Ben Ansell

@benwansell · Nuffield College, Oxford · joined 01 Sep 2009

Politics Professor, Nuffield & Oxford, FBA. Host of BBC Radio 4 Rethink. Reith Lecturer. Columnist for Prospect.

18 780Followers

945Following

30 152Posts total

169.3KViews on collected posts

Against accounts of the same size

5 posts from the last 90 days, next to the 10K–100K follower range. shown widely, but few of those viewers react.

Median views2 613this account1 540median for 10K–100K

Reach, %13.91%this account4.74%median for 10K–100K

Engagement, %0.57%this account1.87%median for 10K–100K

Metric	This account	Median for 10K–100K	Ratio
Median views per post	2 613	1 540	1.70×
Reach (views ÷ followers)	13.91%	4.74%	2.94×
Engagement rate	0.57%	1.87%	0.30×

Others in this range → Compare with another account → How these benchmarks are built →

Growth & engagement

How the posts we collected actually performed: views and reaction rate post by post, what the audience did with them, and where the follower count goes.

Views per post

131.7K12 Sep

1.3K31 Aug

29K

1.6K

3.1K1 Sep

2.6K2 Sep

Last 6 collected posts, oldest on the left. The scale is logarithmic: one post can outrun the rest a hundred times over.

Engagement rate per post

0.36%12 Sep

0.15%31 Aug

0.57%

0.88%

0.35%1 Sep

1.30%2 Sep

Reactions — likes, reposts, replies and quotes — divided by views. Median for 10K–100K accounts is 1.87%.

What the audience does

Likes71.0%527 in total

Reposts12.0%89 in total

Replies7.8%58 in total

Quotes3.8%28 in total

Bookmarks5.4%40 in total

Share of every reaction we collected for this account. Replies mean argument, reposts mean endorsement, bookmarks mean the post was worth keeping.

The follower curve appears once this account has two daily snapshots — we take one a day, and this one is on its first.

Latest posts

Just under two weeks til the closing date for the Assoc Prof in Law, Politics and Computational Social Science at Nuffield College and the University of Oxford. This is an amazing opportunity to join the Centre for Advanced Social Science Methods. https://t.co/rg0b48OWhk 2.6K views · 15 likes · 19 reposts · 0 replies 02 Sep 2026 Agree that basically the status-supplying effects of elite universities are largely AI proof (I would be very surprised if people stopped applying to Oxford). But elites are not completely independent of rest of sector (pensions in UK, PhDs etc everywhere). 3.1K views · 11 likes · 0 reposts · 0 replies 01 Sep 2026 Rare for a Spectator piece to bemoan being treated like an adult but I suppose it comes to us all 1.6K views · 13 likes · 1 reposts · 0 replies 31 Aug 2026 (This is ultimately bullish for the top 50-75 universities anyway — if the demand ultimately isn’t very dependent on instruction/education then higher ed will be robust to AI). 29K views · 151 likes · 2 reposts · 8 replies 31 Aug 2026 For all the knocks the BBC gets, this was the main story on Newsnight back on July 29. In retrospect I was probably a little sanguine about it on the show but it was definitely taken seriously by the media here. 1.3K views · 2 likes · 0 reposts · 0 replies 31 Aug 2026 I am deeply grateful and honoured to have been asked to give this year's Reith Lectures by the BBC. The title of the series is 'Our Democratic Future', which is no simple topic but I hope to do it justice. A v quick thread on details. 1/n https://t.co/WL9pqAMmCQ 131.7K views · 335 likes · 67 reposts · 50 replies 12 Sep 2023