• Axel Bruns
• National Times

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29 July 2010An analysis of the tweets for the first full week of the campaign points to some interesting patterns writes Axel Bruns

Several political contenders on the international stage have used Twitter as a campaign tool, with varying degrees of success.

Those who use the short-message social networking service, the Twitterati, tend to get frustrated quickly by campaigns that they consider are merely pushing out PR messages, without any indication that there's a real human being behind the account.

Hashtags, by contrast, are a way for the Twitter user community to keep a distributed conversation going – by including a short tag like ''#<topic>'' in their messages, they enable others with similar interests to follow only the tweets relevant to that topic.

Since the federal election was called, the hashtag ''#ausvotes'' has emerged as the preferred way for Twitter users to mark election-related messages. An analysis of these tweets for the first full week of the campaign points to some interesting patterns.

Read the full article in the National Times