Institute of Development Studies

IDS Twitters

IDS has joined Twitter to help extend the reach of our work online and experiment with this fast-growing platform for sharing ideas and building networks. 

Twitter has been around since 2007, but only over the past year has its use significantly spread beyond technology and internet specialists to the general population in countries with widespread internet access. It now has around 30 million users worldwide and is frequently cited in the mainstream media.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is often referred to as a ‘micro-blogging’ website. The site allows anyone with access to a computer and the internet to share their thoughts publicly, in 140 character messages known as ‘tweets’. Users can control whose messages they wish to receive by choosing which profiles to ‘follow’. The structure of the site allows information and ideas to spread very quickly between users.

IDS on Twitter

IDS’ first ever ‘tweet’ was sent at 4.37pm on 2 April 2009, encouraging people to have a look at our re-launched IDS website. Since then we have used it to let people know about events and publications, link to other multimedia items such as podcasts and video clips, share thoughts and views on development from IDS researchers and others and more besides.

IDS_UK now has 240 followers. Other ‘Twitterers’ connected to IDS include the Director, Lawrence Haddad  and the STEPS Centre.

The service allows us to engage with a range of people within and beyond its traditional audiences while increasing the influence of IDS research on a global level.

Twitter and the political landscape

As well as allowing celebrities to connect with their fans and less well-known users to tell their friends what they had for breakfast, Twitter has played a small but significant role in addressing information asymmetries in political contexts – first during the 2008 US presidential election and later during the Iranian election protests, to give two examples.

In the 2008 US presidential election, users of the site were encouraged to write about any issues they experienced with voting, while another website, Twitter Vote Report, aggregated these results onto a map. This allowed an instant overview of messages, making it easier to spot where an individual issue might be more significantly part of a pattern of voter intimidation.

In the aftermath of the disputed Iranian presidential election of 2009, ‘iranelection’ was one of the most commonly used phrases on the site (even overtaking news of Michael Jackson’s death) as users wrote messages contradicting official news releases and giving updates on their experiences of violent suppression of protests.

Twitter is also a favourite of politicians, allowing them to connect directly with potential supporters without mediation by spokespeople or journalists. The British prime minister’s wife, Sarah Brown, has more followers on Twitter than there are members of the Labour party. President Obama used it as an integral part of his campaign for election, and has continued to keep in touch with his followers, most recently asking them to help spread the world about health reform.

Getting the best out of Twitter

On 2 September 2009 Kelvin Newman of Sitevisibility.com came to IDS to talk to communications staff about how to get the best out of Twitter, using it to build relationships, engaging in debate, asking questions and avoiding common pitfalls. His advice is summed up in a Twitter white paper which helps explain the phenomenon in a clear and helpful way for beginners and onlookers alike.

IDS and the world social media

Twitter is not IDS’ only engagement with the world of Web 2.0 and social media. We have a Facebook page, on which members of Facebook can register as supporters of IDS. A number of IDS members and research teams maintain blogs, including ‘Development Horizons’ a personal blog by the IDS Director. IDS has also recently started a series of monthly podcasts entitled ‘The Big Question for Development’, asking people working on development issues across the world ‘What do you think is the big question that Development Studies needs to answer?