Q & A has up to 20,000 tweets submitted per show.
Q & A attracts about 15,000 to 20,000 tweets per show. So how does it choose which ones to use?
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
There’s an interesting article today on how Q & A moderates its use of Twitter.
The show attracts about 15,000 to 20,000 tweets per program.
“It’s like a rapidly moving river,” Executive Producer Peter McEvoy says. “We have two moderators who look at the entire stream and they throw a bucket in and pull out suitable tweets. Then our senior moderator chooses which tweets appear.”
Recently the show has copped some criticism for its tweets, including leaning to humour over insight, there was a shoe-throwing prompt at John Howard and an ABC apology to federal Liberal Christopher Pyne.
As to questions of “celebrity tweets” getting airtime over punters, McEvoy says:
“They get a run because they send an awful lot of tweets and because people re-tweet them. If people get behind a tweet there’s more chance that tweet will be seen. People do have a role here, they can push some tweets to the top but a good tweet will do that, too.
“I want the tweets to reflect a wide range of people. That’s what’s so great about it. It gets everyone involved — people with views from the left and right, pro-carbon tax and anti-carbon.”
You can read more at The Age.
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10 Responses
@Jason D – it’s interesting that you say that because it was clear to me that the ABC had become right-leaning after Howard installed a lot of his stooges in senior management. This was pretty evident with the way news and current affairs were presented altho’ Kerry O’Brien appeared to be unswayed. Perhaps things are swinging back the other way.
Also, if the majority of tweets are left-leaning this will automatically be reflected in any unbiased sampling of those tweets. Whilst I agree that the ABC should be neutral, the selection of audience feedback should mirror that of the audience as a whole so that, if the audience displays a bias, the publicised feedback should also.
I have had two tweets appear!!!
@Dodge
News Ltd. is right-leaning, I don’t know about Seven, Nine & Ten, possibly so. However, ABC being a taxpayer funded broadcaster, it should strive to be neutral.
And News Limited, Channel 7 and Channel 9 (and maybe 10 now with Andrew Bolt?) are right- leaning.
I think the twitter moderation on Q&A is a farce despite what Mr. McEvoy claims. I read the twitter posts during Q&A & they do choose those that are left-leaning. It gives the impression that Q&A is biased towards the left of politics, which goes along with the old notion that the ABC has a culture of leftism. I’m being objective about this criticism as I encourage debate from all sides of politics, however, I think that the selection of tweets are clearly weighted, and so do others considering the twitter posts during Q&A which make the same allegations. It’s also detrimental to the long term credibility of Q&A as a platform for democracy in action. I should also mention that The Age (Fairfax media) is also left-leaning.
I wanted to voice an opinion on this but I couldn’t think of a witty way to present it.
I’m really not interested in opinions other than those of the people engagaged in the on-screen program, not unknown Labor/LNP/Greens/ etc. twits.
Get rid of them. They are distracting.
And after all that – anything anti-Liberal/National gets through.
Ban the tweets you twits!
Must Everyone have an opinion about Everything?
Must Every tweeter be a raw comedy contender?\
Can a man truly absorb a conversation And read inner city quips at the same time? (Well we know women can – easily).
Wait, why am I writing this? I’m just another voice in a room of people who are already yelling.
I’ll be quiet now.