So in the last week I have conducted two experiments, here and here to see how parties respond to policy questions. Both times I included the Internet Party, and both times they failed to reply. In the second blog post I mentioned I wasn’t sure if the lack of reply was only because it was me asking, as opposed to a random Twitter user. So I was interested to watch when someone I follow on Twitter asked a policy question of the Internet Party:
The question was sent at 11:04am. I saw Ryan send another Tweet at 2:43pm:
It was only after this that he managed to get a reply, in 9 minutes:
But the reply was to talk to someone else. Unlike all of the parties in the experiment that I under took which replied with links direct to the policy, the Internet Party pointed Ryan at their spokesperson. But thankfully he replied quickly:
For a party that prides itself on being a party of engagement and consultation, one that uses social media to reach out to voters, why does it ignore questions from me, and only reply to Ryan when he follows up the tweet 3 1/2 hours later with one that calls their engagement into question?
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