Posted under Ethics & Politics
I have been actively using a range of social media, including this blog, Twitter and Facebook, since I began my campaign. Recently, a columnist for our local paper, The Capital, interviewed me on the subject.
Naturally, we conducted the interview entirely over Twitter. Here’s an excerpt:
In that vein, I decided to conduct an interview entirely on Twitter with Legum, an Annapolis attorney who is a prolific Twitterer and blogger in addition to being a candidate. It was a challenge, given Twitter’s 140-character limit, which discourages even punctuation.
Legum, a 30-year-old Democrat, wrote: “Twitter has some advantages over other online tools like email because its transparent. I can see my neighbors q and your a.”
Indeed, the entire Twitter conversation between @ethartley and @juddlegum is in the open. So in case you really want to see the sausage made, I put the links on my blog.
We shouldn’t get carried away with the importance of any one method of communication. There’s a certain gee-whiz tone to some media coverage: “Ooh, Sarah Palin’s on Twitter!” Over time, though, that novelty will fade as it has for the Web in general.
Twitter itself or any one site isn’t that important. But the trend of openness is. In effect, much of the information held by governments has historically been closed to the public, since you had to drive to a state capital or Washington, D.C., to get it. It was legally public, but few actually saw it, leading to the term “practical obscurity.”
Now people expect everything to be online, and that’s truer the younger they are. Legum agreed this should keep politicians more honest.
“I think so + more info should be online,” he wrote. “To start, stream and archive all public committee meetings (legislative and exec.).”
Legum said he’ll continue “tweeting” if elected and will put his official schedule online so people know what he’s doing all the time.
You can read the full column here.
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