Should Westminster quit Twitter?
The Rundown by PoliticsHome
PoliticsHome
4.1 • 105 Ratings
🗓️ 15 November 2024
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After a host of MPs were among the millions of people to quit X, formerly known as Twitter, in recent days over the role of its owner, the billionaire Elon Musk, and the amplification of misinformation and abuse, Josh Simons, Labour MP for Makerfield and member of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, joined Ben Guerin, co-founder of creative agency Topham Guerin, which has worked on several high-profile political communications campaigns, and Alain Tolhurst and Zoe Crowther to look at the role of algorithms in mass communication, the manipulation of social media, and whether politicos should finally wean themselves off Twitter despite Westminster being glued to the bird site for more than a decade.
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Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home with me, Alan Tolest. |
| 0:09.7 | This week, we'll look at the role of social media in political communication after a host of MPs, |
| 0:13.7 | Quix, under his Twitter, over the role of its owner, the billionaire Elon Musk, and the amplification |
| 0:18.6 | of misinformation and the abuse people suffer on them. But while its rival Blue Sky, it's having a bit of a moment with millions of new users this week, |
| 0:24.6 | is yet to take off entirely among Politico's, who've been glued to the bird site for more than a decade. |
| 0:28.6 | However, given fears over its algorithms and its millions of people leaves the site, |
| 0:32.6 | should Westminster finally wean itself off Twitter? |
| 0:34.6 | Remming to discuss all that and more, I'm glad to say I've got with me Josh Simons, Labor MP for Makerfield and who sits |
| 0:40.2 | on the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, as well as Ben Gurren, co-founder |
| 0:43.6 | of Creative Agency, Topham Gurin, which has worked on several high-profile communications campaigns, |
| 0:48.0 | including the 2019 Conservative Party election campaign. |
| 0:50.5 | And I've also got poll Home reporter Zoe Crowler. So Zoe, I'm going to start with you actually, because it's your work doing our social media |
| 0:57.0 | strategy that kind of helped spur this conversation really. Just explain a bit what's |
| 1:00.9 | been going on with kind of people's attitudes towards Twitter, which has been kind of going |
| 1:05.1 | a bit downhill since Elon Musk bought the site in 2022, but has really kind of picked a bit of pace |
| 1:09.3 | in the last few weeks. Yeah, absolutely. So I started with Politics Home as our social media journalist in November |
| 1:16.5 | 2022, which happened to coincide with Elon Musk buying Twitter. And essentially since I started, |
| 1:23.9 | unfortunately for me, as social media journalist, since Musk took over the platform, |
| 1:28.5 | our engagement as a publisher and many other journalists have found this too, has not completely |
| 1:33.0 | gone off a cliff, but just over time declined on the platform. And we've seen since Elon Musk |
| 1:37.7 | has taken over the platform that the algorithm has changed. It favours sometimes quite graphic |
| 1:43.9 | content. We've seen the problem of misinformation |
... |
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