One year after the Grenfell tower fire Birmingham Eastside decided to find out which MPs have continued to talk about the topic throughout the past 12 months on Twitter and Facebook. Explore every update yourself using the interactive visualisation below.
Data collated from Crowdtangle, analysis and visualisation by Victòria Oliveres
In the wake of the Grenfell tower fire last June, dozens of MPs took to social media to express messages of condolence and sympathy. By July the subject still dominated social updates, as the focus turned to questions and commentary about the details emerging around the possible causes of the tragedy, and by December many MP mentions of the topic related to how victims’ families and those waiting to be rehoused would spend Christmas.
In May, as the first evidence hearings of the Grenfell Tower Public Inquiry began, MPs began to talk about the subject in large numbers once again.
Fewer than one in five mentions by Conservative MPs
Most references to Grenfell on social media have been from Labour MPs (78%) while fewer than one in five mentions come from Conservative MPs (17%).
The tragedy led to increased scrutiny of the materials being used in other high rise buildings: one in ten social media updates from MPs mentioning Grenfell also talked about “cladding”.
Some talked about the materials used in their constituencies for cladding high-rise buildings while others asked the Secretary of State for Housing to stop using combustible plastic-filled aluminium panels.
Fewer than half of West Midlands MPs have mentioned Grenfell on social media
11 of the West Midlands’ 28 MPs have mentioned Grenfell on social media during the past year, and again Labour politicians dominate. Jack Dromey (Erdington) and Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) are the MPs in the region to have mentioned the topic most.
Explore the interactive graphic above to see what MPs have been saying about Grenfell in the past year.
The data and analysis can be found in this Github repo.