
Twitter is becoming an indispensable tool for the modern academic. Sceptics might doubt it, but the social media platform is perfectly designed to facilitate the dissemination of research findings, information about research projects and teaching materials. Beyond that, Twitter can significantly enhance the profile of an academic, their research and their respective School and University more generally.
It is no surprise, therefore, that there are now numerous guides on how academics can reap the benefits that Twitter offers (like here, here and here). But until now, and beyond individual academics, there has been little information (or discussion) about the extent to which actual departments of politics (or political science) are embracing the little blue bird.
We set out on an exploration of this area, by creating a draft league table of politics departments, which are organized according to their number of followers. This is a rather crude but still useful measure of how engaged the respective department is on Twitter. To reiterate, this is a draft league table, and we welcome those who would like us to record changes to contact our Social Media Officer @NottsPolitics, Naomi Racz. These changes will be recorded before we publish the final 2013 league table next week.
The table below only includes official departments or schools rather than, for example, accounts based on individual blogs, university modules or centres. So, for example, we do not include our own Short Not Brutish feed, which the Nottingham Centre for Normative Political Theory launched to encourage and promote research in this area. Similarly, we do not include high profile Twitter feeds for political science blogs, such as the LSE’s LSEEUROPP or LSEImpactBlog. Instead, we list the actual LSE Department of Government.
The figures reported below were accurate as of Monday May 13, 2013.
Based on these data, from a total of 33 departments in the UK who were found to have a Twitter profile, the average number of followers is 646. But there are considerable variations, ranging from the Department of War Studies within Social Science and Public Policy at King’s College London, which has over 4,100 followers, to the Department for Politics, Languages and International Studies at the University of Bath, which has 50 followers. In fact, only six departments have rallied over 1,000 followers. There is also considerable variation in the level of activity, or tweeting. For example, War Studies at King’s occupies the top spot after only 486 tweets, while the School of Politics at Surrey stands in sixth place with well over 2,100 tweet
Clearly, each department will vary according to what they hope to gain from this activity. While some will use Twitter to engage with external audiences, others are clearly using the platform more narrowly, to engage with their students and publicise internal events. For this reason, we warn against interpreting these data as some indication of broader relevance or quality. But as higher education (sorry, #highered) moves into the social media world, pausing to reflect on where we all stand –and what this might mean- is a useful exercise in its own right.
School or Department |
University |
|
Followers |
Department of War Studies | King’s | warstudies |
4,135 |
School of Politics and International Relations | Nottingham | NottsPolitics |
2,153 |
Department of Government | LSE | LSEGovernment |
1,949 |
Institute of Local Government | Birmingham | INLOGOV |
1,323 |
Blavatnik School | Oxford | BlavatnikSchool |
1,228 |
School of Politics | Surrey | SurreyPolitics |
1,001 |
School of Politics and International Studies | Hull | HullPoliticsDep |
983 |
Department of Politics and International Studies | SOAS | soaspolitics |
940 |
Department of Politics and International Relations | Westminster | DPIRWestminster |
737 |
Department of International Relations | LSE | LSEIRDept |
676 |
Department of Politics | Birkbeck | bbkpolitics |
667 |
School of Politics and International Relations | Kent | POLIRatKENT |
547 |
BA Politics in Dept. of Behavioural & Social Sciences | Huddersfield | hudpolitics |
509 |
Department of Government | Essex | uniessexgovt |
435 |
Department of International Politics | Aberystwyth | InterpolAber |
433 |
Department of Politics | Sheffield | ShefUniPolitics |
361 |
Department of Politics and International Relations | Oxford | Politics_Oxford |
360 |
Department of Political Science and International Studies | Birmingham | BhamPolsis |
348 |
Politics and International Relations Division | Southampton | sotonpolitics |
324 |
School of European Studies | Cardiff | cardiffeurop |
313 |
School of Politics and International Relations | Queen Mary | QMPoliticsIR |
296 |
Academy of Government | Edinburgh | Edinburgh_AoG |
285 |
Department of Political Science | UCL | uclspp |
212 |
School of Sociology, Politics and International Relations | Bristol | SPAISBristol |
202 |
Department of Political Economy | King’s | kingspolecon |
194 |
Department of Politics and International Relations | Leicester | PoliticsLeicsU |
161 |
School of Politics, Economics and International Relations | Reading | UniRdg_SPEIR |
130 |
Politics and International Relations | Edinburgh | EdinburghPIR |
108 |
School of Politics and International Studies | Leeds | POLISatLeeds |
101 |
Politics and International Relations Division | Plymouth | IRatPlymouth |
78 |
Department of International Studies and Social Science | Coventry | covuniisss |
51 |
School of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy | Keele | SpireKeele |
51 |
Department of Politics, Languages and Int. Studies | Bath | PoLIS_Bath |
50 |
Interesting stuff. However, I’d suggest that official departmental sites are not yet that important or interesting in what they tell us about political science communication, for two key reasons:
1. A lot of knowledge exchange goes on now in relation to blogs and many of the blogs involved are multi-author and multi-disciplinary, such as these four blogs run for LSE as a whole by LSE Public Policy Group, but drawing on contributions from scholars from a great many universities in every case:
British Politics and Policy . @LSEpoliticsblog 20,500 followers
LSE Review of Books. @LSEReviewBooks 10,370
Impacts of Social Science blog. @LSEImpactblog 9,530
Europp – European Policy and Politics. @LSEEuroppblog 6,080
There are also collaborative blogs such as the joint Oxford and Cambridge one
Politics in Spires @PoliticsinSpire 1460 followers
I’d also love to follow on Twitter the Ballots and Bullets blog at Nottingham, perhaps the best single institution blog around. But you don’t seem to have an account for that?
2. A lot of communication of political science to the wider public on Twitter takes place via individual political scientists, who seem to outperform their department accounts at present, in some cases by a long margin, such as
Phil Cowley. @philipjcowley 5,470 followers
Matthew Goodwin. @GoodwinMJ 4,870
Patrick Dunleavy. @PJDunleavy 3,050
Rob Ford. @robfordmancs 1,308
Chris Hanretty @chrishanretty 550
(Apologies if I’ve left out other folk far more prominent here! This is a non-scientific selection based on my very limited knowledge).
This effect may only be temporary however – it may just reflect who got into the Twitter scene earliest? Perhaps as more departments get going, learn from each other, and do more interesting and adventurous things on Twitter than departmental notices and puffs, the power of the collective intelligence may emerge as dominant.
Finally, people might find it useful to compare the scale of department, blog and single author Twitter followings already being achieved in the social sciences with the scale of Twitter following for major UK think tanks, covered in March 2013 by @Guerillapolicy Their analysis is at http://www.guerillapolicy.org/guerilla-policy/2013/02/03/the-top-40-odd-think-tanks-by-twitter-following/
These numbers are a bit old now, but what they surely show is that universities and departments who get into social media can begin to reach wide audiences quickly – without having to go through the often frustrating ‘intermediation’ filters of think tanks, or the mainstream media, on what can and can’t be communicated.
We’ve only just begun, and there’s a lot more “shorter, better, faster, free” communication and knowledge exchange for political scientists to foster.
We will be doing a follow-up post addressing in more detail some of the issues you’ve raised. We will be releasing a second league table of political scientists in the coming weeks too. We don’t have a Twitter account specifically for Ballots & Bullets, but we do tweet about the blog and the latest blog posts on @NottsPolitics.
Followership is mainly a reflection of activity and reciprocity. Tweeting as a department requires delegation and ideally social media management software.
Some people prefer to focus on Klout scores (other influence metrics are available)
Based on Klout scores the Top 5 would be as follows:
1. Nottspolitics 56
2. Warstudies 50
3. LSEgovernment and Hullpoliticsdept 47
4. INLOGOV and Surreypolitics 46
5. Soaspolitics 44
Oh, and in case you are interested the top 3 Patrick mentions in his list of political academics have Klout scores of 60, 62 and 59 respectively.
As an occasional tweeter myself I will return to working out how to get from 37 to the lofty heights of 38.
Jolly good.