6/26/2014

Phone-hacking victims plan “thunderclap’ Twitter protest



Simultaneous tweet of ‘Leveson now’ for stronger press regulation will feature JK Rowling, Ian McEwan and Stephen Fry


Almost 2,000 people, including victims of phone hacking such as Gemma Dowler, the sister of Milly Dowler, are to take part in a simultaneous “thunderclap” Twitter campaign for stronger press regulation.


They will all tweet the same message “Leveson now” at 6pm tonight, Thursday, in the hope that the term will create a spike in hash-tagged terms and appear as a trend on the social network.


Others who will take part in the campaign include the authors JK Rowling, Ian McEwan, and Irvine Welsh and TV personalities Stephen Fry and John Cleese. Also expected to join in are Russell Brand, Simon Pegg, John Bishop, Ian McKellen, Richard Dawkins, Graham Norton, Paloma Faith, Alastair Campbell, Marcus Brigstock, Billy Bragg, Hugh Grant, Tom Watson, Irvine Welsh, Peter Tatchell and Guy Chambers.


The Thunderclap website lets supporters of a cause pledge to all tweet a message at the same time, boosting the audience of the slogan by orders of magnitude.


The Labour party used it in November for a campaign to freeze energy bills and said it was a “phenomenal success”.


In Labour’s case, at 10am on Sunday, 848 people, including party leader Ed Miliband, comedian Eddie Izzard and the actor David Morrissey automatically tweeted: It’s time to deal with David Cameron’s cost of living crisis. Let’s freeze gas and electricity bills. #freezethatbill http://thndr.it/1ixNa2y.


Thunderclap’s statistics show that the tweet made it on to the feed of 4.5 million people, almost exactly as many as watched the BBC News at Ten on Sunday, 3 November.

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