ABC puts a big X through its Twitter accounts
Australia’s public broadcaster ABC will archive all of its X (Twitter) accounts except for four from today, significantly reducing its social media presence after it announced a “digital-first” strategy.
The four accounts that will continue to operate include ABC News (@abcnews), ABC Sport (@abcsport), ABC Chinese (@abcchinese) and ABC Australia (@abcaustralia).
However, accounts including QandA (@QandA), ABC Radio National (@RadioNational), and the ABC accounts for different cities will all become dormant.
G’day! Just a quick note from us to let you know we have archived this account.
Here’s how you can stay in touch with ABC Melbourne:
Listen to Local Radio: https://t.co/EMj8VVCyyG
Get your local news: https://t.co/hEqlOnCXdd
Subscribe to our newsletter: https://t.co/nRvNhKFnQY— ABC Melbourne (@abcmelbourne) August 9, 2023
In a statement, ABC said that there were a few reasons that informed the account closures. One of them was to shield team members from “toxic interactions”.
But also, the broadcaster said it does not see significant traffic reduction as a result of the move.
“In February, the ABC closed three program accounts and the results from that have been positive, with negligible reduction in referral traffic from Twitter to ABC content.
“The vast majority of the ABC’s social media audience is located on other platforms and we want to focus our effort and resources where our audiences are.”
The decision comes after ABC announced a new five-year plan in June this year, which saw the public broadcaster striding towards a “digital-first” future to bring more than half of its audience engagement to digital services by 2028.
It lost a few key journalists and presenters since then, including Q+A presenter Stan Grant and 7pm bulletin presenter Juanita Phillips.
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