Trolling, abuse, misinformation, bots – welcome to Twitter during a general election. And yet, despite all that, there are valuable live news updates, on-the-ground snippets of valuable information, good arguments being thrashed out. Yes, Twitter makes a huge contribution to public discourse in politics – if only you could avoid all the other stuff.
The Independent Social Stream aims to separate the useful from the abusive. Our politics team has created a list of the people worth following. All their tweets will appear here, unfiltered. So if you don’t use Twitter, or are driven to delete the app, you can still see the best of the digital debate – and without the lengthy chains of abusive replies that political tweets often prompt.
While we don’t claim that the list includes everyone worth following, or that every post in it will be valuable, it is a collection of many of the sharpest influencers, at The Independent and elsewhere, covering this election. If you would like to suggest someone new for the list, or have thoughts about the things you see posted here, please write to socialstream@independent.co.uk.
Social media is an increasingly important battle ground in elections - and home to many questionable claims pumped out by all sides. If social media sites won't investigate the truth of divisive advertising, we will. Please send any political Facebook advertising you receive to digitaldemocracy@independent.co.uk, and we will catalogue and investigate it. Read more here.
