At yesterday’s OpenLabourNZ event in Wellington there was a discussion about the growing importance of social media and how it is transforming engagement in the political process.
The growing use of twitter and facebook by members of parliament as well as public servants was also discussed and the inevitable issues that result when someone makes a controversial comment that can land them in trouble.
The point of the discussion was that social media interaction was becoming more normalised and it was important for employers (and media) not to over react when comments were posted that seemed inflammtory.
Of course there are lines that have to be drawn. A case in point on Red Alert is how the moderation of comments policy has evolved and got stronger over the last year. David Farrar on Kiwiblog also wrote about this issue.
Given the highly charged nature of the political world it’s interesting to see how many MPs are using social media.
Twitter is fast becoming a tool for discussion and commentary during question time in the House and many New Zealand politicans are actively using twitter on a regular basis.
I thought you might be interested in seeing this twitter analysis tool created by Brenda Wallace, a Wellington based software developer and girl geek.
Engage is a tool to measure twitter use by NZ and Australian MPs. It measures the actual interaction by MPs rather than just the number of broadcast messages. And ranks them.
It’s interesting that Rob Muldoon (his ghost) ranks the highest. I am currently second, because of the amount of tweating over the weekend on OpenLabourNZ. I’m sure that will change as Metiria Turei and Jacinda Ardern are hot on my heels.
But while there are quite a few MPs on twitter, not many use it a lot.
I think we will see this change in the coming months.
If you want to get onto twitter go to www.twitter.com. It’s easy and it’s extraordionary.
Update: It appears that Iain Lees-Galloway and Gareth Hughes are also up there in twitter use. Good on them. 46 NZ MPs are currently on twitter (according to Brenda’s site)
Acknowledgement: I spelt Tweet wrong in the headline. I’m better at doing it than talking about it. Here’s some info about twitter
I’m not familiar with Twitter, deliberately.
I can see how it would MP’s communicate their messages and stay in touch.
But I just don’t get how 24/7 comms on every little thing, from everyone, all the time, is ultimately going to be of much use at all.
Tweeting is a cheap way of communicating with the flock
What I find interesting is, when measuring usage and number of replies, the Aussies rank higher.
http://coffee.geek.nz/engage/9
I’m not familiar with (blogs|email|fax|phone|the printed word), deliberately.
I can see how it would MP’s communicate their messages and stay in touch.
But I just don’t get how 24/7 comms on every little thing, from everyone, all the time, is ultimately going to be of much use at all.
Question for @clarecurranmp: How many Labour MPs tweet themselves and how many get their staff to do it? eg Does @phil_goff himself tweet? Also, why don’t New Zealand diplomats use twitter? Others do, eg UK and USA
@Mary We all do it ourselves (as far as I know). Phil Goff told the OpenLabourNZ conf on Saturday that he sees all the facebook and twitter messages and says what his response will be. He doesn’t physcially do it himself (yet). I’m working on that. But it’s not removed from him. He’s a very hands on kind of guy.
PS: Don’t think anyone else could come up with the kind of tweets that I write. All our tweets display our personalities, which is part of the beauty (and quirkiness) of the medium.
Maybe not hands on, but eyes on
@spud touche. By the way if you do want to follow me on twitter I’m @clarecurranmp
I hear anecdotes of MPs (mostly while in govt) have their emails printed out for them to read. Fair enough if the system works for you (and you have shares in forestry?) — i’m not imagining facebook and twitter messages somehow being printed out for response — mind boggling!
@Clare – that’s really nice of you (bouquet).
The biggest problem that springs to mind regarding MPs’ communication via Twitter is retention for archival purposes. The obligation to retain copies of electronic communications is spelled out quite clearly:
http://www.e.govt.nz/standards/data-management/nz-government-standards/retention
When a Member uses Twitter (or any other form of social media) to communicate with the public that communication must be recorded and archived just as a letter or fax would be. I haven’t yet seen any discussion of how to meet this obligation.
Was this brought up at OpenLabourNZ?
@SHG I don’t believe the issue of retention of Twitter and other social media notices was discussed.
For closed systems like Facebook, this presents a bit of a problem.
However for platforms like Twitter, there is always the competition. The statusnet software that runs identi.ca microblogging service allows you to connect to Twitter to repeat your messages.
So all it would really take would be a Government StatusNet instance, each user assigned an account there, and could populate any messages sent out to any other service that supports the same standards StatusNet does.
And the fact the StatusNet software does have some nice advantages of it’s own like groups
I’m going to unfollow you Clare.
Okay, I change my mind, I’ll stalk you, but not all the way over to the wiki
Sorry for being a little off topic here – but there seems to be 2 x chris’ (both lowercase) – is there anyway to ensure that people dont have the same user id’s (just like twitter – there I got it back on topic)
They refuse to do that, maybe you could get a cool profile picture