Where are the Conservative tweeters?
The Tweetminster webpage, where Conservative MPs are outnumbered by their Labour counterparts
As a newcomer to Twitter, I can’t help wondering why there are only 66 MPs signed up to a social media site that they could use daily to stay in touch with their constituents?
More importantly I find it bizarre that of the 66 MPs on Twitter there are more than 4 times as many Labour MPs (over 40) as Conservatives (9) on Twitter.
Why is this?
The Conservative Party website is full of videos, YouTube links, blogs and audio messages and there are a couple of extremely successful Conservative blogs like Order Order and Conservative Home (although not directly connected to the central Conservative Party). David Cameron has packed his Shadow Cabinet with media savvy figures like Jeremy Hunt - founder of Hotcourses - and spent the last 4 years spearheading Webcameron and the Conservative Wall - innovative uses of interactive media.
So why are they so behind on Twitter?
I am going to put forward a series of hypotheses that could explain this mismatch:
- 1. Proportion - I thought at first that because there are more Labour MPs in Parliament it could seem like more are tweeting when the proportions are the same. But there are 349 Labour MPs compared with 192 Conservative MPs, yet there are only 9 Conservative tweeters and over 40 Labour tweeters. In terms of proportion this means only 5% of Conservative MPs tweet whereas 11% of Labour MPs do - a clear Labour margin.
- 2. Age - The Conservative Party has often had a reputation as a party of older more traditional members, which could be seen as a reason for the Conservative Party not embracing Twitter. But as of the 2005 election Labour MPs were on average three years older than the average Conservative MP at 52 and 49 respectively. So age alone cannot be a factor.
- 3. Occupation -Background could be a more important factor than age as the Conservative Party has a far higher proportion of MPs from traditional professions such as the law, business and finance as compared with the Labour Party’s greater number of teachers, lecturers and political organisers. This may reflect a greater background of engagement in modern media amongst the Labour Party as compared with the legal and financial careers of Conservative MPs.
- 4. Constituency Impact - But for me, the most redolent reason for why Conservative MPs can blog but not tweet is that whilst they are slowly seeing how blogs can help them to stay in touch with their constituents, they cannot understand Twitter’s benefits. In rural Conservative seats in Cumbria, Sussex and Hampshire there is most likely less frequency of creative and media jobs and less engagement with social media than the urban constituencies like Manchester, London and Birmingham where Labour MPs dominate. The greater number of students, teenagers and 20s-30s working in careers that use social media in Labour constituencies makes Twitter more relevant and usable in campaigning as Boris Johnson has showed as Mayor of London -a constituency with a modern and creative media hub.
These are my main thoughts on this twitter conundrum; but to get to the bottom of this question I am going to conduct a survey of MPs and people involved in political communications who may have a better idea of why there are less Conservatives than Labour MPs on Twitter. With this in mind I will blog again in a fortnight and outline my findings on the big question:
Where are all the Conservative (MP) Tweeters?
Tags: Boris Johnson, Conservative Party, Conservative Wall, David Cameron, Hotcourses, House of Commons, Labour Party, MP, Twitter, Webcameron
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Comments (10)
July 9th, 2009 at 10:14 am Posted by Richard
Perhaps complacency is also a factor - having concluded that the right dominates the blogosphere, maybe they are assuming that means they don’t need to push on with other media like Twitter
July 9th, 2009 at 10:35 am Posted by Will H
I agree. But I would also say that it might be complacency combined with ignorance. I think MPs feel they need people to prove to them that Twitter has benefits. Otherwise they think why bother with this new-fangled technology…
July 9th, 2009 at 10:37 am Posted by @RossIGrant
You need to do a comparison of candidates & incumbents from different parties in the sort of urban seat you mention. Think the proportions will be a lot closer.
July 9th, 2009 at 10:42 am Posted by Will H
I think that would be extremely interesting… Whilst MPs are not very Twitter savvy at the moment a lot of PPCs are using it to promote their campaigns and actually there seems to be a split between Conservative activists and PPCs and incumbent MPs. The former are very savvy the latter are not so savvy on Twitter.
July 9th, 2009 at 11:12 am Posted by chrsfrwll
Any reason why Lib Dems have been excluded from the comparison? Would be interesting to see their viewpoint too.
July 9th, 2009 at 11:19 am Posted by William Heald
When I saw the stats initially I thought it was interesting that the Conservatives were behind. But actually looking at Lib Dems they have more Tweeting MPs than Conservatives. Equally their average MP age is lower - maybe they are more in touch with younger generations or come from backgrounds and professions where social media is more important?
The survey will be open to all parties… It would be very interesting to get Lib Dem views.
July 10th, 2009 at 7:00 am Posted by Clive Sinclair
Maybe they feel they couldn’t answer a question in 140 characters. But then that would be all politicians!
July 10th, 2009 at 10:46 am Posted by Martin Jee
Tweeting
Politically twitter is massively over-rated.
Think about it, what is a tweet? It’s a text message. A nugget of information. Information is only interesting to someone if its relevant. Text messages from friends are (usually) relevant so we read them – but who’s gona read a tweet from their MP? Lets face it, the work an MP does is pretty general, one day he’ll be talking about the economy and the next education policy, but those subjects are too broad and usually too removed from the average taxpayer’s concerns to make it of any interest to them. And if it is they know they’ll see it on the 9o’clock news, otherwise normal people just don’t have time to follow someone they’re not that interested in.
The people on twitter with lots of followers all have some degree of fame and an already well established following. If William Hague started to tweet he’d probably rack up a good following pretty quickly, an unknown on the other hand would only be able to establish a following with a lot of hard work (or a promotion).
Also who is registered with a Twitter account? Who’s gona register with an MP even if they are? Other than people in the Westminster village, no-one. Its just not worth it unless you’re specifically interested in politics. And afterall the people who are already on Twitter are not an MP’s main audience. Yes its young people, and engaging them is always important, but given the tight constraints of an MP’s time, the choice between a press release to the local paper and a tweet is no-brainer.
So why the majority of Labour twitterers over Tories? Because they’re desperate. Just look at their standing in the polls or their performance in the last election.They need all the help they can get. Labour is also a faddy party. Every single policy they have announced over the last 5 years has been a headline grabber and nothing more. Take the Brown’s love of nationism, remember Britishness Day? The oath of allegiance? The national motto that would boil Britishness down into five or six words? And who could forget “British jobs for British workers”? For Labour MPs twitter is just another fad to be taken up in their unending quest for mediocrity.
The Conservatives are not behind on Twitter, they’re just not wasting their time.
July 10th, 2009 at 3:12 pm Posted by Ged Carroll
I think the more interesting question maybe about Twitter and parliamentarians in general? Given the amount of MPs or their staff blogging, twitter would be a natural progression rather than a major leap forward and is made even easier with a number of applications available for their BlackBerry or iPhone.
New generations of potential parliamentarians looking to come in new by-elections and the forthcoming general election seem to have a much better grasp of voter engagement through social media.
In the meantime any MPs looking to tweet should get in touch, happy to help improve their voter engagement!
July 10th, 2009 at 3:17 pm Posted by William Heald
Good points. But I think that the main use an MP can get from Twitter is using it as a diary as most do. They state something like “been opening a Hospital today, wonderful facilities - just off to a fete”, which makes them look active and busy.
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