Anti-Social Media

In case you’re not a Twitter user, or have been distracted, a bizarre political topic has been generating a lot of interest in Australia: #blockedbybishop has been trending for most of the last 24 hours.

The phenomenon started yesterday, when a few political engaged tweeters discovered that they had been blocked by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. (For the non-tweeters, if you’ve been blocked by someone, you can’t follow them. In practice, if you’ve been blocked, you can’t see that person’s tweets in your twitter feed, or search what they’ve tweeted, although there are ways around that for determined tweeters.) According to Twitter:

Twitter gives users a variety of tools to control their experience, including blocking. When your account is blocked by another user on Twitter, we limit your account’s ability to interact with that user.

If you visit the profile of a user that has blocked your account, you will not be able to see that user’s Tweets or other account information.

But why would a federal Minister block hundreds – possibly thousands – of twitter accounts? Obviously many of them are from the opposite end of the political spectrum, and some of them may even be abusive - and twitter abuse should always be met with a firm block. Having said that, I know that many twitter users on Ms Bishop’s Block list are polite, interested and engaged Twitter users because they’re people I tweet with on a daily basis. But some of the blocked tweeters don’t follow Ms Bishop, have never even tried to follow Ms Bishop, and have no interest in following her. The only pattern seems to be that she has blocked twitter users who don’t agree with her, who support Labor and the Greens, who question the policies of her government.

I’m one of those Twitter users that she’s blocked.

As communication strategies go, it’s absurd, particularly when almost three million Australians are Twitter users. These users defy the stereotype; rather than teenaged girls swooning over the latest tweet from Justin Beiber or Harry Styles, QUT researcher Axel Bruns described Australian Twitter users as being more mature. 

He said while many users remained anonymous or gave limited biographical detail on their handles, some common traits about #aussietweeters emerged.

“They seem to be in the 25 to 55 age range, fairly affluent, well-educated, urban users, what advertisers would call the AB demographic,” Professor Bruns said.

“[So] it might only be 2.8 million accounts, but those accounts probably represent a particularly influential slice of the Australian population.”

Social media is an important part of the communication mix for this government, even though many MPs still refuse to use it. In February this year, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the Department of Immigration and Border Security had paid $4.3m to consultancies to monitor social media with the aim of monitoring sentiment towards the department’s policies. Unhelpfully, this multi-million dollar investment was about “market research”, not about engaging. 

Excerpt from Julie Bishop's Twitter feed (@JulieBishop)

Social media is not like traditional broadcast media in that it allows the users to engage with each other in discussion. In fact, savvy users of Twitter expect to engage and be engaged, and political Twitter users expect to find people who share their perspective as well as people who oppose it vehemently. What Ms Bishop has done is to mute one side of the conversation, ensuring that she only engages with those with whom she shares some common ideology. She’s preaching to the converted. Needless to say, that’s not the way to win votes.

This wholesale blocking of political opponents is not government policy. In addition to being blocked by Ms Bishop, many of the left-leaning tweeters have also been blocked by Joe Hockey, but not by Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison or Mathias Cormann. Therefore, the mass blocking by Ms Bishop and Mr Hockey must reflect their personal preferences, or those of the respective communications teams.

Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, summed it up this way: 

I've seen firsthand the power of human connections online forming communities of interest. They are self-monitoring, with their own norms and expectations. From the printing press to the telephone to the Internet, each of these tools has been a way to organize and activate -- to give people the voice they want and deserve. Forward-thinking governments will listen to those voices and empower them. Others will be fearful of the voice of the people and remain on the losing side of history.

The reality is that Ms Bishop and Mr Hockey are losing far more than the twitter users they’re blocking. They have consciously chosen to silence the dissenting voices and reject the chance to engage with half of the electorate.

In contrast, those of us who have been blocked have lost nothing; anything of importance will be retweeted into our twitter streams anyway...and that's just one way of accessing the tweets of someone who has blocked you. Wouldn’t it be wiser Ms Bishop and Mr Hockey to break out of the petty, Coalition-friendly echo chamber they’re sustaining, and listen to all of the Twitter users who might want to communicate with them.

Source: http://3rdsense.com/blog/09012014-1121/australian-digital-statistics-2014