According to a new university study, politicians using Twitter are actually the least effective communicators of political news. The findings suggest that it is actually bloggers and political junkies who provide the most-seen tweets regarding political affairs.

The study also explores how the use of hashtags increases exposure for tweets which may otherwise remain unseen. Hashtags, when used in combination with good content of the 140 character variey, can spread the news and information faster and more effectively by expanding the audience which may see a tweet.

According to the study, which was conducted by Professor Tamara Small of Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada, followed the usage of Twitter by members of the Canadian House of Parliament. Of the 308 members of the House, only 37 percent did any tweeting. The study also focuses on the use of the #cdnpoli hashtag, which is the top political hashtag in Canada. Small found that the use of the hashtag increased the visibility of political tweets exponentially, but only five members of the House had used the hashtag at all.

"Only a very small number of Canadian leaders are tweeting, period" says Small. According to the study, politicians only accounted for 1.4 percent of the conversations on Twitter, with other media making up around 10 percent. Furthermore, the "press release-y" quality of many politician's tweets left them, at the very least, uninteresting.

"There is a concern about saying things off the cuff," says Small, who believes that many of the politicians she reviewed relied on their staff to actually create the tweets.

"I question if a lot of them are actually twittering" she says.

Another problem for the tweeting Canadian politicians she studied was that their lack of hashtags led to them communicate mainly with those people who were already following them. On the other hand, Small calls the  use of the #cdnpoli hashtag by journalists and other individuals "exceptional" for sharing news and information.

Overall, Small believes that politicians are under-utilizing the potential that tweeting with hashtags has to blast information and reach new followers, as well as inform constituencies about the intricacies of their agenda.