IS TWITTER SUITABLE ENOUGH TO INFLUENCE POLITICS?

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/nov/11/digital-media-twitter-sustainable-for-politics
A social media conference in London dicusses the impact of Twitter as it makes politics and news more transparent. But will the utopian moment of Twitter last?

Can the power of Twitter be used to improve politics or news and help re-engage a jaded electorate with the political process? Can Twitter actually solve real problems? At Thomson Reuters in Canary Wharf today, about 100 journalists, politicians and twitterers discuss the idea that social media has evolved to the point that it can help. 

Marc Jones, global community editor at Reuters, and Toby Moores, visiting professor at the Institute of Creative Technology and consultant at Sleepydog, introduced everybody to the "curated unconference". As the conference participants in the room know what social media is about, the event is mainly about debating. First an expert will frame the debates about news, politics and other topics, and then each table of five to six people start discussing the issue. Participants are asked to leave a table if they don't learn something and to contribute the best moments at the end of each session with a tweet.

Dominic Campbell from the consultancy FutureGov kicked things off on the topic of politics, saying that with social media the speed of political culture changes very fast. MPs are competing to be the coolest kid on the blog.

"Twitter can make politics a bit more weblike: authentic, open, sharing and maybe even modest. We can see the way how we move on the web injected into politics. Well, obviously politicians want this, but in addition they want to get heard. But is quite interesting how we see power structure to open up.

"Will the interesting space of the web survive? Can the web change things, is it enough utopian? Is Twitter sustainable?"

 

Indeed, as was discussed in the room, the more people there are on Twitter the less of them will be heard. Most early adopters were attracted to Twitter because it was new and there were not that many people in there. If politicians are using this in determining public opinion you risk making policy on the opinion of the masses.

The discussions at my table – with two illustrators, Matthew Buck and Alex Hughes, and Joanne Jacobs from Amplified – concentrated on Twitter as a mass communication tool. "Does Twitter blow up subjects too fast? Are we becoming too fast for our own good? Where is the time for thought?" were the questions discussed in the room. And is Twitter really a critical medium?

"Fry-gate showed that most of the people can't stand critic on Twitter. Isn't the value of social media the opportunity to question? But most people condemned the original critic. Only some discussed the incident."

The debate then discussed several points of the Fry incident: for example that the Twitterer brumplum saying that he admired and adored Fry, but that at the moment he is a bit boring, shows that while Fry was tweeting about his life, he was looked upon as if he had to perform all the time. Professional and private life were mixed up. 

"This is exactly why politicians love it so much. They gain back the authenticity and trust that they lost. On the other hand, does it mean something that Sarah Brown has so many followers? Well, if you are engaging with this medium, you have to understand that this is a two-way medium. But you can't listen to 1 million people? Is this really democracy?

"On the other hand, politicians represent constituencies and Twitter makes them more transparent to their voters. So Twitter makes them more accountable."