Further to the previous post which analysed John Key’s Twitter followers and found an astounding 57% were not “real” followers, Boolean undertook a further analysis.
This time he analysed John Key, myself, Russel Norman, Metiria Turei, David Shearer and Gareth Hughes. The results are here
They show pretty clearly that we all have followers who are questionable. But the percentages for all, except Key are pretty standard. More than half of John Key’s followers don’t stack up.
I reckon that’s a bit odd. I’ll be undertaking a cleanout of my followers. And expect a bit of scrutiny of them.
I think the question that remains is how did John Key acquire nearly 30,000 bogus followers?
Larger accounts definitely attract nefarious followers – a process which is likely to experience a snowballing effect as the account grows and becomes even more likely to attract attention.
The difference is that everyday users are likely to block these dubious accounts whereas the @johnkeypm account administrators likely choose to keep them there to boost the numbers.
As a commenter in your previous post pointed out some (especially older) people may create an account but not fill in any of their details or use it for anything other than reading other peoples tweets.
They are unfortunately caught up in the figures but are still not the ‘living breathing New Zealanders’ described in the original NBR article that drew my attention and subsequent investigation.
He offered them ghost chips, to go with his ghost jobs.
I’ve heard you can actually buy twitter followers. No idea how, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be too difficult. Hell, a google search for ‘buy twitter followers’ gives nearly 58 million results and based on the first few it seems to be $10-15 for a thousand – presumably it gets cheaper if you buy in bulk.
Focusing on the things that matter again Clare?
I think the research on boolean is interesting, especially in light of a study about the corporate buying of twitter followers here: http://www.camisanicalzolari.com/MCC-Twitter-ENG.pdf .
In saying that I’m embarrassed for you that you’ve prematurely framed the research in such an accusatory way. There’s statistical and logical errors wrong with immediately suspecting foul play. First is that generally a higher number of followers will attract a higher proportion of bot accounts. You can buy followers but even if John Key did, they are the type of bot accounts that would be detected as ‘real’ by boolean’s simple algorithm. A profile picture and >10 tweets is important for a fake account to be successful. The type of ‘fake’ followers boolean’s detected seem to be people that have signed up for twitter but never really used their account. Perhaps in getting set up they followed their Prime Minister and their favourite celebrity.
John Key has a profile that would attract an entirely different kind of follower (i.e. not just political junkies). He also has 20 times more followers.
Perhaps that is a better explanation for the differences than a conspiracy theory involving buying bogus followers?
I’d like to see a comparison of John Keys followers to other politicianis with 50,000 followers.
Hi is there a reason my comment wasn’t posted? is it because of the link? I can repost without it.
Hi Ben, humans moderate Red Alert comments and I was busy baking muffins. Clare
How did he acquire 30,000 bogus followers? The answer is… who cares. It’s a twitter account which happens to be a feed of boring, mechanically produced links to press statements and photos taken by staffers.
Nobody cares how many twitter followers John Key has. It’s not a conspiracy. You don’t have to clean out your twitter. You won’t be on the moral high ground if you waste a couple of hours methodically blocking spam accounts.
*sigh* and shakes his head.
Who cares about asset sales? Labour, focussing on the real issues.
Have you got the hots for John Key or something?
Hi Clare. Dont forget the aim is to get enough of John Keys supporters to change camp and vote labor. Probably best not to insult them too much. Say Hi to trev. for me
Ally
The use/mis-use of social media and other political/propaganda tools ie online polls is an important discussion. Not sure it has been framed in the best way here.
Online reality is being manipulated/managed to present a narrative which is far from the truth. It seems politician and other politically active individuals and groups are doing this to unduly manipulate the truth for their own propaganda purposes.
I think this is a real issue; and one the Prime Minister should lead by example where and when necessary.
“The type of ‘fake’ followers boolean’s detected seem to be people that have signed up for twitter but never really used their account. Perhaps in getting set up they followed their Prime Minister and their favourite celebrity.”
Like my dear old Mum. I’ll let her know that she’s a fake. Or a ghost. Or whatever.
WHO CARES? I mean really, this is what Labour has come to? Have you stopped to think about WHY the green party is eating Labour’s lunch? It’s because they are focussed, determined and energetic and don’t waste time on this trivial nonsense.
All of Green’s blog postings and social media correspondence attack the government on policy and challenge official statements – meanwhile Labour mucks around on the fringe trying to get a bog gotcha, oblivious to the fact that New Zealanders DONT CARE about twitter followers.
Following from Chris’ comment above about the Greens, notice that over on FrogBlog Gareth Hughes is talking about some things happening on twitter that are actually interesting:
http://blog.greens.org.nz/2012/06/18/a-twitterstorm-is-brewing/
Even if someone produced original invoices, paid on ministerial credit card and signed by John Key himself demonstrating that he had purchased twitter followers, this would still be a non-story. The official Labour Party blog is not the place for this sort of childish gotcha allegation.
This is such a non-issue it’s not funny. There are far more serious issues surrounding the current government that deserve the time you spent on this.
For those asking “who cares”? The NBR cared enough to write an article about Key’s social media numbers. When it comes to using Twitter as a marketing tool, numbers matter. If people see a critical mass has built up around an account, they are far more ready to join in and follow it too. The rampant use of fake accounts exposes the manipulation of other Twitter users by Key’s PR team.
@Pete exactly
‘Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.” Noam Chomsky
I love seeing how taxpayer money is spent on Clare’s rather insane and pointless efforts to make out like something underhanded has gone on with something so inane as the amount of followers John Key has on twitter. It is so irrelevant as to border on being a sad joke that she would use any time or brainpower looking into it.
Why not spend that energy on something that your constituents care about?
He just likes being popular, as always.
@WillB @OneTrack @Chris etc – I think it’s important to understand that holding politicians to account involves inspecting all their actions and opinions (or lack of them), not just jumping up and down on the spot over one or two issues.
No one disputes that Asset Sales, child poverty, ACC (I could fill up a whole page here) are not hugely important, but I know that Clare and many of her collegues are working their butts off over these issues, and somewhere in their busy working lives they also find time to keep an eye on other areas that are slipping under the radar. This is one of them.
You might not personally find it important, but many others do, and it is another means for keeping influential politicians – much like the Prime Minister – on their toes and making sure they are not bullshitting the public, on ANYTHING.
[deleted, personal attack, Grant}
Attributed to David Cameron.
TOO MANY TWEETS MIGHT MAKE A TWAT.
Deleted. offensive.Warning. Clare
@steelykc – I can’t see how posts like this can help. ” ghost twitter followers” – please. To me, it looks more like Labour is losing the plot.
Do I dare listen to any parliament question time – is Labour going to be using their questions to “grill” John Key on this issue that is critically important to the people of New Zealand. But I am sure everybody sits around the smoko room discussing how many ghost followers JK has and how there should be a royal commission of inquiry.
Clare, not everyone has time to sit around “tweet”ing all day. I would have thought most real twitter accounts would be considered ghost accounts – somebody sets up an account, because it’s the in thing to do, they select the option of John Key , amongst others, from the options twitter suggests, they send a few tweets and then get bored and forget about it. Voila – another John Key ghost twitter account.
Whoa what’s up with Gatman’s anti-semitism? Clare must be burning some muffins again.
Key probably got the idea from Newt Gingrich who was busted for doing this a while back. He pays a lot of money to Crosby/Textor and this is the good stuff he gets.
It just another piece of the PR Propaganda mortar than is Brand Key.
I saw Gatman’s offensive comment last night, but I don’t expect busy MPs to be able to moderate the blog 24/7, so decided to leave it until today. Sadly, nothing has been said or done yet.
So here goes: like all bigotry, anti-Semitism is never acceptable. It doesn’t have to be deleted (that’s your call), but it does have to be challenged, and condemned.
Looking the other way is not good enough.
Who gives one?
Your recent posts suggest that you haven’t got anything better to do with your tax payor funded time …… surely not ?
Not sure what you are referring to. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt this time. Clare
In the interests of comparing apples with apples I have analysed a further set of NZ Twitter accounts – this time with larger follower numbers. It is actually quite hard to find Kiwis with 50,000 followers so I have compared Rhys Darby, Piri Weepu, Cory Jane, John Campbell and Helen Clark.
These larger accounts should attract a similar number of low quality followers due to their higher profile, and to a small extent they do. However, Key still stands out significantly even compared to the larger accounts you would expect to be comparable.
@Boolean so it is likely that Brand Key PR team bought some ghost followers to help build and maintain the Mr Popular image?