There’s been a flurry of chat around the place about the Twitter debate ahead of Saturday’s Penrith by-election for the NSW Parliament, which it’s been claimed is a world first (wrongly, because The Netherlands got there first). At the initiative of The Greens, the debate included Premier Kristina Keneally (who’s quite a dab hand with social media), Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell and Greens MLC Lee Rhiannon.
Reviews have been underwhelming.
The debate was apparently difficult to follow under the hashtag #penrithdebate, and the filtered stream shows that it wasn’t particularly illuminating.
A number of points can be made about this ‘innovation’:
(a) Twitter has a very small footprint among Australian social media users, and various surveys have demonstrated that most people who set up a Twitter account rarely or never use it. It’s also very far from being the micro-blogging or messaging platform of choice for teenagers, despite all the usual misunderstandings about “digital natives”. In Australia, as far as politics goes, it’s been taken to heart by political tragics and journos, whose widespread distaste for the blogosphere has been overcome by a medium where their ‘brands’ ensure that they’re easily able to hoover up the most followers.
I very much doubt any considerable number of Penrith voters were watching, or participating. To the degree that this sort of thing will have any electoral impact, it will only be insofar as it feeds into media and political perceptions.
(b) Although techno-utopians and the more excitable will claim that this is some sort of harbinger of the future, politicians are always much more likely to see social media aspects of campaigns as add-ons rather than core vehicles for messaging. For this reason, and because those who are Tweeting are a very select portion of the electorate, claims about direct democracy are also radically over-blown.
(c) Again, despite the stereotypical way various media platforms are discussed, newest isn’t always best. Anyone who’s followed any of Crikey’s election live blogs, which use software which enables the panel to be highlighted, and which update in a more elegant fashion, and which provide for a more detailed and focused discussion, might well conclude that an online debate might be more productive on a blog than via Twitter.
Elsewhere: Stilgherrian and Ben Eltham.
