A good use of Twitter?
Our friend Marcus posted today about the possible role of social media in an Obama administration. It raises an interesting dilemma: how do you balance the public’s right and need to know in order to hold officials accountable with the risk of information overload that causes the public to shut everything out?
A related thought: How would this play out if a non-profit decided to do something similar with their finances and strategic decisions? Would this help solve the problem that non-profits run into of providing up-to-date feedback to donors?
Rhea-the great fan of Twitter- is this a valid use for Twitter?
I think Twitter could be very helpful for ministries that re-act to real-world events. I did a post on this on another blog you might remember.
I think Marcus’ point is a valid one: people who interact online expect their interactions to matter and do we want blog comments to influence decision makers?
I happen to agree with the Founders who feared Democracy and considered it just about the worst choice of government. Also I feel like the channels we’ve used for the past two hundred years to feedback to government (voting, factions and media).
However, if the transparency increases participation then I’m all for it. If posting a bill online for public comment leads anyone outside of interest groups to take interest then its a good thing in my book.
Jake
July 15, 2008 at 11:07 am
Thanks for link, y’all. I do enjoy following what you are thinking here.
Jake has a good point. For this to work, clear expectations will need to be set that this is still a one-way channel for the president.
Youtube can be fireside chats. A blog could be a fireside chat. But bloggers shouldn’t expect to provide valid government feedback through these avenues.
Like Jake said. We have some other, more conservative forms of feedback for government.
I’m really interested in your idea about nonprofit uses of social media for updating donors. In a sense that’s the kind of thing we’re exploring at the foundation where I work. The big challenge has been getting internal buy-in from the folks we need to help us generate the content.
Marcus Goodyear
July 15, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Marcus, to your question about internal buy-in. First off kudos in understanding that this isn’t necessarily a big dollars investment, but a big time investment.
I think there are two key pieces to the content generation. First, you have to develop it into an organization wide ethos of content creation. If you try to centralize it it probably won’t work. What I mean is that you need a culture that uses Twitter individually and then you can really get the value out of using it as an organization.
And the second makes the first possible. People are concerned about being perfect. A certain author on this blog mentioned to me that she didn’t post on that other blog because she felt like a post had to be perfect.
Removing this stigma and allowing people to write imperfect posts and updates is the only way an organization would ever be able to generate enough content.
Jake
July 15, 2008 at 8:21 pm
My take is that Twitter will form the communication that is channeled through it. So if it were to be used for feedback, it will look very different than what you would send via email, or via a website with an auto-form that lets you customize an existing petition letter.
There are certain levels of expectation (i.e. a response within 24 hours for email, 1-2 weeks for snail mail) that accompanies each channel, so users of social media will just have to be aware of current usage and expectations for the channels they use.
To use a very improbable example, something like this might come up:
@misterpresident – please dont wear a red striped tie with your blue pinstripe suit ever again.
Not exactly the legislation feedback they were looking for, but unfortunately, they will have to expect something like this if they open it up to the entire twittering community.
Rhea
July 17, 2008 at 3:34 pm
@misterpresident – it’s nu-clear, not nu-cular!
(seriously, people used to pick up the phone and call us about that….)
Jenn
July 17, 2008 at 6:36 pm