Recently a
number of Twitter users have reported that their accounts have been blocked by
the Minister’s. There is obvious anger
about the Minister’s blocking, frequently expressed in conjunction with alarm
about the state of democracy in Alberta.
The image below gives some sense of the situation.
My opinion?
Everyone should take a deep breath, exhale slowly, step back, and consider
things a bit more objectively and calmly.
First, I
find it a bit of a stretch to consider that direct access to a politician via
an unblocked Twitter account is a cornerstone of democracy. Hopefully political dialogue requires more
depth than is available in missives that can be no longer than 140 characters,
and on average contain only 11 words!
And presumably democracy has been around a lot longer than Twitter,
which was created in March of 2006.
Second, an
objective examination of the tone of #abpse tweets over the past few months indicates
a growing (and understandable) rancor.
There have been many negative tweets directed towards the Minister that
have been personal in nature, and typically include his account name to appear
directly in his Twitter feed. I, for
one, do not feel that this is particularly helpful or constructive, even though
it conveys the emotions of the many affected by #abpse budget cuts. If I was on the receiving end of this, then I
would deal with it with whatever tools are available. And, of course, account blocking is a
perfectly reasonable tool to use in this case.
Sometime I’m surprised that the Minister’s account hasn’t disappeared
completely!
Third, and
related to the point above, if an open line of Twitter communication to the
Minister is important, then perhaps we should consider the tone of our tweets
before we share them. I have no idea how
many accounts he has blocked, I do not know who he has blocked, and I have no
knowledge about the tweet content that results in being blocked. If innocuous tweets lead to an account being
blocked, then that would be unfortunate (but see below). However, I am sure that the Minister’s
account has seen a flood of tweets that were more than a little charged.
Fourth,
account blocking doesn’t prevent Twitter posts from being processed. A blocked account cannot communicate with @LukaszukMLA directly, but can
easily search for his tweets. Similarly,
I would be surprised if the Minister himself doesn’t search for #abpse tweets,
seeing as he often uses that hashtag. He
can easily keep up with what he might be missing due to his blocking of some
accounts.
Of course,
keeping up with the public opinion expressed in Twitter is something that may
be very important for the Minister to do.
In
a recent column in The Guardian,
John Naughton argues that Twitter provides a key technology for societies to
discuss political issues, and suggests that recent debates by governments on
either side of the Atlantic have been affected by electronically expressed
public opinion. Naughton’s column in The
Guardian provides a
link to an interesting paper from Carnegie Mellon University that shows
that Twitter data is not only highly consistent with ‘gold standard’ public
opinion surveys, but actually provides a leading indicator of survey
results. That is, Twitter analysis can ‘scoop’
the pollsters. Apparently Twitter
predicted not only the overall result of the latest provincial election in
British Columbia, but also made accurate predictions about the seat
distribution across all parties. (It is
not perfect, though. Twitter analyses did not
predict the results of the recent provincial election in Nova Scotia.)
In short,
there are good reasons to keep #abpse tweets flowing, and they may provide
important and accurate information to the Minister and his government regarding
public opinion. It is unfortunate that
he has blocked some accounts. But don’t
worry about democracy: we still have it, and can exercise it at the ballot box
during the next provincial election.