<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s start again with a look at the principals: the major parties\u2019 generic accounts, the major combatants (whom I profiled here<\/a>), and Peter Beattie. Compared to week 1, the @QLDLabor party account is the newcomer in this mix: we\u2019ve only been tracking it since 26 Feb., but this also means we do have a full weeks\u2019 worth of data for week 2. Sadly, though, there\u2019s nothing much to be said about it here \u2013 with 34 tweets in seven days, it has remained relatively quiet. By comparison, @TheQldPremier Anna Bligh continues to lead the pack, maintaining her work rate at levels comparable to last week (160 tweets in week 2, just over 180 in week 1). Her deputy @AndrewFraserMP has substantially increased his tweeting, on the other hand: he\u2019s been tweeting roughly twice as much as he did during week 1. By contrast, crucial Labor MP for Ashgrove @katejonesmp, who is in a direct electoral contest against would-be LNP Premier Campbell Newman, has dropped back slightly: posting just over 60 tweets in week 1, she\u2019s only managed 41 in week 2. <\/p>\n The same goes for Peter Beattie (@SmartState1): he\u2019s posted some 60 fewer tweets than in week 1. This is perhaps unsurprising: now working as an election commentator, the start of the election campaign proper would have afforded him a much greater opportunity for comments than the (in Queensland, at least) relatively uneventful second week of the campaign.<\/p>\n On the other side of politics, party account @LNPQLD has more or less maintained a high level of activity: from just under 110 tweets in week 1, its work rate has increased to touch on the 120 mark in week 2. It remains evident that the Twitter<\/em> campaign here is centred on the party headquarters: where ALP candidates well out-tweet its party account, the situation is reversed for the LNP. With 34 tweets in week 2, candidate for Premier @Campbell_Newman matched his week 1 rate almost exactly, while nominal parliamentary opposition leader Jeff Seeney remains absent from Twitter<\/em>, and his deputy @TimNichollsMP might as well be: he tweeted just once during week 2.<\/p>\n What is also interesting in examining these week 2 numbers is how much the tweeting styles of these accounts have remained the same from one week to the other (see the corresponding graph from week 1 for comparison<\/a>). Bligh and her predecessor Beattie remain highly conversational, posting a substantial number of @replies and no retweets (with Bligh posting a significantly larger number of original tweets \u2013 i.e. neither @reply nor retweet \u2013 and tweets containing URLs); Newman\u2019s tweets follow a similar pattern, if on a much smaller scale. Fraser and the LNP party account both post an almost even mix of original tweets, retweets, and @replies (for both, the retweet component has grown in week 2), but @LNPQLD\u2019s tweets contain more URLs. Jones\u2019s activities are the only where some change is notable: she has taken to posting more retweets in week 2.<\/p>\n Overall activity levels in interactions with these accounts have remained more or less stable during week 2, compared to the levels established by the end of week 1 (on average, there were some 1200 tweets from or to the accounts we\u2019re tracking here). I\u2019ll skip the relevant graph in this post, and will include one which shows patterns since late January in my week 3 post.<\/p>\n Things become more interesting again when we look at the most active and most visible accounts during week 2. Here are the relevant tables, again colour-coded by party:<\/p>\n But activity does not equal visibility or success: when we examine the @mentions of major political accounts, the picture is considerably more balanced. In terms of @mentions, in week 2 challenger @Campbell_Newman has (just) taken the lead from @TheQldPremier, and these two accounts each receive easily more than twice as many @mentions than any other users listed here. Amongst those other accounts, there are few surprises: Fraser, Jones, Beattie, and the @LNPQLD account all maintain their positions in the lead of the also-rans; @gavking, the LNP candidate under pressure for some highly controversial remarks about rape, also continues to receive a substantial number of @mentions.<\/p>\n The minor parties (in particular, the Greens and KAP) remain comparatively absent from the list, on the other hand; the focus of the discussion, at least to the extent that it is expressed through tweets which directly mention politicians\u2019 accounts (which is what our dataset represents, you\u2019ll remember), clearly is on the major parties \u2013 and of these, mainly on their two candidates for the Premiership. Outside of this, there\u2019s a smattering of news-related accounts (in addition to Beattie\u2019s @SmartState1, accounts for Network Ten, the Courier-Mail<\/em>, and the Brisbane Times<\/em>), as well as the anonymous account of LNP critic @LNPInsider and the account of Young LNP president Ben Riley (@YLNPPresident; not coloured in the table above since he\u2019s not a candidate in the election, as far as I know).<\/p>\n Finally (for week 2), another quick graph of the network of @mentions between the major accounts (click to enlarge). Here, I\u2019m again showing the political accounts (plus Peter Beattie) only, and compared to last week, I\u2019ve coloured the arrows between them by the party affiliation of the sender (so, a red arrow shows @mentions by an ALP account, a blue arrow shows @mentions by an LNP account, etc.). Node size indicates the number of @mentions received \u2013 but only from the accounts shown here (so @TheQldPremier is larger than @Campbell_Newman in this graph, since \u2013 due to the greater number of active ALP accounts on Twitter<\/em> \u2013 she receives more mentions from political accounts than he does).<\/p>\n There\u2019s now a fair amount of separation visible between the two camps. Labor accounts mainly tweet at each other (and most of all, @mention the Premier); LNP accounts, to the extent that they\u2019re particularly active at all, do the same. The major exceptions are @AndrewFraserMP and @Matt4SurfersALP on the ALP side, and @ScottDriscollAu for the LNP; beyond that, there are also a handful of one-on-one battles (for example between @karenstruthers, ALP, and @DavidGibsonMP, LNP, and between @DavidGibsonMP and @ryan4glasshouse) or unrequited attacks (the LNP\u2019s @jplangbroek\u2019s tweets to the @QLDLabor account, for example, seem to have remained unanswered).<\/p>\n![\"image\"](\"http:\/\/www.mappingonlinepublics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/image_thumb2.png\" "\\"image\\"")
<\/a> <\/p>\n\n
\n User<\/td>\n tweets sent<\/td>\n <\/td>\n User<\/td>\n @mentions received<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Qlder<\/td>\n 258<\/td>\n <\/td>\n Campbell_Newman<\/font><\/td>\n 2072<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n PJAllmanPayne<\/font><\/td>\n 165<\/td>\n <\/td>\n TheQldPremier<\/font><\/td>\n 2048<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n TheQldPremier<\/font><\/td>\n 160<\/td>\n <\/td>\n AndrewFraserMP<\/font><\/td>\n 811<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n ryan4glasshouse<\/font><\/td>\n 120<\/td>\n <\/td>\n LNPQLD<\/font><\/td>\n 457<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n BrentALP<\/font><\/td>\n 119<\/td>\n <\/td>\n katejonesmp<\/font><\/td>\n 379<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n GREENS4GlssHse<\/font><\/td>\n 119<\/td>\n <\/td>\n SmartState1<\/td>\n 296<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n LNPQLD<\/font><\/td>\n 118<\/td>\n <\/td>\n Qlder<\/td>\n 281<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n AndrewFraserMP<\/font><\/td>\n 104<\/td>\n <\/td>\n gavking<\/font><\/td>\n 242<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n SmartState1<\/td>\n 97<\/td>\n <\/td>\n tennewsqld<\/td>\n 164<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Matt4SurfersALP<\/font><\/td>\n 96<\/td>\n <\/td>\n couriermail<\/td>\n 133<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n old_dog_rusty<\/td>\n 84<\/td>\n <\/td>\n DavidGibsonMP<\/font><\/td>\n 130<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Dangerman_2<\/td>\n 70<\/td>\n <\/td>\n Tencb<\/td>\n 122<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n DavidGibsonMP<\/font><\/td>\n 65<\/td>\n <\/td>\n LNPInsider<\/td>\n 108<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n vonschnapps<\/td>\n 65<\/td>\n <\/td>\n aidanmclindon<\/font><\/td>\n 98<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n rosannebarrett<\/td>\n 62<\/td>\n <\/td>\n ryan4glasshouse<\/font><\/td>\n 97<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n gvandersee<\/td>\n 61<\/td>\n <\/td>\n YLNPPresident<\/td>\n 97<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n JLacey_86<\/td>\n 60<\/td>\n <\/td>\n MarkRobinsonMP<\/font><\/td>\n 96<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Tencb<\/td>\n 60<\/td>\n <\/td>\n QLDLabor<\/font><\/td>\n 92<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n MarkRobinsonMP<\/font><\/td>\n 58<\/td>\n <\/td>\n brisbanetimes<\/td>\n 84<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n DaKwozzie<\/td>\n 57<\/td>\n <\/td>\n justinbarbour<\/td>\n 83<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
Compared again to last week\u2019s tables, a few patterns are obvious. Some Greens accounts continue to campaign strongly via Twitter<\/em>; a third<\/strike> second account, the unfortunately-named @GREENS4GlssHse, has joined the lead group (I initially mistook the ALP\u2019s @ryan4glasshouse for a Greens account, too \u2013 fixed now)<\/font>. Similarly, three more ALP Twitter<\/em> accounts have entered the top 20 list in week 2, in addition to @TheQldPremier herself. Overall, and notwithstanding the strong performance of the central @LNPQLD account, this continues to give the impression that candidates from left-of-centre parties in Australia have taken to Twitter<\/em> with significantly more enthusiasm than conservatives (and interestingly, the three Katter\u2019s Australia Party accounts which were in the top 20 in week 1 have now disappeared from the list). Of the non-official accounts, @Qlder continues to tweet most actively at the accounts we\u2019re tracking here.<\/p>\n![\"image\"](\"http:\/\/www.mappingonlinepublics.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/image_thumb5.png\" "\\"image\\"")
<\/a> <\/p>\n