Twitter is a great place for open, honest conversation. It’s a wonderful opportunity for people to connect, including councillors and the people who elected them into office. But one thing’s for sure, it’s certainly no place to try and control the message in the same way as the traditional press release heavy conversation light world of communications.

An extreme case perhaps, but no-one is now more aware of the perils of trying to control the message in the the age of web-powered communications than Ryan Giggs after his super injunction episode, where the footballer took legal action to ban the UK press from breaking a story about his personal life (in fact banning them from mentioning they had been banned even). Unfortunately the facts were already out there, and the more his legal team tried to control the story, the quicker it gathered momentum, spreading like wildfire across tweets and status updates.

Not only are high profile celebrities on the receiving end of the Twitter chatter, but recently in local government there has even been a high profile case of one councillor making the headlines as super (anonymous) user of the service, hitting out at his own council.

After a series of anonymous tweets about South Tynside Council, and in an unprecedented move, the local authority successfully subpoenaed twitter to hand over local councillor Ahmad Khan’s account details, including the names, email addresses and contact details relating to several accounts, including @fatcouncillor and @ahmedkhan01. The council justified the move as down to ‘concerns surrounding damaging claims to council officers’.

It is believed to be the first time Twitter has bowed to legal pressure to identify anonymous users and comes amid a huge row over privacy and free speech online.

“It is like something out of 1984,” Khan told the Guardian. “If a council can take this kind of action against one of its own councillors simply because they don’t like what I say, what hope is there for freedom of speech or privacy?”

“I don’t fully understand it but it all relates to my Twitter account and it not only breaches my human rights, but it potentially breaches the human rights of anyone who has ever sent me a message on Twitter.

South Tyneside Council responded by saying “the council has a duty of care to protect its employees and as this blog contains damaging claims about council officers, legal action is being taken to identify those responsible.” Last week the council caused further controversy by taking action to find the writer behind the blog Mr Monkey, who has posted various stories about council leader Iain Malcome among others. The council justify their search for the writer behind the blog as “an analogy to harassment cases, and their duty to look after their staff.”

The taxpayers alliance have condemmed the council’s actions stating that “we are funding a case that undermines free expression and, whether or not Mr Monkey’s claims were genuine, will have a powerful chilling effect deterring future, important criticism of public bodies.”

With such anxiety and uncertainty surrounding these recent stories, we wondered what our tweeting councillors made of it all. Do you see twitter as a no holds barred kind of a place or do you think councillors should tread the same line online as you do offline, bound by the same rules?

We’d love to hear you’re thoughts on this so do leave a comment below.

Are you interested in writing a guest piece as an online councillor (anonymously or otherwise)? Let’s talk! Either drop us a line or send us a tweet (or direct message if you prefer;).