On Twitter: what does your MP do?

Caroline Ansell has sent almost 1,500 tweets since setting up her account, analysis of her online activity reveals. In the last of our series looking at the work of our politicians, we take a look at how active the Conservative MP for Eastbourne is on the social media platform. Analysis of Caroline Ansell's Twitter account (@Caroline_Ansell) by Motive PR shows she had sent around 1,400 tweets between first joining the website on June 1 2012 and March 29 this year. It means the 51-year-old sends an average of less than one tweet per day – putting out just 12 per month. However, Ms Ansell has had this account since before she was elected to the seat – on December 12 2019. The average MP that has an account sends 3.5 tweets per day, but around one in 10 representatives did not have one at the time the research was done. Labour MP Karl Turner is the most prolific Tweeter – sending an average of 26.1 per day for 12 years. The roughly 600 MPs with accounts had sent almost 8 million tweets between them by the end of March. But Motive said they found little correlation between the number of tweets and retweets an MP sent, and the number of followers they have. Despite his steady output, Mr Turner has fewer than 41,000 followers – below the average of 54,300 for MPs with accounts. And though he has tweeted fewer than 6,000 times, Boris Johnson's account is followed by 4.1 million people. The Prime Minister is one of just four MPs with more than a million followers – ahead of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (2.4 million), current Labour leader Keir Starmer (1.2 million) and ex-PM Theresa May (1 million). Caroline Ansell, who serves as a backbench MP, had around 6,100 followers by the end of March. Of parties with at least 10 members, Labour was reaching the largest section of the electorate – with an average of 63,500 followers each. Meanwhile, the Scottish National Party's 45 members averaged just 29,300 each. Despite not taking their seats in the Commons due to their abstentionist policy, Sinn Fein MPs have tweeted almost 80,000 times from their official accounts.