25 February 2010
House of Tweets: Twitter and the House of Commons
For those of us who work in digital communication and follow politics, yesterday’s announcement by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty that the Finance Department will be Twittering the budget speech next week is another milestone in making Canada’s government more digitally engaged. Oddly, Mr. Flaherty is not a Twitter user himself.
In fact, only 20 per cent of MPs are active Twitterers. That’s a statistic that represents concerns held by some of the impassioned Canadian “digerati”, particularly since the digital economy is becoming a popular topic of discussion in the federal government.
Which makes this the perfect opportunity to look at how MPs are using social media, if at all.
I’ve just completed the white paper, House of Tweets: Twitter and the House of Commons (click here to download a copy). The paper examines the distribution of the federal political parties based on their use of Twitter, which MPs are applying their innate network building skills to social networks and what our federal politicians can do to become engaged with their constituents.
The white paper tells a much different story about party distribution in the House of Commons and identifies MP Twitter accounts with large followings that aren’t being used to great effect, while other MPs with small (yet growing) followings are building their own influence in the digital world — influence that could become an important asset in elections and leadership campaigns. Another group of MPs have accounts they’ve done little or nothing with.
I’ve created Twitter lists for each federal party in the House of Commons. The following links are open to the public and allow you to follow the latest Twitter activity from all Twittering MPs.
I’ll do my best to keep these lists up to date.
For the REAL political junkies, I highly recommend PoliTwitter.ca. It’s hard to describe what a fantastic resource that site is. It includes everything from basic information about our MPs and their digital footprints, to following Twitter activity in real-time (complete with a translate button which automatically toggles the selected tweet between English and French) and displaying summary statistics about online activity for each party and MP.
By the way, the report has been released under a Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license. This means you’re free to copy, share and quote the report provided you do so with attribution to the author (provide a link to this post if you share the document online), do not charge for copies of the report.
Fleishman-Hillard SVP Mark Senak published the report Twongress: The power of Twitter in Congress in January.
15 Responses to “House of Tweets: Twitter and the House of Commons”
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25 February 2010 at 9:38 AM
Great job Mark!!
25 February 2010 at 11:02 AM
[...] Click here to read more and download your own copy of the white paper. House of Tweets [11:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download [...]
25 February 2010 at 11:22 AM
[...] a fun way of summarizing the findings in my white paper, House of Tweets: Twitter and the House of Commons, a research project I undertook as part of my work in digital public affairs at [...]
26 February 2010 at 12:45 PM
There are a number of MPs who are officially tweeting as MPs but are blocking selected members of the public from their accounts based upon partisan divisions.
Have yet to see a study, including yours, even acknowledge MPs who practice unequal access to official government channels. I would think equal access is an important issue but no other “social media researcher” seems to.
26 February 2010 at 3:57 PM
[...] tool. Using the free Twitter analysis tool Twitalyzer, Mark Blevis, the author of the study “The House of Tweets“, measured Canadian federal politicians in terms of their clout, influence, and generosity on [...]
28 February 2010 at 12:42 AM
I appreciate my MP Bruce Stanton, CPC (ONT-Simcoe North) is tweeting.
1 March 2010 at 10:18 AM
Doug… Twitter is NOT an official government communication channel. The accounts are free (no cost to taxpayers) and held by individuals, not offices. Nor is Twitter identified in any Parliamentary act. The management of the Twitter account, the information distributed through it and access restrictions are handled at the discretion of the MP. You’ll note that some MPs have established their Twitter accounts as private.
As much as a digital geek as I am, I would never expect, nor want, Twitter to be explicitly identified as an official channel. Technology moves too quickly. Legislation needs to be agnostic if it’s to remain relevant as the digital economy grows.
3 March 2010 at 2:19 PM
Mark
At this point in time ,I have to disagree. Our candidate just lost Manitoba by-election with only a 20% voter turnout! Digital communication does not equate with # of ballots in voting box to win. Correct me if you think I am wrong-
4 March 2010 at 2:40 PM
O… thank you for sharing your experience. In “House of Tweets”, you will see I identify the value and potential value of using digital communication channels such as Twitter for building networks and engaging with the public. I refer to social media as representing the digital “long head” that could ultimately drive some important changes to politics and even the political process as a whole. I never claimed in the report that digital communication will have dramatic impact on election results in the short term. Nor do I believe numbers of followers is a barometer for the impact of a Twittering political candidate. There are many factors to consider.
So, yes, we agree.
9 March 2010 at 12:17 PM
[...] House of Tweets, my report about the use of Twitter by elected members of Canada’s House of Commons, has drawn a lot of attention from the media. In fact, I just came from the CBC building where I was interviewed by Daniel Thibeault for TéléJournal (airing this Friday night). The more I talk about the report, the more I realize there are other measures of Twitter use by MPs that I hadn’t included in the report and people seem interested in. [...]
14 March 2010 at 1:28 AM
[...] Canadian pol. Make sure to cite the troves of information at Politwitter when you churn out some half-assed essay at 2 A.M. about how “Social Media Is The Future Of Communication”, first-year [...]
23 March 2010 at 9:57 AM
[...] follow up to the House of Tweets report on the use of Twitter by Members of Parliament, Public Affairs podcast host Mark Blevis met [...]
23 March 2010 at 9:58 AM
[...] Twitter and Canadian politics [33:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download After publishing my House of Tweets report on the use of Twitter by Members of Parliament, I decided to follow-up with some of the most [...]
8 July 2010 at 4:21 PM
[...] age,” I am not exactly a natural for Twitter. But when FH was in the process of putting together House of Tweets – our study of the use of Twitter by Members of Parliament – I became positively hooked on [...]
22 July 2010 at 12:13 PM
[...] Click here to read more and download your own copy of the white paper. [...]