This MPs on Twitter post is going to be a little bit different to the ones I have done so far.
Mojo Mathers doesn’t need much in the way of introduction. She is New Zealand’s first deaf MP. She isa Green Party list MP based in Christchurch. I have already blogged about her once.
Instead of looking at how she has used Twitter, solely from her Twitter feed, I thought I would contact Mojo to get her view of how she sees Twitter being of use to her.
Mojo said that she uses Facebook more than she does Twitter to connect with her communities of interest, including deaf and hearing impaired. Mojo sees Twitter as being of more use for beltway politics, emergency responses and trending issues.
Though she point to the #deaf and #NZSL hashtags. She also made clear that she does not link to any videos that are not subtitled or have a transcript attached. Which is something that other MPs should think about. When they Tweet links to multimedia content, are they excluding sections of the community?
One of the great advantages of Twitter is that it allows many more people to directly engage with MPs, or the content they share. However it is important that sections of the community are not excluded. If for no other reason than they all have the right to vote, and every vote matters.
It is not directly related to Twitter, but one great thing I could see Mojo facilitating would be a cheat sheet for other MPs/politicians/media on how to make social media/online media more available and useable to those in the deaf/hearing impaired community. I would be happy to host and promote that cheat sheet.
Twitter is a great tool for many MPs, if used correctly. However, some MPs may find that they get better returns on engagement with other social media. It is up to the MP involved to assess that. But if you do start using a particular form of social media, use it well.
