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ABC retreats on X (Twitter) accounts

All ABC accounts on Twitter will be closed except for 4 brands, including the pioneering and long-running Q+A account.

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ABC is closing nearly all of its accounts on X (formerly known as Twitter), and leaving just four active brands.

They are:

  • ABC News (@abcnews). This account drives the majority of the ABC’s impact on X and will continue to publish news from Australia’s most trusted news source.
  • ABC Sport (@abcsport). Sport remains a popular genre on X, with Australian sports fans engaging with sports content before, during and after games on the platform. @abcsport will continue to be the home of our daily sports conversation on the platform.
  • ABC Chinese (@abcchinese). The ABC reflects contemporary Australia which includes creating informative, educational and entertaining content that is relevant, relatable, and inclusive for Australians with different backgrounds and interests. @abcchinese reaches Chinese speaking audiences on Twitter.
  • ABC Australia (@abcaustralia). The ABC’s masterbrand account will showcase the breadth and depth of ABC content, as well as being a home for official news, statements and other programming information from the ABC.

All other ABC accounts will be discontinued starting from today, leaving pinned posts informing users where they can access content.

The decision includes the end of the Q+A account which has long been regarded as a pioneer in audience engagement, with producers previously posting live tweets and boasting about its live interaction. It will now direct all conversation to @abcnews.

It also reverses the enthusiasm for Twitter declared by former managing director Mark Scott who encouraged on-air talent to sign up for accounts as part of show promotion. But in recent years the platform has caused the broadcaster headaches, including at Senate Estimates when management were grilled over presenters making personal comment.

In February ABC also closed accounts for Insiders, News Breakfast and ABC Politics following toxic interaction and harassment of preenters. Profile journalists Lisa Millar, Leigh Sales and Hamish Macdonald had all abandoned the platform citing ongoing abuse, while Stan Grant has similarly citied social media harassment.

ABC indicates results from closing accounts has been positive, with negligible reduction in referral traffic from Twitter to ABC content.

“The vast majority of the ABC’s social media audience is located on other platforms and we want to focus our effort and resources where our audiences are,” ABC said in a statement.

“X is introducing charges which are making the platform increasingly costly to use.

“Also, we have found that closing individual program accounts helps limit the exposure of team members to the sometimes toxic interactions that unfortunately are becoming more prevalent. Concerningly, X has reduced its trust and safety teams.”

Updated:

  • Tagged with Q+A

4 Responses

  1. Interesting but not unsurprising move by the ABC which is probably following a trend as Musk monetizes his ‘X’ investment, allowing more right wing commentary when previously the Twitter bias leaned more to the left.
    When first introduced on Q&A the use of Twitter was a far sighted move by the producers even though I disliked it, for me it provided a soap box for media trolls who used Q&A as a way to highlight political fringe issues which just happened to be popular with ABC news at that time, this was very coincidental indeed.

  2. … not before time … back when Mark Scott was MD, on-air staff were instructed to open Twitter accounts and “tweet something every day” and the commercial twitter logo was broadcast on every ABC television news bulletin with the reporter name tags …

  3. Never understood why TV really went all in on Twitter etc. a decade ago. A useful tool granted and cheaper than running their own forums but ultimately TV channels promoting rival platforms made little sense.

  4. Not happy Jan…Musk and his X…this X subscriber has now…Xited the site completely and permanently….Now all the ABC need to do is monitor their live chat YouTube Q&A and sort the toxic comments there.

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