Thursday, February 26, 2009

Congressional tweets

Rep. Erik Paulsen on stage waiting to address ...Image via Wikipedia

My Congressmember, Erik Paulsen, is on twitter. And MySpace and Facebook and LinkedIn and YouTube and pretty much everywhere a person can be networked. Good for him. I'm glad to see my Representative using new media.

But how is he using it, to speak or to listen?

I tweeted him. Impressed with Obama's State of the Union call to set aside old partisan politics, I asked Paulsen how he would work with the President. No response. Paulsen (or someone in his office) had time to continue tweeting, posting a link to a newspaper story about Paulsen. Subsequent Paulsen tweets posted links to new YouTube videos, as well as a request for questions to ask at a Financial Services hearing. So I tweeted, "How will you insure banks don't use TARP money for lobbying?"

The demands of Twittering can be intense, and Congress has important work to do. But if my Congressmember has time for Facebook and LinkedIn and YouTube videos; if he makes time to offer his comments to traditional media, he can use the new technology to listen to and respond to his constitutents. I follow my Congressmember. Should my Congressmember follow me?
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3 comments:

Susan Berkson said...

Twitter to me

show details 12:41 PM (12 minutes ago)

Reply

Hi, Susan Berkson (berksons).

Rep. Erik Paulsen (Erik_Paulsen) is now following your updates on Twitter.

Check out Rep. Erik Paulsen's profile here:
http://twitter.com/Erik_Paulsen


Best,
Twitter

Anonymous said...

So? How is he going to work with Obama? And stop the bankers from lobbying with TARP$? Any answer yet?

Anonymous said...

No. Still no answer from Paulen and I have DM'd him.