Make Your Representation In 140 Characters Or Fewer?

This is entry number 283, published on 11 October 2011, of a blog on the Planning Act 2008 infrastructure planning and authorisation regime. Click here for a link to the whole blog. If you would like to be notified when the blog is updated, with links sent by email, click here.

Today's entry reports on the use of social media in consultation.

A current pre-application consultation for a nationally significant highway project allows representations to be made via Twitter and Facebook - the first time this has been done. Is this the way of the future?

It is certainly an interesting and appealing development and one likely to allow more representations to be made, and allow them to come from some groups who do not normally respond to such exercises. Having said that, I foresee some issues with using either social networking site as a consultation medium.

Control

First, unlike emails and letters, tweets remain the property of the sender rather than becoming the property of the recipient. If I send you an email, I can't later change or delete it, but if I send you a tweet, I can delete it. At least I can't edit it, which I might be able to do with an online forum message. It may therefore be difficult to keep track of what responses have been made and to decide whether a response has actually been made, if it is later withdrawn, or keeps changing.

Facebook, on the other hand, does not suffer from that problem. A message sent to another account cannot later be amended or deleted by the sender. I understand that if you send a message to someone, you can delete it at your end, but it does not disappear at the other end, similar to deleting something from your email 'sent items'.

Size limitation

Secondly, there is the obvious issue of the limit for a tweet of 140 characters - and if you are tweeting to a particular account, it will be even shorter, as the account name will take up some space. Can you really make a meaningful response in so few words?

Again Facebook does not suffer from that problem - there is no limit to the length of a message. On the other hand it is possible to 'like' an organisation or issue (but not dislike one) on Facebook - a single bit of information. To what extent should such an unelaborated indication count, particularly when no counterpart is available?

No subject

Thirdly, tweets and Facebook messages have no equivalent to an email 'subject' line. Thus if tweets or Facebook messages are directed to a general account, it...