As the election campaigns get underway, there is a new battleground: Twitter. Tweets are the newest weapons in the political arsenal, and Demos CASM is partnering with the Sunday Times to cover this new digital side of politics and campaigning.
The Centre for the Analysis of Social Media has been learning how to listen to huge numbers of Tweets for some time. As a collaboration of political researchers from the think tank Demos, and computer scientists from the University of Sussex, we build and use technology to help us collect and analyse the enormous amount of political Tweets that are now produced.
Each week CASM be looking at which MPs are the loudest, the most hated and most successful, who makes the biggest gaffes and wins of the week. We’ll be judging how well each of the parties perform on Twitter, and look at the key battleground constituencies where Twitter might matter most. We’ll also look at Twitter’s response to the important political events that lie in front of us – the debates, interviews, resignations and announcements. We’ll see which inspire the greatest reaction from people online, where it was coming from and, most, importantly, what people thought of it.
We’ll also be trying to understand what social media means for politics. We’ll try to understand the new pressures and challenges that parties and politicians face, and how they are changing as a result. We’ll look to see whether it is helping to redraw the balance of power in the UK, whether it helps some kinds of parties and politicians over others, and whether it allows genuine democratic debate, or is simply a forum of abuse.
Above all, we’ll try to learn how, when, and whether it might influence the result at the finish line and the political landscape we wake up to on May 8.
You can follow CASM's progress with the latest findings each week here:
What role will Twitter play in the fight for Downing Street? (Feb 15)
Brand has treble the reach of Commons (Feb 8)
Twitter defeat for the Tories (Feb 15)
