Adoption of Twitter by MPs

Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovation sought to explain how audiences adopt new ideas/policies/technologies.

Rogers suggested that in order to be successfully adopted by society/markets, an innovation had to first be of interest to innovators, a very small (typically 2.5% of the target population) who liked to try out new things in their field. This would then lead to early adopters, and then the early and late majority. The laggards would resist that innovation for some considerable time.

We can see this approach applying to MPs adoption of the Internet. For example, Anne Campbell claimed to be the first MP to have a website in 1994. By the time of the 2001 General Election this had risen to about a fifth of all MPs (about 120), which a year later had increased to over 60% and now about 85-90% of MPs have an accessible website. So the initial website providing innovators were slowly joined by some early adopters up to the 1997 General Election (probably less than two dozen in number), then the early majority joined, and then by the 2005 General Election the late majority had adopted websites. Now only a small minority of laggards exist who resist providing a website.

If we look at MPs use of Twitter we are just moving from the early adopter to the beginnings of the early majority stage. Alan Johnson claimed to be the first MP to use Twitter in June 2007 as part of his Labour Party deputy leadership campaign, though it is interesting that he no longer appears to tweet, which is a common feature of innovators: that they often the first to adopt and then move on. In March 2009 the number of Tweeting MPs had slowly risen to 21, probably representing the innovators and some early adopters. Research conducted by myself and Darren Lilleker, found that in June 2009 51 MPs had a sticky Twitter account. Stickiness refers to whether an online presence is regularly maintained to encourage repeat visitors, for Twitter this was assessed to be tweets within the previous month. Using Tweetminster today this number has increased to 77, there are 30 MPs regularly using Twitter who did not in June, but four counted in June no longer have a sticky account. Hence the net increase is 26 more MPs.

Of the four no longer using Twitter, three were from Labour, one from the Conservatives, two were men and two women. At the point of our research in June, women were slightly over-represented, as were the Liberal Democrats (the party whose MPs were most likely to have a Twitter account proportionately) and Labour. Of the 30 new Tweeting MPs, 15 are Labour, 8 Liberal Democrat, 6 Conservative and one Scottish National Party (SNP). This maintains the bias towards the Liberal Democrats and Labour. In the run-up to the next General Election the gap between Liberal Democrats/Labour MPs tweeting and Conservatives is growing, which is not necessarily an issue if the Conservatives are using other off- and on-line channels.

I also note that the slight bias amongst the early adopters to being women, appears to be changed by the early majority, who are mostly male. Twenty seven of the newly tweeting MPs are men, and only 3 are women.

That the next election campaign is only six months or less away is proabbly acting as a spur for MPs to think about which technologies they could use. As with websites before 1997 and 2001, and e-newlsetters before 2005, a very small number of innovators have encouraged others to think about joining the bandwagon.

I have suggested elsewhere that MPs use of any Internet modality can fall into one of four categories: pioneers; magpies; bandwagoners; technophobes. Of the now 77 tweeting MPs there are probably some 20 who are pioneers using it as a normal part of their communication strategies, and shaping their representative role as a consequence. In the run-up to the next election a considerable number of the remaining tweeting MPs will probably be magpies seeking to use twitter as a means of gaining competitive advantage. Some, and an increasing number as we approach the election date, will be bandwagoners, jumping on the latest bandwagon in order not to get left behind.