Are US politicians scared of social media?
Technosailor has just posted US Congress trying to stop Representatives from using social media. Apparently the Franking Commission, created to govern how Congress used their right to mail letters to constituents for free, does not like online communications from Congress from any other source than a House.gov space.
While the original letter (which is available in full on Technosailor) from Michael Capuano a Democrat Congressman on the Franking Commission appears to be aimed at video and YouTube. Any restrictions will impact on a wide range of social media sites, including Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and any other social media services. A number of twitterers have started a campaign Let Our Congress Tweet, so that the current twittering Congressmen John Culberson and Tim Ryan can remain twittering and hopefully others both in the Congress and Senate will join them.
What Michael Capuano and others fail to realise is:
- The time, cost and effort to create these services inside the House.gov space is a waste of resources, when it can be done for next to nothing, right now using external services.
- Using existing services comes with a ready made audience, creating a new service means having to attracting an audience.
What impact will restricting social media in the US Congress and Senate have in Australia. It will probably slow the adoption of social media by our politicians. With the loss of Australian Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett there is nobody in the Australian Parliament how understands social media enough to makeuse of it. With fewer examples of effective use of social media by politicians overseas, our politicians are unlikely to adopt social media or expect government agencies to make good use of social media.
Malcolm Turnbull has a pretty good go of it, though.
There are a few MPs that are very supportive of it, but due to their full-on schedules, don’t find time in their day to take part. It’s easy for us to be cynical (I am, constantly) but I think the blogosphere needs to be empathetic about how MPs view the world otherwise we’ll never be able to bring them to the party.
I would really like to see Lindsay Tanner taking a leadership role here and start blogging. He is the pollie for the dept of Finance, where AGIMO sits, after all.