Twitter is well known as a platform for comment and debate by individuals but a new twist is aimed at giving whole nations and cities a voice.

It a new trend called “rotation curation”, someone sets themselves up as the curator of a Twitter account, but doesn’t actually post any Tweets. Instead, control of the account is handed to a different person each week.

It started in Sweden, where someone set up the @sweden account back in 2011. More national Twitter accounts soon followed. And others sprung up for cities (the account for everyone in Leeds, @PeopleofLeeds, was the next one after @sweden).

Following accounts like these is an eye-opening experience, even for people who’ve been on Twitter for a while. Since control of the account keeps changing each week, you hear a lot of different voices. Some are inspired. Some controversial.

One or two have managed to be subversive, or even downright nasty. No-one gets more than a week to have their say, so even the loudest and most unsavoury characters have to give way when their stint is over.

Generally, though, it’s a great way of finding out what’s going on elsewhere in the world. It’s not like traditional news.

Mostly, the curators of these national Twitter accounts are ordinary people living ordinary lives – but for one week, they are granted an extraordinarily powerful voice.

There are dozens of accounts like this to follow, and you can sign up to be one of the contributors if you live in the right place.

The UK account is @PeopleofUK, and there are accounts for other places listed at the Rotation Curation home page, www.rotation curation.com. Will Bournemouth and Poole accounts take off?