Sunlight’s Twitter Lobby Campaign
Posted by Allison Fine on March 12, 2009
The Sunlight Foundation, always pushing the envelope on using social media tools to influence policy making in Washington, announced yesterday the launch of an effort to use Twitter to lobby individual Congress people to vote for
In an email received yesterday, Ellen Miller, co-founder and executive director of Sunlight, wrote:
Currently there are 17 senators tweeting and we intend to get our supporters to @lobby them to seek their support for S. 482. We believe that this will be the first organized direct lobbying of members of Congress over Twitter.
For those of you who don’t speak Washington, S. 482 is a bill introduced in the Senate to require the electronic disclosure of Senate campaign finance reports.
Not everyone thought this campaign was a great idea. Ethan Zuckerman wrote a blog post that said, in part:
I realized that the “ask” of the campaign was to send 17 identical tweets to the congresscritters who’ve adopted Twitter. This means that all my twitter followers get to see me nagging Congress – including the roughly half of them that don’t live in the US – with seventeen messages. And it means that Congressfolk start seeing what amounts to Twitter spam, and start dismissing it much as they learned to dismiss email.
So, has Twitter jumped the shark and just become another tool for spamming politicians and decision makers? Or is it, could it, be something fundamentally different? What if the focus of the campaign was to ask (a nicer word than insist, but perhaps the reality in is somewhere in between) that the 17 tweeting Senators engage in a discussion on Twitter about how we can help them to get this bill passed. Twitter has so far been used by elected officials as a one-way communication tool, they tweet about what’s on their mind, and we get to listen in. We could ask/insist that they use Twitter to engage in a two-way conversation about legislation. Would it be possible to get Senators to stop talking for a minute and start listening? Pretty high bar, I know, but perhaps worth reaching for.
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This entry was posted on March 12, 2009 at 1:18 pm and is filed under Social Media. Tagged: Ellen Miller, Ethan Zuckerman, S. 482, sunlight foundation, Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
4 Responses to “Sunlight’s Twitter Lobby Campaign”
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Ellen Miller said
We sure saw Ethan’s post expressing concerns that this Tweet Lobby effort amounts to “spamming” Members of Congress who are on Twitter. Well, a genuine message of concern about a pending bill can’t be “spam,” as most of us understand that term. It is Members’ job, after all, to pay attention to public opinion as they wrestle with the issues before them.
That said, we can understand if Ethan and others prefer the time-tested method of calling (here’s the link to do that http://sunlightfoundation.com/pass482) or writing your Members, and prefer to save Twitter for other kinds of communication.
Will “twobbying” Members by sending them direct messages via Twitter eventually cause them to stop participating in using this two-way medium? Well, it IS a two-way medium, isn’t it? Members of Congress who adopt social media can’t expect it to work like top-down media.
That said, there is a larger point here for all of us to ponder, as we foster greater transparency and participation by embracing interactive communications technologies. We are going to need better tools for filtering and managing mass participation, as these media are adopted by more and more people. Right now, it’s pretty cool that Members of Congress are experimenting with Twitter and personally paying attention to the tweets landing in their inboxes. This situation probably can’t last. It’s incumbent on all of us to figure out what comes next.
Let’s talk about that soon.
Allison Fine said
Thanks for the comment, Ellen, particularly as I know how busy you are with this and other campaigns. I don’t think the question is whether it is spam so much as whether it could feel like spam to the Members of Congress — and thereby allow them to dismiss it. I think it’s marvelous that members are tweeting, and that groups like yours, especially yours, are taking the lead in so many ways on transparency and using social media to improve the interactions between elected officials and citizens.
Perhaps one next step is to identify a few members who are attracted to social media and train and support them as they learn how to use the tools to listen and engage in real conversations – using muscles and instincts that may no longer be instinctual for them if they ever were.
Thanks again for everything that Sunlight does and will do to make our government and elected officials more responsive to our interests and needs.
Allison
Ellen Miller said
Allison. We’re starting the process of building something new. Check out this post from Clay Johnson, Labs director http://sunlightlabs.com/blog/2009/03/12/do-we-need-getsatisfaction-congress/
Voli Dublino said
Vеll, nоt perfеct роst, but I liked it and that is thе main thing.
I am Voli Dublino