International Law

Earlier this week there was Australia's first Twitter debate ahead of tomorrow's Penrith by-election for the NSW Parliament.  I wasn't able to follow the debate in real time but here is some of the analysis of the experiment:

Mark Bahnisch:

A number of points can be made about this ?innovation?:

(a) Twitter has a very small footprint among Australian social media users, and various surveys have demonstrated that most people who set up a Twitter account rarely or never use it. It?s also very far from being the micro-blogging or messaging platform of choice for teenagers, despite all the usual misunderstandings about ?digital natives?. In Australia, as far as politics goes, it?s been taken to heart by political tragics and journos, whose widespread distaste for the blogosphere has been overcome by a medium where their ?brands? ensure that they?re easily able to hoover up the most followers.

I very much doubt any considerable number of Penrith voters were watching, or participating. To the degree that this sort of thing will have any electoral impact, it will only be insofar as it feeds into media and political perceptions.

(b) Although techno-utopians and the more excitable will claim that this is some sort of harbinger of the future, politicians are always much more likely to see social media aspects of campaigns as add-ons rather than core vehicles for messaging. For this reason, and because those who are Tweeting are a very select portion of the electorate, claims about direct democracy are also radically over-blown.

(c) Again, despite the stereotypical way various media platforms are discussed, newest isn?t always best. Anyone who?s followed any of Crikey?s election live blogs, which use software which enables the panel to be highlighted, and which update in a more elegant fashion, and which provide for a more detailed and focused discussion, might well conclude that an online debate might be more productive on a blog than via Twitter.

Derek Barry:

It is too easy to overlook just how exciting this kind of interactivity is. Working at its best, the Twitterati operates like synapses, a hivemind that is capable of massive thought and concerted action despite its 140 character limits, inherent anarchy, spamming, non sequiturs and juvenile humour. Forced to be brief, complex words and sentences are pared down to their absolute essentials and often chiselled into remarkably dense thought despite the brevity. Admittedly we didn't see much of that today but there will be other opportunities.

More of these debates will be conducted in the trust economy of social media. Politicians will have to learn a new skill: how to become adept at ceding control. Twitter debates (or whatever social media format might follow) won?t decide the election, but with the right tools and the right filters, they can add to the general wellbeing of the body politic by getting tight messages out to a wide and engaged audience.

Greens participant Lee Rhiannon was in no doubt the debate was a success. ?There would have been more people following this debate on line than would fit into many local town halls,? she wrote ?I am not saying these online events should replace public meetings but there is a place for online debates in the political landscape and we should encourage its development.?

While the debate format suited the Greens as it did not exclude them, Rhiannon is right ? we should encourage their development. But we should not get too carried away; Rhiannon and the rest did what politicians do in any other debate on any other media. They spoke to their own themes and ignored pointed replies. It is politics, after all. It is up to us to go through the entrails to make sense of it.

Stilgherrian:

OMFG what a clusterf*ck! This morning's supposedly-but-not-really world-first Twitter debate between NSW political leaders was confusing and pointless. Inevitably.

Not because moderator Kevin Wilde from Nine News didn't do a good job, because he did. He posted clear questions but let participants go with the flow. Not because there were first-time glitches - as Wilde put it, "Training wheels on for everyone on this. It will be better during the #nswdebate that is locked in for March 2011."

No, it's because Twitter is completely the wrong medium for a debate.

Ben Eltham:

What can we draw from this brave exercise? A few key observations offer themselves.

Firstly, Twitter offers new models for geographically distributed debate. Today?s debate did not require the leaders to assemble in one forum. Keneally was at a Penrith cafe, Rhiannon was at her electoral office, and O?Farrell was on the move. Twitter offers not so much a lack of geography as a multiplicity of geographic simultaneity. Insert your favourite new media metaphor here.

Secondly, a new medium offers a new challenge for politicians. The first televised US presidential debate in 1960 offered voters a radically new way to engage with their leaders. Listeners on radio thought Nixon won. Television viewers thought Kennedy won. Many blamed Richard Nixon?s five o?clock shadow for the result.

Today?s Twitter debate offers some intriguing glimpses into a future in which a quick wit and rapid touch typing skills could be just as important as good hair and an appropriately tailored suit. To my surprise, I decided that Barry O?Farrell performed best. His tweets were more direct and even betrayed the occasional flash of humour whereas Keneally seemed capable only of anodyne campaign pledges. Rhiannon seemed most at home in the medium, but also struggled to get a consistent message across.

Thirdly, the new medium will stimulate a rapid evolution in political tactics appropriate to it. Indeed, we saw a number in their nascent form today. For instance, Keneally showed her political discipline, staying on message with a series of boring ? but at least clear and comprehensible ? campaign talking points. Another tactic that could emerge is to flood the channel by engaging large numbers of supporters or party members to bombard the Twitter stream on a particular hashtag. Twitter also offers the opportunity for savvy politicians to simply overwhelm the debate with large numbers of tweets; unlike a live TV interview, no-one can say "I?m going to stop you there".

It may take audiences and media professionals just as long to understand and adapt to the new medium as politicians. The messy and difficult debate will look a whole lot smoother once it makes the news tonight.

Perhaps the tweet of the debate was from Daily Telegraph blogger Joe Hildebrand, who observed "Exclusive: Twitter debate confused, nonsensical and unproductive; perfect representation of NSW politics." It will take more than a few Twitter debates to sort out the mess that is state politics in New South Wales. Genuine democracy is never neat or clear-cut.