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So far I have not been very good at demonstrating our work visually. To begin redressing this I have had a go at visualising some of the results from last year’s political engagement research.

In one part of our survey, school students in the 11-19 age range were asked which topics they thought they should be taught more of. I took the data I wanted to visualise and created a new table with it. Then, with the help of tutorials from flowingdata.com, I used the statistical computing framework R to turn the numbers into both a heat map and a set of Chernoff faces. I then used a vector drawing package (Inkscape, to be precise) to tidy up and tailor the images.

Heat map

In the heat map image below, the ‘hotter’ the topic the more important the students thought it was.

Chernoff faces

The bigger, happier and more elaborate the face (in the image below), the more important its associated topic was felt to be. The characteristics of the faces are determined by the data for each age group.

All of that was derived from a csv file of a simple table of data:

I have been developing a draft Twitter strategy and policy, based on Neil Williams’ draft strategy for government departments.

Although a long way from finished, I am releasing a very early draft now because Neil’s has received prominent media attention.

My version is already substantially different from Neil’s, and I still have a long way to go. There’s a lot that I want to rearrange, re-work or cut completely; it does not constitute the Citizenship Foundation’s strategy for using Twitter.

My main reason for releasing it now is that there are some inaccuracies in the original, particularly in regard to replies and direct messages, which are in danger of informing government strategies.

But hats off to Neil, for doing a superb job producing a draft from which people like me could work.

Download the latest version of my Draft Twitter Strategy.

Updates

• 29 July, 13:30: File replaced with version 2. It should be read as three related but independent documents: ‘Strategy’, ‘Policy’ and ‘Appendices’.
• 28 July, 09:28: the draft strategy document will periodically be replaced with newer versions while it’s under development.

Feedback

This is feedback that I have already given for Neil’s document, reproduced here in case it’s useful.

• Not sure I agree that having a Twitter account renders web feeds (eg RSS, Atom) redundant. Twitter is immediate and pretty ephemeral: I might stumble across something on Twitter but I’ll track it using a feed reader.
• A strict clearance procedure can be counter-productive as it can severely undermine the immediate and conversational nature of Twitter. Not easy to avoid in the public sector I imagine, but my take on it is to delegate oversight responsibility down to line managers.
• I don’t think it’s possible to have an ‘organisational voice’ in a conversation. An organisation as an entity does not have an individual, informal, human voice: it is the collective voices of the staff (on behalf of the organisation) that engage in discussion, not the organisation itself. Therefore I don’t agree that a corporate account should be anonymous: it should be clear who the person behind it is. I’m waiting with interest for ConnectTweet, as I think it may solve a lot of issues.
• Having a high following/followers ratio is generally seen as a good thing, not a bad thing, by reputation grading services.
• @replies no longer work like that: people will only see your reply if they are following both you and the person you’re replying too (explained on Twitter and reported on Mashable)
• You don’t need to be following someone to send them a DM, only they need to be following you (DMs explained by Twitter)
• I don’t think ‘friends’ and ‘following’ are different. As I understand it ‘friends’ was replaced by ‘following’ as a clarification (‘What is Following’? (Twitter Help))