Queensland election: One Nation dominates Twitter debate in the final weeks

As Queensland approaches its election day on Saturday, the social media campaign for votes continues alongside – and in combination with – the candidates’ doorknocking efforts and mainstream media advertising. But over the final two weeks, the focus of that campaign has gradually shifted. First, as I reported a fortnight ago, Labor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s …

Early tweets favour Labor in Queensland election campaign

There’s still plenty of time to go in the current Queensland state election campaign, but early signs from the social media trail offer some encouragement for Labor premier Annastacia Palaszczuk: she is receiving considerably more retweets than LNP challenger Tim Nicholls, and chatter about the controversial Adani mine project has declined in recent days. Twitter …

#qldvotes: A Final Social Media Round-Up

By any measure, it’s been an extraordinary weekend here in Queensland. The same electoral tsunami that brought the LNP to power in March 2012 has washed the government away again in January 2015. Premier Campbell Newman has lost his own seat of Ashgrove, and Labor leader Annastacia Palaszczuk looks poised to form government – although …

#qldvotes: Final-Week Update on Social Media Activities

This year’s Queensland state election campaign may be very brief, but it’s certainly been action-packed. In my previous post I provided an overview of what were roughly the first two weeks of the campaign; mid-way through the final week, here’s a further update of how the social media campaign has unfolded. As a reminder about …

Twitter in the Queensland State Election, Two Weeks In

Somewhat earlier than expected, Queensland finds itself in the throes of a very tightly contested state election campaign, which was called on 6 January and concludes with election day on 31 January. Just like candidates and the media, we in the QUT Social Media Research Group too have been scrambling to put in place the …

Twitter and Politics at State and Federal Levels in Australia

Here's one final update from the October conference tour, before we get back to covering new work: our research into the political uses of Twitter continues apace as well, of course, and during the AoIR and ECREA conferences Tim Highfield and I also had opportunities to discuss some of the recent findings from our observations …

Call for Applicants: PhD Researcher on Crisis Communication Linkage Project

Regular visitors to this site will be well familiar with our research into the use of social media in crisis communication – especially in the context of the 2011 Queensland floods and Christchurch earthquakes. We’re now about to commence a further major research project in this area, working in collaboration with the Queensland Department of …

Talk about Disasters Workshop

Our fabulous colleague (and co-author of the Queensland floods report) Frances Shaw came up to Brisbane this week to participate in a crisis communication workshop at Griffith University. Here are her impressions from the workshop, and her presentation: On 25 and 26 June I represented the Mapping Online Publics team at the Talk about Disasters …

Mid-Week #qldvotes Update: How the Leaders Compare

As we count down to the Queensland state election date, I’ve just published a new piece about the Twitter campaign in The Conversation – head over to the site to read it there. The centrepiece of the story is this graph of @mentions of the two leaders’ accounts throughout the election campaign, though – it …

Queensland Election, Week 4: All Over But the Shouting?

There’s just one more week to go until the end of the 2012 Queensland state election campaign – and as I write this, the tenor of the mainstream media coverage is that we’re heading for a landslide election win for the conservative LNP. So, let’s take another look at the way the election has played …