Do you think this where the advantage of Twitter lays? As a tool for organising
rather than debating?
BT: I don't think Twitter is good at this - too few people are connected, there is no guarantee tweets
will be received and tweets are too public, in general. A lot of work has been done over many years to
make email delivery reliable, and many more people can receive email on the move than use Twitter.
DS: Has Twitter made it too easy to join in debates, we've seen the enormous reaction to campaigns
against Trafigura and Jan Moir and the we love NHS campaign. How many of those people who
retweeted comments and used the hashtags had actually read up on the incidents and come to their own
conclusions?
BT: The tools that make democratic engagement easier also devalue the very participation they
encourage - signing an email petition hardly means anything. Those who use them also have to do a lot
less work to get people involved. So overall I don't think that these tools add much to the debate,

though they may do a lot to raise awareness that could then be capitalised on by proper campaigning.
Tom Watson's book Causewired is a good examination of the potential of the network to galvanise
causes.
DS: Is Twitter an aid to democracy? Or is too superficial to have any real impact?
BT: Any tool that helps people communicate directly is an aid to democracy, however small the impact
it may have. Twitter has a lot to offer, but it's not going to save the world.
VIII: FOI Request to UK Cabinet Office
Dear Sir/Madam,
Please acknowledge receipt of this letter as a Freedom of Information request. I am writing to you in
order to obtain copies of any documents/memo’s/E-Mails, issued by any Government departments,
setting out protocols/guidelines on the use of Social Media by both Ministers and backbench MP’s.
By Social Media I mean websites such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, as well as blogs.
Yours Sincerely,
Danny Saxby
(Results included Civil Service guide to social media and a copy of the UK Ministerial Code)
VIIII: FOI Request to Mayor of London Offfice
Dear Sir/Madam
I was wondering if you could tell me how often the mayor of London updates
his Twitter feed himself. I have noticed on occasions that he updates his
feed whilst appearing live on TV.
Danny Saxby
Response:

Dear Mr. Saxby,
Thank for your inquiry on 10 March 2010.
The Mayor communicates with Londoners using every appropriate and practical tool possible,
including twitter. He also receives more than 6000 pieces of correspondence every month. This is
clearly a considerable logistical challenge and a small team of people who process these exchanges
help the Mayor. All communications however reflect his personal views and the authentic voice of the
Mayor.
Thank you again for your interest.
Kind Regards
Debbie Mazs
Marketing
Greater London Authority

X: Data Collected between 18th January 2010 and 24 January 2010.
18/01/2010
Tweet Catagories Interaction
Party Party
MP Political Rhetoric Policy Mundane News Blog Other Consiturncy Parliamentary Total Links Replies ReTweets
Adam Afriyie 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Adam Price 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Alison Seabeck 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
Alistair Carmichael 0 0 0 2 0 0 1 0 0 2 0 1 0
Andrew George 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 0
Andrew Gwynne 10 6 1 4 1 0 13 0 4 39 3 25 10
Andrew Rosindell 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Andrew Slaughter 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 2
Andy Reed 0 0 0 2 0 0 1 0 1 4 0 0 0
Angus Robertson 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Anne Snelgrove 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 2 0 0
Ann Keen 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ann Widdecombe 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Anthony D Wright 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ben Bradshaw 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Celia Barlow 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Chris Bryant 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 1 0 1
Christopher Huhne 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 0 0
Crispin Blunt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Danny Alexander 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Dari Taylor 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Cairns 0 0 0 0 1 0 3 0 0 4 1 3 0
David Chaytor 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

David Drew 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0
David Evenett 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
David Jones 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 4 2 0 2
David Kidney 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Lammy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Miliband 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
David Mundell 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Wright 5 0 0 0 1 0 3 0 0 9 1 6 2
Derek Wyatt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Diana Johnson 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Douglas Carswell 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
Edward Balls 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Edward Davey 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Edward Miliband 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1
Edward Vazey 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Elliot Morley 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Eric Joyce 4 0 0 0 0 0 10 0 0 14 1 12 0
Eric Pickles 0 2 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 4 2 2 1
Frank Field 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
George Galloway 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gillian Merron 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gisela Stuart 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Graham Stuart 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Grant Shapps 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 2 2 0 0
Greg Mulholland 1 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0
Harriett Harman 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Hazel Blears 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Hywel Williams 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ian Cawsey 3 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 4 2 3 0
James Brokenshire 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
James Plaskitt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

James Purnell 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 2 1 1 1
Jim Knight 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 2
Jim Murphy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
John Denham 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
John Prescott 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0
John Spellar 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Jo Swinson 1 0 0 5 0 0 3 0 0 8 1 6 0
Julia Goldsworthy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Kerry McCarthy 11 8 3 0 1 1 17 2 3 46 4 38 4
Kevin Brennan 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
lembit Opik 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Liam Byrne 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Linda Gilroy 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 0
Linda Riordan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Louise Ellman 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Lynne Featherstone 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 2 2 0 0
Malcolm Bruce 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mark Durkan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Michael Fabricant 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Michael Foster 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 1 0 5 0 0 0
Michael Meacher 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Michael Moore 0 0 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 0 1
Michael Weir 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
Mike Gapes 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mike O'Brien 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0
Nadine Dorries 0 0 0 1 2 0 0 0 3 2 1 0
Nicholas Clegg 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 2 0
Norman Lamb 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Parmjit Dhanda 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Patrick McFadden 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Paul Clark 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Paul Rowen 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Pete Wishart 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Phil Willis 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0
Phyllis Starkey 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sadiq Khan 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 3 0 0 0
Sandra Gidley 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sarah McCarthy-Fry 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Shahid Malik 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sion Simon 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Stephen McCabe 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Stephen Timms 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Steve Webb 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Susan Kramer 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tessa Jowell 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tim Farron 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
Tom Brake 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tom Harris 1 0 16 0 1 0 7 0 0 25 3 23 0
Tom Levitt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tom Watson 4 1 5 2 5 0 24 0 0 41 20 30 4
Vera Baird 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 0
Vincent Cable 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Virendra Sharma 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0
Willie Rennie 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
51 27 28 26 17 9 90 9 13 269 65 154 31

19/01/2010
Party Party
Adam Afriyie 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Adam Price 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Alison Seabeck 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 2 0 1 0
Andrew George 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Andrew Gwynne 7 2 0 1 5 0 31 1 1 48 9 31 12
Andy Reed 0 0 0 3 0 0 3 0 1 7 0 1 0
Angus Robertson 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Anne Snelgrove 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ann Keen 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ann Widdecombe 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Anthony D Wright 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 2 1 0 0
Ben Bradshaw 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Celia Barlow 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Chris Bryant 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Crispin Blunt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Danny Alexander 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Dari Taylor 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Cairns 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 2 1 1 0
David Chaytor 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Drew 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
David Evenett 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Jones 3 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 4 2 0 0

David Kidney 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Lammy 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0
David Miliband 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Mundell 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Wright 4 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 6 2 3 2
Derek Wyatt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
Diana Johnson 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Edward Balls 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1
Edward Davey 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 2 0 1 0
Edward Miliband 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Edward Vazey 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Elliot Morley 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Eric Joyce 0 0 1 0 3 0 6 0 1 11 2 2 2
Eric Pickles 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Frank Field 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
George Galloway 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gillian Merron 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Gisela Stuart 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Graham Stuart 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 2 0 1 0
Grant Shapps 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
Greg Mulholland 1 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 3 0 0 0
Harriett Harman 0 0 1 0 0 0 5 0 1 7 0 5 0
Hazel Blears 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Hywel Williams 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ian Cawsey 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 2 1 0 1
James Plaskitt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
James Purnell 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Jim Knight 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Jim Murphy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

John Denham 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
John Prescott 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1
John Spellar 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Jo Swinson 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 1 3 0 3 0
Julia Goldsworthy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Kerry McCarthy 2 1 0 0 2 0 15 3 1 24 1 19 4
Kevin Brennan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
lembit Opik 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Liam Byrne 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Linda Gilroy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Linda Riordan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Louise Ellman 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Malcolm Bruce 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mark Durkan 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 3 0 0 0
Michael Foster 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0
Michael Meacher 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Michael Moore 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 4 5 0 0 0
Michael Weir 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mike Gapes 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mike O'Brien 1 0 0 0 2 0 1 0 0 4 0 0 0
Nadine Dorries 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Nicholas Clegg 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 2 1 0 0
Norman Lamb 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Parmjit Dhanda 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
Paul Clark 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Paul Rowen 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Pete Wishart 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Phil Willis 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0

Phyllis Starkey 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 1 1 0
Sadiq Khan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 0 0
Sandra Gidley 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Shahid Malik 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sion Simon 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Stephen McCabe 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Stephen Timms 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 1 0 0
Steve Webb 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Susan Kramer 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tessa Jowell 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tim Farron 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
Tom Brake 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tom Harris 2 2 1 0 0 4 20 0 0 29 3 23 0
Tom Levitt 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
Tom Watson 0 1 0 0 0 0 13 0 0 14 2 8 1
Vera Baird 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 1 0 0
Vincent Cable 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Virendra Sharma 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
Willie Rennie 2 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 3 2 0 0
25 6 6 4 16 12 111 7 28 212 38 100 25

20/01/2010(PMQ's Day)
Party Party
Adam Afriyie 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Adam Price 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Alison Seabeck 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 0 4 1 2 0
Andrew George 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 2 1 0 0
Andrew Gwynne 6 4 4 1 0 0 18 2 1 36 10 26 11
Andy Reed 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 3 6 1 0 0
Angus Robertson 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Anne Snelgrove 1 2 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 5 5 0 0
Ann Keen 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ann Widdecombe 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Anthony D Wright 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ben Bradshaw 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Celia Barlow 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Chris Bryant 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 2 1 0 1
Crispin Blunt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Danny Alexander 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Dari Taylor 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Cairns 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Chaytor 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Drew 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Evenett 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Jones 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 2 1 0 0
David Kidney 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 0

David Lammy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Miliband 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 2 0 1 0
David Mundell 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Wright 1 0 0 0 0 0 5 0 0 6 0 5 0
Derek Wyatt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Diana Johnson 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Edward Balls 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 1
Edward Davey 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0
Edward Miliband 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Edward Vazey 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Elliot Morley 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Eric Joyce 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 0 0 6 1 5 1
Eric Pickles 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Frank Field 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
George Galloway 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gillian Merron 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gisela Stuart 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Graham Stuart 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Grant Shapps 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Greg Mulholland 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 3 0 0 0
Harriett Harman 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 0 2 0
Hazel Blears 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Hywel Williams 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ian Cawsey 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 2 0 1 0
James Plaskitt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
James Purnell 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Jim Knight 0 2 0 0 0 0 3 0 3 8 1 3 1
Jim Murphy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
John Denham 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

John Prescott 1 2 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 5 3 0 2
John Spellar 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Jo Swinson 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 2 2 0 0
Kerry McCarthy 12 2 1 0 0 1 19 1 10 46 9 34 7
Kevin Brennan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
lembit Opik 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
Liam Byrne 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 2 1 0 0
Linda Gilroy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Linda Riordan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Louise Ellman 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Malcolm Bruce 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 2 1 4 0 0 0
Mark Durkan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
Michael Foster 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Michael Meacher 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Michael Moore 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 0 0
Michael Weir 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mike Gapes 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mike O'Brien 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Nadine Dorries 0 0 0 0 0 1 4 0 0 5 1 1 1
Nicholas Clegg 0 0 8 0 0 0 2 0 2 12 4 6 0
Norman Lamb 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 0 0
Parmjit Dhanda 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0
Paul Clark 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Paul Rowen 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Pete Wishart 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Phil Willis 0 0 1 0 0 0 5 0 0 6 2 3 0
Phyllis Starkey 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 3 0 0 0

Sadiq Khan 0 1 0 0 1 0 2 0 2 6 1 1 0
Sandra Gidley 6 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 7 0 1 0
Shahid Malik 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sion Simon 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Stephen McCabe 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Stephen Timms 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
Steve Webb 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
Susan Kramer 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0
Tessa Jowell 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tim Farron 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Tom Brake 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tom Harris 1 0 0 0 1 2 3 0 1 8 4 3 0
Tom Levitt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tom Watson 2 0 2 0 2 0 9 0 5 20 7 9 4
Vera Baird 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
Vincent Cable 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
Virendra Sharma 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
Willie Rennie 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
32 17 21 1 11 12 103 8 45 251 66 108 29

21/01/2010
Party Party
Adam Afriyie 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Adam Price 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Alison Seabeck 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Andrew George 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 4 0 0 0
Andrew Gwynne 1 2 0 1 1 0 5 0 0 10 2 5 3
Andy Reed 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 0 6 0 2 0
Angus Robertson 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Anne Snelgrove 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 0
Ann Keen 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ann Widdecombe 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Anthony D Wright 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ben Bradshaw 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 2 0 0 0
Celia Barlow 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Chris Bryant 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Crispin Blunt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Danny Alexander 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Dari Taylor 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Cairns 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0
David Chaytor 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Drew 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0
David Evenett 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Jones 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 2 0 4 1 0 0
David Kidney 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

David Lammy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
David Miliband 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 3 1 1 0
David Mundell 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Wright 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
Derek Wyatt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Diana Johnson 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Edward Balls 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Edward Davey 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 3 1 0 0
Edward Miliband 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Edward Vazey 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0
Elliot Morley 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0
Eric Joyce 0 0 0 3 1 0 7 0 0 11 2 4 0
Eric Pickles 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1
Frank Field 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
George Galloway 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gillian Merron 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 3 0 0 1
Gisela Stuart 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Graham Stuart 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0
Grant Shapps 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0
Greg Mulholland 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 2 0 0 0
Harriett Harman 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Hazel Blears 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Hywel Williams 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ian Cawsey 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0
James Plaskitt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
James Purnell 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Jim Knight 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Jim Murphy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
John Denham 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

John Prescott 1 1 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 5 1 2 2
John Spellar 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
Jo Swinson 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0
Kerry McCarthy 7 0 2 0 2 0 18 1 1 31 4 23 6
Kevin Brennan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
lembit Opik 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Liam Byrne 0 0 0 2 0 0 1 0 0 3 0 0 0
Linda Gilroy 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
Linda Riordan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Louise Ellman 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Malcolm Bruce 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mark Durkan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Michael Foster 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
Michael Meacher 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Michael Moore 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 0 0 0
Michael Weir 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 3 0 0 0
Mike Gapes 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mike O'Brien 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Nadine Dorries 1 0 0 2 2 2 6 0 1 14 5 4 3
Nicholas Clegg 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Norman Lamb 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Parmjit Dhanda 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 1 0 0
Paul Clark 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 0 0
Paul Rowen 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
Pete Wishart 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Phil Willis 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 2 0 1 0
Phyllis Starkey 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Sadiq Khan 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 4 1 1 0
Sandra Gidley 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Shahid Malik 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sion Simon 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Stephen McCabe 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Stephen Timms 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 5 7 1 1 1
Steve Webb 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Susan Kramer 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tessa Jowell 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tim Farron 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tom Brake 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tom Harris 2 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 0 6 3 1 0
Tom Levitt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tom Watson 1 4 1 1 1 0 15 0 1 24 6 15 4
Vera Baird 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 3 0 2 0
Vincent Cable 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 0
Virendra Sharma 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
Willie Rennie 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 2 0 0 0
21 15 9 12 8 13 71 19 26 195 45 68 21

22/01/2010
Party Party
Adam Afriyie 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Adam Price 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Alison Seabeck 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
Andrew George 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
Andrew Gwynne 5 5 0 1 1 1 45 0 3 61 4 49 9
Andy Reed 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 0 2 6 0 1 0
Angus Robertson 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Anne Snelgrove 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ann Keen 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ann Widdecombe 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Anthony D Wright 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ben Bradshaw 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
Celia Barlow 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Chris Bryant 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 1
Crispin Blunt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Danny Alexander 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Dari Taylor 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 3 0 0 1
David Cairns 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Chaytor 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Drew 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
David Evenett 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Jones 0 0 1 0 0 1 2 0 1 5 2 2 0
David Kidney 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

David Lammy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Miliband 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 2 1 0 0
David Mundell 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Wright 3 0 0 0 1 0 3 0 0 7 0 5 1
Derek Wyatt 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Diana Johnson 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Edward Balls 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Edward Davey 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Edward Miliband 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 2 0 0
Edward Vazey 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
Elliot Morley 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Eric Joyce 1 0 1 0 1 0 8 0 1 12 2 8 2
Eric Pickles 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 3 1 0 0
Frank Field 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
George Galloway 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gillian Merron 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 3 0 5 0 2 0
Gisela Stuart 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 2 1 0 0
Graham Stuart 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Grant Shapps 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0
Greg Mulholland 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Harriett Harman 0 2 0 0 0 0 5 2 1 10 0 8 0
Hazel Blears 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Hywel Williams 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ian Cawsey 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 3 0 5 3 1 0
James Plaskitt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
James Purnell 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Jim Knight 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 0 0 1
Jim Murphy 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
John Denham 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

John Prescott 5 2 0 2 1 2 9 0 0 21 9 6 8
John Spellar 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Jo Swinson 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
Kerry McCarthy 3 1 5 0 1 22 2 1 35 0 29 1
Kevin Brennan 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
lembit Opik 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Liam Byrne 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 3 0 0 1
Linda Gilroy 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
Linda Riordan 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
Louise Ellman 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Malcolm Bruce 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mark Durkan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Michael Foster 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 2 0 0 0
Michael Meacher 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Michael Moore 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
Michael Weir 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mike Gapes 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mike O'Brien 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0
Nadine Dorries 0 2 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 5 0 1 0
Nicholas Clegg 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Norman Lamb 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
Parmjit Dhanda 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Paul Clark 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 0 0 0
Paul Rowen 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Pete Wishart 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Phil Willis 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 2 0 0 0
Phyllis Starkey 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 0 0 0

Sadiq Khan 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 3 0 5 0 2 0
Sandra Gidley 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
Shahid Malik 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sion Simon 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
Stephen McCabe 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Stephen Timms 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Steve Webb 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0
Susan Kramer 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0
Tessa Jowell 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tim Farron 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
Tom Brake 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tom Harris 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 3 3 0 0
Tom Levitt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tom Watson 2 0 1 0 3 0 24 0 1 32 7 23 6
Vera Baird 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 0 0 0
Vincent Cable 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Virendra Sharma 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
Willie Rennie 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 2 0 0 0
26 15 12 8 9 12 141 37 18 279 44 140 31

23/01/2010
Party Party
Adam Afriyie 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Adam Price 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Alison Seabeck 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Andrew George 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Andrew Gwynne 3 2 0 1 0 1 26 0 0 33 1 21 7
Andy Reed 1 1 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 5 1 1 0
Angus Robertson 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Anne Snelgrove 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ann Keen 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ann Widdecombe 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Anthony D Wright 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ben Bradshaw 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
Celia Barlow 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Chris Bryant 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Crispin Blunt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Danny Alexander 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Dari Taylor 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Cairns 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Chaytor 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Drew 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Evenett 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Jones 2 0 0 1 3 1 4 0 0 11 2 6 0
David Kidney 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

David Lammy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Miliband 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Mundell 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Wright 5 0 0 0 0 0 8 0 0 13 1 11 1
Derek Wyatt 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Diana Johnson 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Edward Balls 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 2 1 0 1
Edward Davey 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Edward Miliband 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0
Edward Vazey 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Elliot Morley 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Eric Joyce 0 0 0 0 1 2 0 0 0 3 3 1 0
Eric Pickles 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Frank Field 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
George Galloway 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gillian Merron 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gisela Stuart 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 0 0 0
Graham Stuart 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Grant Shapps 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 2 2 0 0
Greg Mulholland 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 1 5 0 1 0
Harriett Harman 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
Hazel Blears 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Hywel Williams 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ian Cawsey 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 0 0 0 0 6 0
James Plaskitt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
James Purnell 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
Jim Knight 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0
Jim Murphy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
John Denham 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

John Prescott 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
John Spellar 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Jo Swinson 0 0 0 0 2 1 9 0 1 13 1 8 0
Kerry McCarthy 0 0 0 1 0 1 7 1 0 10 1 7 1
Kevin Brennan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
lembit Opik 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
Liam Byrne 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 0 0 3 1 1 1
Linda Gilroy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Linda Riordan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Louise Ellman 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Malcolm Bruce 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mark Durkan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Michael Foster 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Michael Meacher 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Michael Moore 0 0 0 1 0 2 0 0 3 0 0 0
Michael Weir 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
Mike Gapes 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 2 0 0 0
Mike O'Brien 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Nadine Dorries 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0
Nicholas Clegg 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Norman Lamb 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 0 4 4 0 0
Parmjit Dhanda 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1
Paul Clark 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Paul Rowen 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Pete Wishart 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Phil Willis 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Phyllis Starkey 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0

Sadiq Khan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sandra Gidley 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0
Shahid Malik 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sion Simon 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Stephen McCabe 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Stephen Timms 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 3 0 6 0 3 0
Steve Webb 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Susan Kramer 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tessa Jowell 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tim Farron 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tom Brake 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tom Harris 0 0 0 1 0 0 6 0 2 3 4 6 0
Tom Levitt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tom Watson 0 0 0 1 4 0 25 0 3 33 11 24 2
Vera Baird 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Vincent Cable 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Virendra Sharma 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
Willie Rennie 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 2 0 0 0
12 5 1 7 11 9 116 15 7 171 37 98 15

24/01/2010
Party Party
Adam Afriyie 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Adam Price 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Alison Seabeck 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Andrew George 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Andrew Gwynne 7 2 0 0 0 0 28 0 0 37 3 27 7
Andrew Slaughter 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Andy Reed 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
Angus Robertson 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Anne Snelgrove 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ann Keen 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ann Widdecombe 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Anthony D Wright 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ben Bradshaw 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Celia Barlow 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Chris Bryant 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
Crispin Blunt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Danny Alexander 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Dari Taylor 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Cairns 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Chaytor 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Drew 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Evenett 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Jones 3 0 0 2 1 0 2 0 0 8 3 2 2
David Kidney 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

David Lammy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Miliband 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Mundell 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
David Wright 5 2 2 0 0 0 2 1 0 12 4 6 2
Derek Wyatt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Diana Johnson 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Edward Balls 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0
Edward Davey 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Edward Miliband 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Edward Vazey 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Elliot Morley 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Eric Joyce 0 0 2 0 2 0 6 0 0 10 2 3 5
Eric Pickles 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 3 2 1 0
Frank Field 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
George Galloway 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gillian Merron 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0
Gisela Stuart 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Graham Stuart 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Grant Shapps 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Greg Mulholland 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0
Harriett Harman 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Hazel Blears 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Hywel Williams 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ian Cawsey 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 0 1 0
James Plaskitt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
James Purnell 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Jim Knight 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 1 0 0
Jim Murphy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
John Denham 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

John Prescott 2 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 4 2 2 3
John Spellar 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Jo Swinson 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 3 0 2 0
Kerry McCarthy 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 4 0 6 0 4 0
Kevin Brennan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
lembit Opik 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Liam Byrne 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Linda Gilroy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Linda Riordan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Louise Ellman 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Lynne Featherstone 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0
Malcolm Bruce 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mark Durkan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Michael Foster 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Michael Meacher 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Michael Moore 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0
Michael Weir 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mike Gapes 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mike O'Brien 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Nadine Dorries 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Nicholas Clegg 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Norman Lamb 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 3 2 1 0
Parmjit Dhanda 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Paul Clark 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Paul Rowen 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Pete Wishart 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Phil Willis 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Phyllis Starkey 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Sadiq Khan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 2 0 0 0
Sandra Gidley 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Shahid Malik 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sion Simon 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Stephen McCabe 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Stephen Timms 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Steve Webb 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Susan Kramer 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tessa Jowell 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tim Farron 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Tom Brake 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tom Harris 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 0 3 2 1 0
Tom Levitt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tom Watson 0 0 2 1 1 0 11 0 0 15 3 11 3
Vera Baird 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Vincent Cable 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Virendra Sharma 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
Willie Rennie 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
22 4 6 7 7 6 63 10 0 127 29 63 22


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Has social media made politics more accessible? Or is it just another platform for party politics?

Has social media made politics more

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4. How our politicians use Twitter.

Number of MP's using Twitter

Conservative Labour Lib Dem

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Conser vat ive Labour Lib Dem

Conser vat ive Labour Lib Dem

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Douglas Carswell Lynne Featherstone Jo Swinson

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5. An aid to democracy: Engaging the disengaged.

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6. Reactionary, Superficial and Shallow: Does Twitter

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Word Count: 5,493

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Barney, D. (2004). The Network Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Sanders, K. (2009). Communicating Politics in The Twenty-First Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave

The Times. (2010). “Time’s Up Brown” – Stab of The Stilloted Socialist.

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Moral Maze. (2009). BBC Radio 4. Wednesday 4th November 2009.

Box UK (2009) Twitter Demographics [Online] Available from: http://www.boxuk.com/blog/twitter-

Tweetminster (2010) Tweetminster [Online] Available from: http://tweetminster.co.uk/ [Accessed: 5th

United Kingdom Ministerial Code. Cabinet Office. (2007).

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DS: Danny Saxby

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DS: How do you thin Twitter is going to affect this election?

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DS: Danny Saxby

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DS: And you’ve got a blog as well?

DS: Do you get much feedback on the blog?

DS: And you’ve got a Twitter account?

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DS: Danny Saxby

DS: Do you think it’s a good thing for politicians to be on twitter?

DS: But what being connected with your constituents? Directly?

DS: Danny Saxby

DS: How did the idea for Tweetminster come about?

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AN: Twitter is communications platform, not a debating tool.

AN: You would need to ask them that question

Applied Journalism Research Project: Social Media & Politics

Applied Journalism Research Project: Social Media & Politics