Hone Harawira needs no real introduction. He is the Mana Party leader and their sole MP. He is the MP for the seat of Te Tai Tokerau. He has been an MP since 2005, when he was elected as part of the Maori Party. Since 2011 he has been the leader of the Mana Party in Parliament.
Before coming to Parliament he was well known for his activism on behalf of Maori.
He has been subject to a number of criticisms for his attendance record in Parliament.
Hone has sent 326 Tweets, he follows 12 accounts and has 414 followers.
I have looked back through all of his Tweets, as far as I can see, they are all automated press release type Tweets, linking to the Mana Party website.
The Mana Party has it’s tag line as “Movement of the People”, yet Hone seems to be ignoring the use of Twitter as a way to get out and connect with a wide range of people. Mana appears to be a party, like the Greens, where their support base is spread thinly across the whole country, so their chances of getting more than one MP rely on increasing the party vote across the whole country. With just one MP, Mana and Hone need to leverage their reach as much as possible. Twitter should be at the forefront of this. They already have a solid Facebook following, but they are missing out on a different audience on Twitter.
Hone can be charismatic, which is a good thing on Twitter. I suspect, with a bit of help and some effort, Hone could be extremely effective on Twitter.
