This morning @maxfawcett posted

"I know we all love Twitter but the Premier isn't resigning because of scheduled tweets."

I've been reading the replies with interest and I have a few comments.

First of all, Max is correct. A Premier resigning due to public pressure is not a small thing and the sort of social media density you'd have to achieve would be so large that it would have to become, itself, a story the regular media would carry.

And even then, it wouldn't be a shoe-in.

But that doesn't mean that social media is without power or can't be used to effect change.

Enough coordinated pressure can get politicians to do things to improve a situation to *save their jobs*.

So, my point is that creating certain changes, like who is the Premier, is always and should always be a voting booth issue.

But creating change in how that Premier addresses things can be achieved through social media pressure ...

... if that pressure is sustained, coordinated and "rational".

Finally, we haven't learned how to work together on social media yet and can't mount those kinds of campaigns because of (all sorts of human nature reasons).

In short, you can *potentially* use social media to get positive changes in performance but you can't likely use it to get someone to give up their job. That said, you can likely create enough pressure to get a Premier to cause someone else lose their job.