One of the great things about politicians using social media, it's said, is that it creates two-way conversations between the electors and the elected.
But how much are the politicians listening, as opposed to talking -- as usual -- on Twitter? Former NDP communications guy Ian Capstick inspired me yesterday to look a little more closely into this. Capstick noted that MP Justin Trudeau now was boasting 10,000 followers on Twitter, but the number of people that Trudeau follows is a meagre 62. That amounts to 0.5 per cent of his followers' list.
I realized that this could be an interesting form of scorecard. In an ideal world, politicians would be listening as much as they're talking -- so 100 per cent would represent a perfect score. And then I went and checked the following/follower numbers for leading Canadian politicans and here's what I came up with:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper: 41 per cent
Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff: 31 per cent
NDP leader Jack Layton: 54 per cent
Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe: 22 per cent
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney: 9 per cent
Heritage Minister James Moore: 11 per cent
Toronto Centre MP Bob Rae: 41 per cent
Green Party leader Elizabeth May: 74 per cent
You can draw your own conclusions from this scorecard. Only the NDP and Greens leader are over 50 per cent in this tally. Ignatieff's pretty far back, behind the Prime Minister, but ministers Moore and Kenney seem to have Twitter set permanently on send, rather than receive. Interesting. If others want to join in the scoring, I'll post any other results.
Oh, I score 87 per cent in this system, and I swear I didn't sign up to follow anyone new to boost my results.
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