While many left-leaning folks around the UK try to forget the 2019 general election ever happened, Twitter has rocked up to brag about how often people used the social network to espouse their viewpoints during campaign season.
The social network, whose record on ensuring fair and balanced democratic discourse isn’t brag-worthy, says 15 million tweets were posted during the election. According to Twitter, that’s an example of how ‘political discourse continues to thrive’ within the platform.
In a post on its official blog, Twitter says 10,000 election-related tweets were posted in a 60 second period at 10:05pm, shortly after the infamous exit poll dropped to signal a gigantic Conservative party majority was on the cards.
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The company says there was a 66% increase in the volume of Twitter conversation compared to the snap general election of 2017.
“This marks a significant uptick in engagement and reflects the increasing value of the service as the go-to place for conversation during election cycles,” the company said in the blog post.
The biggest queue I’ve ever seen at my polling station! Get out there and vote people! #GE2109 #iVoted #BeAVoter #clapham pic.twitter.com/BjXunRqbKe
— Kelly Molloy (@sparklysparkly) December 12, 2019
The social network also went into detail on the trends most discussed during the campaign, with #Brexit, #IVoted, #Conservative, #Labour, #ClimateChange and #NHS topping the talking points.
The company also said Jeremy Corbyn was more discussed than Boris Johnson or Nicola Sturgeon during the campaign. Given Corbyn was both loved and hated within voters of his own party and reviled by conservative voters, it’s hardly surprising he was the most mentioned leader.
Most importantly, there were 122,000 #DogsAtPollingStations tweets throughout the campaign. At least we all got some entertainment from those, regardless of our political sensibilities.
Thrilled to report an exceptional (and very good) turn out at Dulwich Village Polling #DogsAtPollingStations pic.twitter.com/WQv3FRfWFZ
— Rashi Gupta ♥️ (@iam_rashi7) December 12, 2019
The social network added: “As with every election around the globe, election integrity and online safety are key priorities for Twitter, and #GE2019 was no different. To this end, we worked to ensure the conversation was healthy, open, and safe for everyone and implemented a clear plan to safeguard the UK election.”
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
