Today and for the first time in the UK, departments were announcing that they would stop tweeting until the election has run its course. Five years ago there would have been no departments making that statement. Social media is rapidly becoming an important aspect of government communications.

In the last year the use of social media by government and politicians has increasingly attracted attention in the media. Think of David Cameron's "too many twits" comment or Gordan Brown's YouTube broadcasts. That attention is often negative.

Online opinion is (unsurprisingly) divided into two camps. I've taken two articles (one from The Register and one from the Telegraph) and fed the for and against comments through Wordle to get a picture of the language being used.

Wordle 1 contains a hard-hitting message: "Government wasting money/time: pointless cost". Detractors are concerned by the "frivolous" nature of Twitter, how can our money be spent on single-line communications?

Wordle 2 for the use of Twitter is more subtle. A possible headline reading is "useful social value/worth". Comments for the use of Twitter acknowledge its affect is limited when used for purely broadcasting but that it can provide great value as a tool for generating new relationships and dialogue.

Personally I am very much for the use of Twitter and other social media by government for three key reasons:

1. I get to see what is going on inside the organisations I work for so I can better tailor my company's services to their needs
2. I find out things I would not have thought to look for
3. there is an opportunity for people to create new dialogue with government

I suspect in this forthcoming election campaign we're going to hear much more about the benefits and pitfalls of Twitter!

Damian Watson