On Twitter: what does Doncaster North MP Ed Miliband do?

In the last of our series looking at the work of our politicians, we take a look at how active the Labour MP for Doncaster North is on the social media platform.

Analysis of Ed Miliband's Twitter account (@Ed_Miliband) by Motive PR shows he had sent around 7,900 tweets between first joining the website on July 1 2009 and March 29 this year.

It means the 52-year-old sends an average of around 1.7 tweets per day – equating to 52 per month.

This account was created after Mr Miliband was elected to his seat – on May 5 2005.

The average MP that has an account sends 3.5 tweets per day, but around one in 10 representatives did not have one at the time the research was done.

Fellow Labour MP Karl Turner is the most prolific Tweeter – sending an average of 26.1 per day for 12 years.

The roughly 600 MPs with accounts had sent almost 8 million tweets between them by the end of March.

But Motive said they found little correlation between the number of tweets and retweets an MP sent, and the number of followers they have.

Despite his steady output, Mr Turner has fewer than 41,000 followers – below the average of 54,300 for MPs with accounts.

And though he has tweeted fewer than 6,000 times, Boris Johnson's account is followed by 4.1 million people.

The Prime Minister is one of just four MPs with more than a million followers – ahead of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (2.4 million), current Labour leader Keir Starmer (1.2 million) and ex-PM Theresa May (1 million).

Ed Miliband, who serves as Shadow Secretary of State of Climate Change and Net Zero, had around 776,500 followers by the end of March.

Of parties with at least 10 members, Labour was reaching the largest section of the electorate – with an average of 63,500 followers each.

Meanwhile, the Scottish National Party's 45 members averaged just 29,300 each.

Despite not taking their seats in the Commons due to their abstentionist policy, Sinn Fein MPs have tweeted almost 80,000 times from their official accounts.

In these confusing and worrying times, local journalism is more vital than ever. Thanks to everyone who helps us ask the questions that matter by taking out a subscription or buying a paper. We stand together. Nancy Fielder, editor.