It started with a #hashtag
(above) Political cartoon. Source: Pinterest
On Twitter, the general discussion around politics in Australia can be followed, or participated in, by searching the hashtag #auspol (Rambukka, 2015 pp. 18). The Australian community has become proficient in using different hashtags for following different political issues:
- #qt to follow Question Time – the publicly broadcasted hour of debate during Parliament sitting days;
- #qanda for commenting on the weekly politics show on the ABC;
- and each state and territory has their own politics tag, for example NSW has #nswpol, Victoria has #SpringSt (an odd one out which represents that Parliament is on Spring Street in Melbourne), #taspol, etc.
News: #auspol – The Twitter hashtag Australia can’t live without – Mashable
B&T Weekly, (2017), writes by mid 2017 #auspol had been tweeted 3.5million times by political followers. Whilst that might seem a lot, in comparison, Australian Boy Band 5 Seconds of Summer have been tweeted about almost half a billion times using the hashtag #5SOS.
Jericho, (2017 pp. 113) describes the importance of journalists covering politics needing to be on Twitter, and suggests that if a journalist is not active on Twitter, they’re giving themselves an automatic handicap. Announcements and news is appearing quicker and quicker on Twitter, before making it onto news websites, leaving journalists to fight out who gets the best clicks through to their sites after people have already found they key information through the social media site.
Now let’s leave Australia and do the dive to the most talked about person on Twitter, Donald Trump.
Sigh.
I can’t believe how much we’re talking about him based on what he tweets!
Related news article: How Trump Wins Twitter – Slate
It’s important to note that Trump has been a regular user of Twitter since 2009 (Osborne & Roberts, 2017). From 2009 and pushing his empirical products such as golf courses and beauty pageants, to him tweeting about seeing Lada Gaga in 2010, starting to find his political voice in 2011, through to the post-Presidency win FAKE NEWS tweets, Trump really can claim to be an avid user of Twitter, and How Trump Thinks: His Tweets and the Birth of a new Political Language is a great read as it shows all his tweets with explanations as to what they’re about, so you can try get inside his head and understand what he’s trying to share.
Do you follow politics on social media?
Jericho, G 2013, The Rise of the Fifth Estate : Social Media and Blogging in Australian Politics, Scribe Publications, Brunswick, Victoria.
Oborne, P, & Roberts, T 2017, How Trump Thinks : His Tweets and the Birth of a New Political Language, Head of Zeus, London.
Twitter celebrates 10 years of the #hashtag, 2017, B & T Weekly.
Rambukkana, N 2015, Hashtag Publics : The Power and Politics of Discursive Networks, Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers, New York.












