Michiel Mulder nr. 1 on Twitter

With over 1,250 followers, city council member Michiel Mulder (PvdA) is the local politician with the largest following on Twitter, according to an analysis by News from Amsterdam. Twitter appears to be mainly popular among liberals: D66 and the VVD are relatively well-represented.

On 25 July, News from Amsterdam collected data on 35 local politicians on Twitter. Shortly before, Twitter had deleted large numbers of spam accounts, which caused the number of followers to drop, resulting in a more realistic picture. The count yielded the following top-5:

1. Michiel Mulder (PvdA) 1,283
2. Fatima Elatik (PvdA) 457
3. Hans Korff (D66) 218
4. Alexander Scholtes (D66) 211
5. Jan Paternotte (D66) 180

The picture changes if one looks at the number of updates politicians have published: Jan-Bert Vroege (D66 chairman in Oost) heads this list with almost one thousand messages, followed by Laurent Chambon (PvdA), Fatima Elatik (PvdA), Margreet de Boer (GroenLinks) and Hans Korff (D66). On average, the politicians have 114 followers and have published 242 updates.

Mulder was persuaded by fellow party member Rik Winsemius to start Twittering. At first he was sceptic, but now he sees it as a way to make politics more transparent and accessible. For example, he published his plans to make government contracts more SME-friendly on Twitter. Piet van der Lende of welfare recipients’ organisation Bijstandsbond reached him at Twitter with a complaint about the welfare agency.

The district with the largest number of Twittering politicians is Oud-Zuid. During council meetings, politicians comment on each other, which incidentally can be seen by people watching the meeting online. Council chair Petra Tiel (VVD) said that she has no problem with Twittering during council meetings.

She responded to Speaker Gerdi Verbeet (PvdA), who had expressed irritation at politicians Twittering in Parliament. “An occasional text message is no problem – I do that myself. But they shouldn’t be constantly peeking at that gadget,” she said.

During the campaign for the European election, a number of candidates were very active on Twitter. When the local election campaign gets going, the number of politicians on Twitter will probably rise somewhat again.

Perhaps they secretly hope to mobilise the masses through Twitter, as Barack Obama did with his online operation. Of course, that is not going to happen: the masses are not to be found on Twitter. However, Twitter may come in useful when it comes to keeping in touch with active party members and other sympathisers, the backbone of any campaign.