Westminster at Sunset
Uploaded by DMoutray on 29 Dec 08, 2.34PM GMT.
I cannot find it in my heart to truly sympathise with Members of the UK Parliament (MPs) who might now hit a spot of bother with their twitter account – but I do understand how this might have happened.
You see we are about to go onto a general election and the rules state that MPs become Prospective Parliamentary Candidates and are not allowed to refer to themselves as MPs at all. Apart from new stationary this could very well mean a problem with twitter accounts of the @(name)MP format. If clarification is sought and the House decides this goes for Twitter as well I wonder if all of their names are still available without the MP suffix.
I would expect the House to be sensible about this and ask them to by-pass or re-direct to a campaigning account e.g. @(party)in(constituency) for the duration of the general election process. There certainly are ways around the issue.
However I can’t really make my mind up on whether this is a technology or a communications problem.
First of all Twitter services are admittedly quite abysmal. Being a verified user has been a long time coming and it’s still not widely available. I assume most MPs thought that the best way to communicate it’s really them would be to append MP after their name (there are actually quite strict rules about this so people – in the UK – do not misuse it generally).
On the other hand MPs don’t remain MPs for ever. I would normally do a boring list of how they should have done it here but really I think it might have happened kinda naturally. I might not sympathise but I understand it. This sort of problem usually comes up due to lack of initial planning. The ease with which one can open a social media platform account (and the fact that they are free) may some time lead to not thinking things through and not checking the rules. However we’ve all seen it before (usually when a website is delivered and it’s well and truly wrong just because the company never gave a proper requirements document).
This is a learning process for all existing and new candidates and I’m eager to see what lessons they will take (and hopefully share) out of this general election and their digital communications processes.
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Read On:
MPs Could Be Forced To Change Twitter Usernames Before Election by David Singleton, PR Week UK, 25 November 2009
