Recently I published a post about Shane Jones and the signs I see of preparation for a future tilt at the Labour Leadership. In that post I hypothesise that Shane Jones has been using both social and mainstream media to help raise his profile. However, following the developments of recent days, the leak of Labour’s ICT policy and the revelations about David Cunliffe’s use of and declaration or not of trusts, I have been paying closer attention to Labour MPs on social media. Something interesting jumped out when looking at Andrew Little’s Twitter account.
As at 0945 6 March 2014, the last Tweet that Andrew sent was as follows:
As a former National Secretary of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU), Andrew does have a reason to be involved in the questioning around the charges to do with the Pike River mine. However, it is not the content of his tweets that is a possible sign of something afoot. But the lack there of.
During the period in which lots of questions and challenges have been faced by the current leadership of the Labour party, Andrew has been very quiet on Twitter.
Between the evening of the 25 Feb and the afternoon of 5 March, Andrew did not send any tweets at all. This compares with him being reasonably active, with a few breaks of a couple of days. 
When a potential Labour candidate came under scrutiny about their use of TVNZ resources to support the Labour party Andrew spoke up. Yet with his party leader now under scrutiny, he has been silent.
He has also been happy to make digs at the Taxpayers Union on Twitter as well. So Andrew does not have a record of being backwards about coming forwards. He is willing to be vocal on Twitter.
I have tried to see if this silence extends to Facebook as well, but it is locked down to friends only, and there are no public posts from him.
The other interesting element is that if you go to his Labour Party profile page, the Twitter account that it links to is this one:
While he has been silent on social media, he has issued a 2 Press Releases to do with the Pike River legal issues. Surely if you wanted to help generate interest around this issue, you would be using social media?
Andrew has been touted as a future leader of the party. He also has strong connections to the union movement, who of course now have a strong say in the Labour leadership. What with the recent appointment of Matt McCarten, from the Unite Union, as the Labour Leader Chief of Staff, is there more to this silence than just the busy life of an MP?
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