Rory Allan Memorial Prize

Friends and teachers of the late Rory Allan (03-10) recently established a writing prize in his memory, kindly supported by the ONA. Rory was a prolific writer, with a natural gift for the comic and the polemical, be it in the form of an essay, a letter, or a text message.

Presentation by Luke Hughes (05-10), Rory’s friend to runner-up Rachel Rees (Lower Sixth) and Phillipa Sanders (Year 11) W e asked RGS students to submit up to1,500 words on the question, Should Politicians Tweet? We were hugely impressed by the quality of the responses. Prizes were awarded to ‘the most intellectually stimulating, the most amusing or the most opinionated’ of the entries. Here we publish the winning entry by Philippa Sanders (Year 11) with congratulations also to Rachel Rees (Lower Sixth) for winning the Runner-Up prize.

Should Politicians Tweet?

The simple answer is most probably no.

First of all, I’ll address the already-present elephant in the essay: President Donald J Trump. In the past year, Trump sent 2,608 tweets. He has been critical 135% more than he has been complimentary. So far, Trump has called one of the most dangerous tyrants in the world ‘Rocket Man’, claimed that his nuclear button was ‘bigger’ and ‘more powerful’ than the aforementioned man’s, and has informed the world that he is a ‘very stable genius’. That was just this week on Twitter. Twitter’s cardinal abuse outline is that exhibiting behaviour that harasses or intimidates a person or a group of people will result in the offender being suspended or banned. Trump has intimidated both individuals and groups

throughout his gross career on Twitter and yet is still left (relatively) untouched by the Twitter team. Kim Novak, a 50s film star and near-recluse, was coaxed to go out by her friends to the Academy Awards and was promptly thrown in for a tailspin as Mr Trump tweeted ‘I’m having a hard time watching. Miss Novak should sue her plastic surgeon!’ Even his Republican chums condemned him as he referred to Mika Brzezinski as “Low IQ crazy Mika” and stated that she was ‘bleeding badly from a facelift’. In terms of group condemnation, Trump has a curious habit for retweeting anti-semitic memes and, of course, actually caused the Pentagon to admit that they are afraid he might engender nuclear war. The explanation Twitter gives for not banning him is that his tweets fall under ‘newsworthiness’, a defence that wasn’t afforded to actress Rose McGowan, who was suspended for doxing – the practice of broadcasting private information –while leading a worldwide conversation on sexual abuse during the Weinstein scandal. The real reason why Trump is still allowed on Twitter is because he is, according to Forbes, worth about $2bn to the company in brand-name recognition from news companies. To me, that seems just slightly inequitable. Twitter approves of ‘freedom of expression’ and ‘allowing users to express diverse opinions’, but is it suitable for Trump to be wielding his freedom of speech like a grim scythe over the world if he regularly threatens war and discrimination? On the one hand there is one orange man’s raucous opining, on the other is the peace and equality of millions, and in between there is Twitter. The fact that Trump is prioritised is my first reason against Twitter politics: Twitter is an uneven playing field for any sort of reasonable debate because the person who has more followers and who generates more for the company itself will always prevail, no matter how much drastic misinformation he propagates.

No-one has ever accused me of being UScentric about this issue, and that is because I am averse to Twitter politics on this side of the Atlantic, too. British politicians on Twitter are extremely boring. Any British politician’s Twitter account is rife with party-political point scoring, retweets from either the Mirror or the Telegraph and extremely anodyne and insipid comments about their daily life as they realise they have to at least pretend to be human for the public. I remember scrolling through former Minister for the Olympics, Tessa Jowell’s Twitter feed and my eyes being scalded by tweet after tweet about ‘Productive meeting!’ and her daily updates on the efficiency of her filing system. While that may seem jejune, my worst tweet would have to be from MP Gordon Henderson, who actually prompted my brain to switch itself off and then back on again after I read his tweet that he Wishing that British Twitter politics had “ personality may be a step into the absurd, but wishing that each tweet didn’t include some form of kowtow to superiors or a link to the government website isn’t. At the moment, modern British politics looks like a massive grey wall of triteness and a quick glance at Twitter confirms that. ” ‘Enjoyed the fresh pressed apple juice brought in by [his] secretary, Jessica’ and that he wonders if he can make juice from the pears in his lovely garden? Then there’s Nigel Farage: his Twitter feed is just endless retweets of Trump’s meanderings and pictures of the UKIP puppeteer drinking beer. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad Theresa May didn’t accompany her infamous ‘*cough*’ tweet with a threat to begin a nuclear war. However, I also don’t condone the banality of tweets by British politicians. Wishing that British Twitter politics had personality may be a step into the absurd, but wishing that each tweet didn’t include some form of kowtow to superiors or a link to the government website isn’t. At the moment, modern British politics looks like a

massive grey wall of triteness and a quick glance at Twitter confirms that.

However, the behaviour of politicians is not solely responsible for my disapprobation of Twitter politics. It is my belief that politicians do not truly know how to use Twitter to the best effect, and thus anything they come up with on the platform is outdated and static. Political communication via social media has the potential to allow for increased dialogue between political representatives and the public and the opportunity to sculpt a more communicative and involving democracy, but our politicians are clearly incapable of this sort of communication thus far. The Prime Minister’s Twitter feed is inundated with missives that simply outline policies and provide no scope for consultation or interaction with the public: ‘We’re putting £5.7m into creating a new national forest’ and ‘The NHS is delivering for people’. Instead of inviting people in, it seems to simply report what has already been decided. Rather than using Twitter to establish a two-way dialogue which bypasses the media and provides a direct connection with citizens, May merely reinforces the existing old media model of one-way communication and sound bites. Of course, there will always be the consequence of offensive and unconstructive replies to political posts, but by continuing to use web 2.0 communication platforms in a web 1.0 manner, political figures further frustrate an already disaffected public. When politicians continue to use a two-way radio as a megaphone the public will rightly feel ignored. Perhaps, instead of providing links to press releases, politicians could provide links to consultation pages. Maybe representatives could make greater use of structured question and answer events in order to give the public a chance to have their say and highlight their particular concerns. There is no doubt, however, that politicians need to reassess their use of social media as an avenue to new democratic and civic engagement.

Should politicians tweet? No. Twitter itself is a morally dubious association that does not know whether it wants to be a social platform, a technology company or a news agency, and thus is virtually incapable of regulating the power politicians have online for fear of loss of visibility of their hodgepodge website. Additionally, the propensity for politicians to undermine the usefulness a social media network like Twitter has by tweeting out boring notes about their great day out with such-and-such MP and linking an article to the work they’ve done instead of explaining it and leaving it open to involved discussion is bleak and discouraging for a young person such as myself to look at. Politicians on Twitter don’t actually say anything that I couldn’t have gotten from two minutes scrolling through the BBC News app. The value Twitter has as an interactive media source is negated by the blinkered laziness of politicians both in and out of power, and I would love for them to stop telling me about themselves. However, they will keep on tweeting, and I will continue to ignore them completely.

ONA Prize presentations, April 2018: (L-R) Henry Haslam (Upper Sixth) winner of Outstanding EPQ; presented by Kate Harman (née Appleby) (06-08); Rachel Rees; Phillipa Sanders and Luke Hughes