Showing 12 results for the tag: Twitter.
Rather than writing a lengthy blog post, I've live-tweeted the event instead
This morning I attended the Parthenon Marbles Colloquy.
For those who follow this blog on twitter, I live-tweeted through most of the event.
For those not on twitter and those who couldn’t follow my typo filled messages, I’ve assembled them in a more readable form on Storify.
View this summary off the day here.
For a long time, like many others who have followed the case closely, I have had a general understanding of which parties supported return of the Parthenon Marbles and which did not. However, with the upcoming General Election in May, I thought it would be interesting to see if the figures actually backed this up.
To the best of my knowledge, none of the parties in the UK currently have an official policy on it, although past statements actions have given a relatively good idea of where the main parties stand on the issue. As followers of British politics will know though, this election, more than any in recent years is as much about the rise of other smaller parties as it is about the main parties. Predictions are that the share of votes cast for smaller parties will far exceed what has been achieved at any previous elections.
In 2010, I took a look at the policies of the main parties and based this on historic information. As a result of this, I know that we had people in the government who strongly believed in the return of the Parthenon Sculptures to Greece, but they were unable to express these views, as they believed that there were more major issues that needed to be tackled with their coalition partners, before time was invested in things such as this.
This time round, I have looked at the information on support from various parties using two entirely different methods.
The first analysis is based on the incumbent MPs and their previous expressions of support. The majority of these come from Early Day Motions, although there are additional instances where people have been added to the list (either for or against) based on public statements, replies to letters or direct conversations.
The second analysis is entirely new and is based on a survey of candidates on Twitter. I started this exercise following the dissolution of Parliament at the end of March 2015. I targeted a wide range of Prospective Parliamentary Candidates, some of whom had been MPs in the previous parliament and many others who had not. This helps us to better gauge levels of support not just from those who have been elected in the past, but also from those who have yet to be elected.
Because people were asked a question on twitter, it meant that the replies could be more nuanced than a simple yes or no. This made it harder to categorise the results, but led to some additional categories and could form the basis for development of new campaign strategies in the future.
Anyone who looks in detail at either of these methods will see that they both have their flaws. However, if we bear in mind these issues, there are some interesting things that can be learned from the data, some of which backed up my expectations, while others were unanticipated.
The data is based on the 649 MPs (the speaker is not counted) at the end of the previous parliament. This is to say – the 21 by-elections during the last five years have been factored into the results. Data has been collected both during the previous parliament and in the case of those who were MPs prior to that, from EDMs dating back as far as 1991. In total, the results of 24 pro-restitution and 3 anti-restitution EDMs have been taken into account.
249 MPs were new to Parliament in the 2010 election (an unusually high number, in part due to many retirements) or have joined through by-elections since then. As only two EDMs have referred to the Parthenon Marbles since 2010, results skew in favour of those MPs who have been in parliament for longer.
Of the parties with more than ten MPs, the highest level of support is from the Lib Dems, at 46%. Labour is next at 23%. Finally, there are the Conservatives with 2%.
Of the smaller parties (where results may hold less accuracy), the SNP has support at 33%, with 2 out of 6 MPs. The SDLP both show 60% support with 2 out of 3 MPs. Plaid Cymru has 100% support with 3 MPs Respect show support of 100%, but only has a single MP.
There have also been some anti-restitution EDMs tabled – generally in direct response to the pro-restitution EDMs that the above results are based on. Of these, the only signatories are from the Conservatives, with 20 MPs indicating that 7% of their MPs have specifically stated that they are against reunification of the sculptures.
As these results do not go against what my more recent survey showed, I will deal with the conclusions of both sets of results together.
As mentioned before, there are a number of potential flaws to this study.
I messaged 1174 PPCs who were on Twitter. From this, I received 138 responses – a reply rate of approximately 12%.
351 of those contacted had been MPs during the previous Parliament, (equating to 54% of the 650 constituencies) so there was a good representation amongst those asked of both current MPs and potential new ones (particularly when one bears in mind that 89 from the last Parliament are retiring of have been deselected – bringing the number of incumbents asked to 63% of those who are standing again).
The candidates selected were based on various lists of twitter contact details I came across, so were somewhat random in their nature, involving a selection of all the parties expected to win seats in Mainland UK. None of the Northern Irish Parties were represented by this list.
With the exception of SNP members, all others came from a single list of Twitter handles that I located, so the balance of parties comes from there. It is skewed a bit heavily in favour of Labour, but all parties are represented by enough members to constitute a reasonable sample size.
The question I asked initially in my tweets was:
In run up to election, was wondering what your views are on Parthenon Marbles return? Many voters feel strongly about it
After I had sent out the first 200 or so messages, a number of people queried the use of the term “many people”. I still stand by my use of it – perhaps not as a percentage of those in the UK it is not many, but worldwide, we are talking of numbers in terms of millions.
To avoid getting side-tracked by queries and to tie the question more closely to current events, for the remainder of those questioned, I asked:
In election run up, was wondering what your views are on Parthenon Marbles return? & of UK rejection of UNESCO mediation
It rapidly became clear once I started getting answers that a simple yes or no was not going to cover everything.
Many people added more detail to qualify their answer; I will cover some of the key points from this later.
Quite a few of the answers were not yes or no, or even maybe. I created a separate category for cases where their intent was completely unclear. It also includes those who only reply to queries from those in their constituency.
Others were undecided, so fell into the maybe category.
Finally, a surprising number (enough to create a category of its own) stated that either that they had no answer or did not have the time to consider it, because they did not see the subject as being an issue. No constituents had ever asked about it in their years of campaigning, or they did not have the time to think about it.
The results of this survey are shown below:
| Party | Yes | No | Maybe | Unclear | Unimportant |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Con | 18% | 41% | 12% | 18% | 12% |
| Green | 87% | 0% | 10% | 0% | 3% |
| Lab | 65% | 2% | 15% | 9% | 9% |
| LD | 70% | 13% | 4% | 9% | 4% |
| PC | 100% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| UKIP | 38% | 25% | 13% | 13% | 13% |
| SNP | 100% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
There was quite a lot of data to digest there, but it can be made simpler if those from the maybe, unclear and unimportant categories are ignored. It seems safe to assume that if it came to a vote, these people would be likely to at the very least follow a 50 / 50 split, or to follow the split of opinions of those in their party who have already made their views known, meaning that the overall trend in the results should still be relatively similar.
As you can see from this table, the results are fairly clear cut. With the exception of the Conservatives, in all other parties the clear majority of respondents support return of the Parthenon Sculptures – in most cases by a massive amount.
UKIP is perhaps the most erratic in their responses, with no definite trend. As with most of the other parties, there is no set party policy on the issue, but in their case, members seem more divided on whether or not they want the sculptures returned.
What is interesting is to interpolate these results to match the actual breakdown of the MPs in parliament. The breakdown of each of the parties questioned is taken as a percentage of their number of seats multiplied by their percentage of yes votes. Other parties not covered by my survey are included as zero support, although we already know from the first part of this study, that Respect (with a single MP) supports the return of the Marbles. The total number of MPs used for calculating the percentages is 650 minus the speaker (who does not vote) and minus the 5 Sinn Féin MPs (who do not take their seats in Parliament) Giving a total of 644 voting MPs. This same methodology (in terms of voting and non-voting members) is used to calculate how many seats are required for a majority in Parliament.
| Party | MPs | As % | Yes % | Aggregate | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Con | 303 | 47% | 30% | 14% | |
| Green | 1 | 0% | 100% | 0% | |
| Lab | 258 | 40% | 97% | 39% | |
| LD | 57 | 9% | 84% | 7% | |
| PC | 3 | 0% | 100% | 0% | |
| SNP | 6 | 1% | 100% | 1% | |
| UKIP | 2 | 0% | 60% | 0% | |
| Others | 14 | 2% | 0% | 0% | |
| Total | 62% |
Not all parties are included in this survey and it relies on a lot of assumptions, but based on the information available, it still represents a surprising outcome, that even with the Conservatives forming the largest block in Parliament (albeit not an overall majority), 62% would support return of the Marbles. This result is notable, as it indicates that support for the issue amongst members might well be higher than the party leaders acknowledge. Bear in mind though that this result, excludes those who are undecided or gave unclear answers, on the assumption that their decision would either match that of others in their party, or not be enough to alter the overall balance.
Various twitter responses included more detail in addition to the yes / no answer, and from this a number of themes emerged.
From those in support of the return of the Marbles:
Out of those that opposed the return of the sculptures, arguments raised justifying retention included:
This analysis is not the place to try and refute these assertions, but many of these statements are factually incorrect and other articles on this website have already explained this in more detail.
Others suggest that some MPs do not really see the return of the Marbles as an issue.
Finally, I was surprised to hear from some that despite the recent loan to Russia, the presence of Amal Clooney in Athens and previous comments by both George Clooney and Stephen Fry, some said that they had never heard of the case.
At the level of which parties support or are against the return of the Marbles, both surveys present broadly similar results. Although the level of support indicated varies (in part due to the very different methods used in each survey), the indication is that there is support from all the major parties, with the exception of the Conservatives and possibly UKIP.
Because of the nature of both surveys, it is hard to translate the survey results to an exact level of support, although my attempts show that it may well be high enough that a majority in Parliament would be in favour of their return if an un-whipped vote was taken. Factors to consider are whether those who do not reply / do not respond to EDMs do so because they are against the issue, or because they do not have the time, or any one of many other possible reasons.
One thing that surprised me was the numbers that did not see is as an issue of importance. I put this largely down to a lack of understanding of how the other side might feel – while it is easy to be in Britain and happy with the current situation, or uncaring about it, it is harder to take this point of view if you consider how those on the other side of the argument (in this case, the citizens of Greece) feel about the situation. While we might have concerns here about the transport system or the NHS, return of the Marbles is something that relatively easily rights a historical wrong, and at the same time would show that Britain had moved on from an imperialistic viewpoint and increase our standing internationally.
The issue of understanding the other side of the argument is perhaps what produces the high level of support from Plaid Cymru and SNP PPCs. There are various relevant intra-national cases that affect both these areas, the most notable being the Mold Cape and the Lewis Chessmen, which allow them to far more easily understand how another country in a similar situation might feel than for many British MPs who are more comfortable with the status quo.
While there were some inaccuracies in the understanding of the situation by those who supported return, it was clear from the responses that the amount of misinformation within the retentionist camp is far higher. This highlights that education is key to resolving the issue – many are against restitution in large part only because their understanding of the situation is built on factual inaccuracies. No inaccuracy in the media should go unchallenged, but at the same time spurious arguments that might weaken the reunification cause should be dropped.
In a separate message endorsing the cause that I received from a former Tory councillor, I queried that his opinion was at odds with the majority in his party who I spoke to and whether there was a reason for this. He suggested that a major reason was that many people did not know the history of the case well enough.
So, to sum up, anything other than a Conservative Majority on May 7th 2015 will increase the chances for the return of the Marbles. Once the election is over, I will re-visit this Analysis, both in terms of how the breakdown of parties has changed, and in terms of how many of those questioned have become MPs both within the new Parliament and within the Government.
As a closing comment, one of the PC PPCs who I spoke to noted that: “Finders keepers should be remain a playground chant & not form part of government policy.”
Perhaps this is the simplest summary of the reasons for return of the sculptures.
APNI – Alliance Party of Northern Ireland
Con – Conservative
DUP – Democratic Unionist Party
Lab – Labour
LD – Liberal Democrat
PC – Plaid Cymru
SDLP – Social Democratic and Labour Party
SNP – Scottish National Party
UKIP – UK Independence Party
PPC – Prospective Parliamentary Candidate
EDM – Early Day Motion
Archaeologist Monica Hanna recently received a Beacon Award from Saving Antiquities for Everybody for her work in highlighting the looting of antiquities in Egypt. This article looks at how she used twitter to help to publicise the looting to the outside world.
Monica Hanna
From:
New York Times
Taking on Art Looters on Twitter
By TOM MASHBERGAPRIL 9, 2014Monica Hanna stood inside the Malawi National Museum in Minya, Egypt, last August, armed only with a cellphone and her Twitter account, as looters ran rampant. Nearly all the objects she had loved since childhood — mummies and amulets, scarabs and carved ibises — were gone. In their place lay shattered glass, shards of pottery, splintered wood and the charred remains of a royal sarcophagus.
The thieves had stolen all but a few dozen of the museum’s 1,100 artifacts, leaving behind some statues and painted coffins that were too heavy to cart off. Dr. Hanna, a 30-year-old archaeologist, sent out a tweet pleading for help. Soon, she, some colleagues and local police officers were hauling the surviving relics to a truck as men fired automatic weapons nearby.
Read the rest of this entry »
Ask A Curator has been running on twitter for a number of years now, based on the simple enough premise, that for one day each year, you can ask curators of the museums who are signed up to it, pretty much anything you want.
Of course, not every question gets answered – for many of the more well known institutions, there will be too many and other questions may be completely inappropriate etc. Also, many of the staff answering tweets also have other work to do during their day as well.
This year, there was a definite trend (at least among the people that I was following), to ask questions about cultural property. However, as the day went on, it became few of these questions were actually getting answered.
Eventually, after being bombarded by questions about the Parthenon Sculptures, the British Museum bluntly stated:
For all questions related to the Parthenon sculptures please see this page stating the Museum’s position ow.ly/oYNy2 #AskACurator
The page that it directed you to though, answered very few of the actual questions that they were being asked. People were asking about all sorts of aspects, such as whether the museum planned to organise educational exhibitional exhibitions relating to the sculptures, to whether they would consider displaying a copy rather than the original (as is the case with the Rosetta Stone. However, everyone received the same response.
Now, I’m not asking for miracles, but it would be nice to understand whether the museums at least partially acknowledged people’s concerns, rather than just directing them to a statement written years ago, that takes no account of public opinion, or the nature of the actual question being asked.
This approach was not just taken by the British Museum. Many others seemed to ignore any queries about disputed artefacts in their collections, even when the question itself should not have been that controversial.
Dr Donna Yates made a far more impressive attempt to quiz the curators of museums around the world, but was met with a similar lack of responses.
You can also see my attempts to get an answer on the Marbles (Storify won;t show half my tweets for some reason today, so you don’t get to see the ones to other museums about other artefacts.
After his book Scorpia Rising, it was clear that author Anthony Horowitz had an interest in the Parthenon Sculptures in the British Museum.
Now, in a post on twitter he is more clear about his support for the return of the sculptures to Athens. That they should definitely return to Greece to be displayed in the New Acropolis Museum in Athens.
From:
Twitter
@AnthonyHorowitz
Visited the superb Acropolis Museum in Athens and – I’m sorry – but I really do think the Elgin marbles should go back.
7:28 AM – 29 Mar 13
The Tales from a Tour Guide blog (@TourGuideGirl on Twitter) has an interesting account of the vast amount of posts that ensued when she posted hew views about the Parthenon Marbles. I seem to be heavily implicated in it – although I’m far from the only commenter.
Read the article here.
As part of an ongoing update of their website & social media strategy, the UK based Marbles Reunited campaign are now using twitter. They have also changed from the old Facebook group (now closed to new members) to a new Facebook Page, which should allow for more frequent updates on what is happening with the campaign.
If you support the campaign & use twitter or Facebook, you are encouraged to follow them / become a fan, to keep up with the latest developments.
Follow them on twitter – here.
Become a fan on Facebook – here.
Their website is still: www.marblesreunited.org.uk
At the request of some readers, I’ve added the option to receive updates to this website automatically by email. You can do this by clicking on the link near the base of the list of links on the right hand side, below the heading Meta.
You can also if you prefer still follow updates on Twitter or Facebook.
The American Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures now has a page on Facebook, that Facebook users can use to follow the updates to their campaign. Visit the page here.
This is in addition to their main website, which you can still access here.
It is worth reminding people that Elginism is also available to follow on Facebook & Twitter so that you can have the articles appear straight in your newsfeed.
Alex Kapranos, lead singer of the band Franz Ferdinand has spoken out in his Twitter feed on his support for the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece.
From:
alkapranos
Just discovered my father follows me on this thing. Hi Dad. Good luck getting your marbles back.
10:37 PM Feb 1st from web
Now he’s retired he spends his time campaigning to have the Parthenon Marbles returned to Greece where they were stolen from.
10:43 PM Feb 1st from web
Stolen by a Scot – a descendent of Robert The Bruce – then sold to the English for £30K.
10:47 PM Feb 1st from web
British Museum always trots out the same old patronising crap about how they look after them in a way the savages in Greece never could.
10:50 PM Feb 1st from web
In addition to this site, for some time now it has been possible to follow Elginism on its associated Twitter feed & Facebook page. In an attempt to increase the multimedia aspects of the site, you can now also join Elginism’s Flickr photostream. At present the photostream consists of archive images – some of which I’ve already made available through other sources. In the coming months though I hope to further integrate these various aspects of the site so that they tie in more closely to the main site.
A youtube channel for Elginism will also be available soon.
View Elginism’s photostream on Flickr here.
Current photosets include:
For people who are using Twitter to keep up to date with news, Elginism is now on Twitter. All posts here would be linked to, but I will also try to add other items of information – either breaking news that I don’t have time to create a full blog post for, or links to other relevant articles.
You can of course continue to view Elginism in the normal way here.