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Is Twitter an appropriate mode of communication for MPs?


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A recent Twitter status update from Barrie MP Patrick Brown:

at children aids fundraiser at southshore in Barrie. good job by @jonaston and organizers
6:37 PM Nov 21st from mobile web

Source: http://twitter.com/brownbarrie

No. Mr. Brown did not attend a fund-raiser for children with AIDS. It was a fund-raiser for the local Children's Aid Society:

http://www.simcoecas.com/en/foundation_events/events.asp

That simple typo got me thinking. Is Twitter an appropriate mode of communication for a Member of Parliament? If mistakes like the one above can be overlooked in a message that is a mere 14 words long, maybe this is not the way the people who are responsible for writing our laws should be communicating.

If it's not professional to put out documents with spelling errors, should MPs be using a mode of communications whose limitations encourage sacrificing spelling and grammar in favour of brevity?

St. Catherines MP Rick Dykstra recently made the news when he was photographed apparently composing a Twitter message during a Remembrance Day ceremony. This raised another question: Where and when is it appropriate to be composing a message on a mobile phone?

Scarborough Southwest MP Michelle Simson recently apologized in the House of Commons for a Twitter message in which she joked about another MP's waistline. She apologized for the joke, but should she have also apologized for the fact the message was composed during a committee meeting?

Are our MPs giving enough attention to the professionalism of their communications? Should they be giving more attention to the people around them and less to the gadgets in their pockets?

Edited by robert_viera
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St. Catherines MP Rick Dykstra recently made the news when he was photographed apparently composing a Twitter message during a Remembrance Day ceremony

What a shame. I hope this ignorant MP gets the boot.

On another note. I think twitter is an overhyped application. Its a flash in the pan. No one will be twittering in 3 years.

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Oops! I hit Reply when I should have hit Edit. The above message should read:

Forgive me. I didn't intend the "grown-up" comment to be a criticism of all Twitter users, just the ones who are acting like spoiled teenagers when they ought to be acting like professionals.

Edited by robert_viera
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Robert,

I think the MPs will continue to use these new media. I don't care much about it, except that I'm hopeful that it may lead to a greater general use of the web to provide performance statistics for government departments, showing service levels, and to a use of the web for garnering feedback from citizens.

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I'm inclined to agree with Charlie Angus:

We are elected to represent our people. We go to committee to do serious business. I believe the issue of members sitting on committee with their inane Twitters about what happens at committee demeans the work of all parliamentarians. I am not going to speak on this party or that party. We have an obligation to represent the best of our country and I would like members of Parliament to put the inane little games away and get down to business of serving their constituents.

http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=40&Ses=2&DocId=4231509#Int-2952661

Do MPs really need to be "tweeting" at committee meetings when the meetings are covered by journalists, streamed on the Internet (ParlVU) and transcribed in Hansard?

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Just one more way to screw up and get themselves in trouble. I may be a dinosaur but can't see much of an upside to it. Just a another product of a society so self centered that it has come to believe the rest of the world is interested in what they are doing every minute of the day. Maybe it is better they don't.

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Just one more way to screw up and get themselves in trouble. I may be a dinosaur but can't see much of an upside to it. Just a another product of a society so self centered that it has come to believe the rest of the world is interested in what they are doing every minute of the day. Maybe it is better they don't.

You may not be familiar with the technology here: you have to subscribe to a person's Twitter updates or Tweets by clicking on a link to 'follow' them. So you're asking, in effect, to be updated.

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You may not be familiar with the technology here: you have to subscribe to a person's Twitter updates or Tweets by clicking on a link to 'follow' them. So you're asking, in effect, to be updated.

I'm referring to person's who feel the need to continually provide updates, not those who subscribe to them.

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One concern I have with MPs using Twitter for communication is the limited size of messages does not allow for nuance or explanation. Twitter messages are the on-line/mobile phone equivalent of sound bites. Brief messages have their place, but I think we need to make sure that they don't replace fuller, more thoughtful discussion.

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One concern I have with MPs using Twitter for communication is the limited size of messages does not allow for nuance or explanation. Twitter messages are the on-line/mobile phone equivalent of sound bites. Brief messages have their place, but I think we need to make sure that they don't replace fuller, more thoughtful discussion.

One very big concern they should have is that everyone who is following their "updates" is not their friend or well wisher.

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I'm inclined to agree with Charlie Angus:

We are elected to represent our people. We go to committee to do serious business. I believe the issue of members sitting on committee with their inane Twitters about what happens at committee demeans the work of all parliamentarians. I am not going to speak on this party or that party. We have an obligation to represent the best of our country and I would like members of Parliament to put the inane little games away and get down to business of serving their constituents.

http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=40&Ses=2&DocId=4231509#Int-2952661

Do MPs really need to be "tweeting" at committee meetings when the meetings are covered by journalists, streamed on the Internet (ParlVU) and transcribed in Hansard?

Definitely not. If they have time to notice and comment on the inane they have time to focus on more important things. Amongst other things MP's should be expanding their use of the Internet to make democracy more participatory. MP's should monitoring feeds that provide input from constituents that are watching. MP's should have assistants and software filtering through this looking for any outstanding ideas and insights that could prove useful to the MP and possibly the country.

The technology of the Internet should also be used to make our representation and governance more transparent. MP's who wish to be seen as accounting for the time they spend on various issues, and even who they spend that time with could provide their location via their gadgets with GPS or by posting their location manually. It may be just as useful for constituents to know who didn't attend a meeting as who did.

The desire to be easily located this way should be voluntary for everyone but registered lobbyists. I would think over time that MP's who are seen as being most transparent will be the one's who get more votes at election time. A simple transparency index would let a constituent rate and compare their representatives and other political parties commitment to transparency.

Imagine a PM who decides its in their best interest to wire the PMO to the Internet.

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What a shame. I hope this ignorant MP gets the boot.

On another note. I think twitter is an overhyped application. Its a flash in the pan. No one will be twittering in 3 years.

For you to say that no one will be Twittering in 3 years is not only ignorant, but you, like many stubborn corporations, don't understand the evolution of the Internet and where it's headed. Social media is the future and for those businesses that just don't get it yet, it's likely already too late. Kudos to the MPs who do get it and use the platform to their advantage.

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