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Congressional Tweeting
In 140 characters or less can you express your feelings regarding the current state of the American political scene? Neither can I, but our representatives in Washington are trying, and in tweetspeak at that.
141, that is the number of Congressional members listed on TweetCongress.org, a site where you can find and follow members of Congress. You can even search by party or state. According to the statistics on the site of those on Twitter 48 are Democrats, 93 are Republican and 0 Independents.
Social media is allowing individual citizens to interact in real time with members of the Senate and the House. This is revolutionary compared to the old ways people communicated with political figures. Even using e-mail most people get form letters in response to issues of concern. More often than not if a response is sent it comes from someone other than the intended senator or representative.
Only recently have members of Congress been allowed to Tweet Before this was banned by regulations regarding online activity of government officials. Now members of the Sunlight Foundation, a group who encourages transparency of the government, are encouraging all members of Congress to join in on the Tweets.
I recently joined Twitter and look forward to conversing with members of Congress, having always been politically active. I have several letters from congress stashed away in my home. I can’t wait to add Tweets to my collection of congressional correspondence. Some Bama boys on twitter:
http://twitter.com/RichardShelby Senator Shelby (R) and his latest tweet “ I’m going to be on CNN’s State Of The Union today. Please tune in: http://is.gd/nryI #tcot”
http://twitter.com/ArturDavis Congressman Davis (D) “Check out the pictures from my campaign kick-off event this weekend: http://bit.ly/8qRlf 2 days ago”
So go to TweetCongress.org, and find your representative, and see if you can’t start a conversation in 140 characters or less.
Oh, and if you do get a response, let me know @NMJUST on Twitter.
- melissa justice
