The recent emergence of online social media has had a significant effect on the contemporary political landscape, yet our understanding of this remains less than complete. This article adds to current understanding of the online engagement between politicians and the public by presenting the first quantitative analysis of the utilisation of the social network tool Twitter by Australian politicians. The analysis suggests that politicians are attempting to use Twitter for political engagement, though some are more successful in this than others. Politicians are noisier than Australians in general on Twitter, though this is due more to broadcasting than conversing. Those who use Twitter to converse appear to gain more political benefit from the platform than others. Though politicians cluster by party, a relatively 'small world' network is evident in the Australian political discussion on Twitter.Much has been made of the impact of social media on the modern political landscape. For enthusiasts, social networking tools such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and blogging and video platforms offer powerful new ways to connect, influence and engage fellow citizens -perhaps ushering in a radical transformation in the way citizens connect with and influence their government and politicians connect with the public. Within this, politicians throughout the democratic world have begun to embrace such tools as a new way to connect with their constituents, shortcutting the heavily mediated connections offered by traditional media (Keane 2009a;Posetti 2010;Westling 2007). As Queensland Premier Anna Bligh recently observed, Engaging with the community online is a great way for me, as Premier, to get feedback on the decisions and actions of my government . . . Twitter in

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Twitter is now a key platform for public communication between a diverse range of participants, but the overall shape of the communication network it provides remains largely unknown. This article provides a detailed overview of the network structure of the Australian Twittersphere and identifies the thematic drivers of the key clusters within the network. We identify some 3.72 million Australian Twitter accounts and map the follower/followee connections between the 255,000 most connected accounts; we utilize community detection algorithms to identify the major clusters within this network and examine their account populations to identify their constitutive themes; we examine account creation dates and reconstruct a timeline for the Twitter adoption process among different communities; and we examine lifetime and recent tweeting patterns to determine the historically and currently most active clusters in the network. In combination, this offers the first rigorous and comprehensive study of the network structure of an entire national Twittersphere.

Social media is increasingly being used by science communicators, journalists and government agencies to engage in discourse with a range of publics. Despite a growing body of literature on Twitter use, the communication of science via Twitter is comparatively under explored. This paper examines the prominence of scientific issues in political debate occurring on Twitter during the 2013 and 2016 Australian federal election campaigns. Hashtracking of the umbrella political hashtag auspol was used to capture tweets during the two campaign periods. The 2013 campaign was particularly relevant as a major issue for both parties was climate change mitigation, a controversial and partisan issue. Therefore, climate change discussion on Twitter during the 2013 election was used as a focal case study in this research. Subsamples of the 2013 data were used to identify public sentiment and major contributors to the online conversation, specifically seeking to see if scientific, governmental, media or ‘public' sources were the more dominant instigators. We compare the prominence of issues on Twitter to mainstream media polls over the two campaign periods and argue that the potential of Twitter as an effective public engagement tool for science, and for politicised scientific issues in particular, is not being realised.

Against a backdrop of substantial and persistent disruption in Australian federal politics, this article examines the uses of Twitter in campaigning in the 2013 and 2016 federal elections. We comprehensively tracked the tweets posted by, and directed at, all candidates during the final 2 weeks of these campaigns, and compare patterns in candidate and audience activity across the two elections. This documents considerable shifts in campaigning strategies, electorate responses, and central themes of the debate from 2013 to 2016; we show that these shifts are in line with the changing electoral fortunes of Australia's major party blocs during an exceptionally tumultuous period in federal politics.