I enjoy interacting with organisations and politicians on twitter. It allows access to quick, pertinent information that I don’t think would be possible through a telephone or email. As with any mode of communication, success depends on both ends knowing how the medium works. @brisbanecityqld is a good example of a productive organisational account. I’ve also heard good things about Premier Bligh’s @TheQLDPremier. These two work because someone has decided to take twitter seriously as a medium to communicate with the public, and has been adequately resourced to do so.
On the other end of the spectrum, the account of one politician recently couldn’t articulate a policy position, because their ideas ‘won’t fit into 140 characters’. Here, a well run campaign, or just a politician who understand the web, could defer to a medium which does not hold such a limit. But this didn’t happen, so there was a breakdown.
If we do operate in a world where politicians are professionals in the narrow field of appealing to voters, taxpayers or business, then political parties need to ensure that they are not left unsupported in domains that they don’t understand (here, the internet). Perhaps this is ridiculous idealism, but I would like for the people running the council, state or country to have a broader expertise and be able to respond when questioned by a citizen, because they are intelligent and capable individuals in their own right. Maybe it is fair to insist that agents of the state are literate in modern communication platforms, consider all that they demand of us.