Danny Yadron in The Guardian today wrote a piece entitled “Why do normal people struggle with Twitter?” that, via a conversation with Mathieu, drove me to write this piece. For Yadron’s alludes to an issue that has not been afforded much attention during Twitter’s current woes – namely the very […]
Tag: Twitter
Teaching EU online communication through simulation – the twitcol case
For the first time in the academic year 2015-16 I am a member of the faculty of the politics department at the College of Europe in Bruges. My own MA is from the College of Europe (in 2003-04) and it is good to be back there as a teacher this […]
Why disliking Twitter’s “Heart” function is a matter of the head
Today Twitter turned its Favorite* function (with its star symbol) into a Heart – as the company explains here. This met with a lot of criticism from regular Twitter users, perplexed by the new function. Here are a few example tweets from Anne Roth, Armin Wolf and Patrick Jackson: These […]
#PortugalCoup, and Britain’s post-fact politics
“Eurozone crosses Rubicon as Portugal’s anti-euro Left banned from power” screamed Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Daily Telegraph on Friday last week. The Telegraph even followed up with a piece about why Portugal’s situation was a threat to everyone else. Everyone from Daniel Hannan to Owen Jones jumped on it, and […]
Commissioners on Twitter – countering the critique
So, having taken apart the behaviour of European Commissioners on Twitter earlier this week, the critique has poured in – most of it to me personally in private, and some of it on Twitter. In this blog entry I am going to examine each main avenue of the critique, piece […]
European Commissioners seem to have missed the social aspect of Twitter and use it for one way, bland PR instead
In Gartner’s hype cycle, users of a technology encounter a trough of disillusionment after the initial peak of inflated expectations. The use of Twitter by the 28 Members of the European Commission (Twitter list here) feels like being in such a deep trough that it’s almost as if this is […]
Few people are interacting on Twitter (and those who are aren’t the ones you’d expect)
On 18 May (18 days ago) I started a little experiment. Using SocialBro I started a private Twitter list called People Who Interact. This list was automatically created – out of everyone who either replied to a tweet I wrote, or RTed a tweet of mine. The summary of the […]
Twitter’s defective account suspension ‘system’
I’ve registered a whole bunch of Twitter accounts over the years for a variety of purposes. Recently two of these accounts were suspended by Twitter, and the process of what (didn’t) happen as a result requires a little bit more analysis. Both were suspended in late March 2015, and I […]
The Aarhus EU Twitter Top 30
I gave a speech about EU online communications at Danmarks Medie- og Journalisthøjskole in Aarhus last year, and yesterday John Frølich – one of the professors there – e-mailed me to ask if I could suggest 20 to 30 EU Twitter accounts that his students ought to follow. So rather […]
Politicians blocking users on Twitter
Yesterday evening I was browsing Twitter, and saw this tweet about serious allegations of election fraud by UKIP from Labour politician John Mann (Bassetlaw) retweeted into my timeline. Oh, I’ll retweet that I thought (I’m on John’s side here, not UKIP’s), but Twitter prevented it – it turns out my […]
Why Twitter works better than Facebook for discussions about the EU
Following my earlier blog entry about Twitter chats I was confronted by a familiar charge – ah, Frans Timmermans is a Facebook guy. He doesn’t like Twitter. That’s the problem. There are probably some pretty good reasons he likes Facebook, and not Twitter, and I will come to those at […]
Commission Twitter-chats: interactivity-washing
At 1600 CET today, First Vice President of the European Commission Frans Timmermans will do an online chat on Twitter and Facebook* – tag is #AskFrans. Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc will do the same on Monday 27th April at 1400 CET – tag there is #ITS2015chat. Oooooh, look, little users […]