more on the White House & Twitter
It seems like the White House’s use of Twitter is constantly in the news. Here’s the latest from Associated Press.
If you’re PressSec — White House press secretary Robert Gibbs’ username on Twitter — you join the powerful social media platform and push your message across the Internet, 140 characters at a time.
Blending behind-the-scenes nuggets with a defense of President Barack Obama’s record, White House and administration officials increasingly are communicating through Twitter.
The popular social network is operating as a Web-based clearinghouse for public statements on weighty subjects (the federal budget) and the mundane (personal grocery lists). It’s similar to a bulletin board where anyone can post short notes and users cull the pieces they see by choosing to “follow” individuals’ account.
Forget press releases. Gibbs and his deputy, Bill Burton, are now sharing news in Twitter messages. So far 35,000 people have signed up to follow Gibbs and more than 6,000 are tracking Burton. Those two officials have a ways to go to catch actor Ashton Kutcher and his 4.6 million followers.
“Wow unreal game… POTUS watched OT in his office right off the Oval Office — all of us are so proud of our great team,” Gibbs tweeted during the men’s Olympic hockey finals last Sunday, when the Americans lost the gold medal game to Canada in overtime. POTUS, of course, is the acronym for president of the United States.
Burton offered a midgame, inside-the-Beltway joke: “Tied! White House response, on bgnd, from a low- to midlevel administration official: USA! USA! USA!” (He was referring to a favorite administration request when talking to the press “on background” means the official won’t be identified publicly.) After the U.S. loss, Burton noted that America still led the overall medal race.
These are hardly the pronouncements one expects from the president’s top spokesmen. But as Obama’s team continues an online strategy set in place during the campaign and imported to Pennsylvania Avenue, it seems only natural that they would make it a piece of a broader communications plan that extends across the government.
U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice tweets about diplomacy, Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela tweets about the Western Hemisphere and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke tweets about trade.
“Welcome back, furloughed DOTers!” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood tweeted recently to his employees.
With a news cycle now measured in seconds rather than days, administration officials recognize they must embrace this rapid pace and use the same tactics as the critics who assail them and the reporters who cover them. Gibbs, who is Obama’s chief defender, has signaled that the White House won’t cede any ground online.
Twitter began four years ago as a microblogging site to follow the activities of celebrities such as Lance Armstrong, the bicycling champion whose account was the first one Gibbs followed.
Since then, it has proved to be a powerful tool for mobilizing causes and protest movements by allowing people to use common phrases to link subjects by theme. In Washington, that translates into hashtags — key words preceded by the symbol for a pound sign — such as (pound sign)whitehouse or (pound sign)gop that users key in to find connected nuggets.
“There’s a whole language, obviously, and typing with numbers and symbols that has evaded me,” Gibbs said. “I’m sure my son could teach me that far better than I could pick it up.”
Twitter also lets users communicate directly with each other, either through public messages using (at) symbols or through private messages. In many ways, it can be used as an e-mail system in which messages are completely public but limited to just 140 letters, numbers or symbols.
Obama’s aides are fast students of Twitter’s etiquette and uses. The White House announced Obama’s first news conference on Twitter last year. Burton has been known to clarify Gibbs’ comments while Gibbs is still speaking from the White House podium. Officials share with their followers news reports the White House views as positive.
Burton explained — in a tweet, no less — the approach.
“(At)PressSec is using this new medium in a way that gets information out quickly and effectively tracks what is on the minds of our press corps,” he responded to a tweet from this reporter, PElliottAP.
Obama’s campaign team built an Internet-based direct engagement model to win the White House and adapted the plan once in Washington. At the Democratic National Committee, aides continue to update the political BarackObama account, which operates separately from the White House tweets. Those are treated as formal communications and will be filed away as part of the presidential archive along with legal memos and policy documents.
In tandem with their quick bursts of information on Twitter, the online White House routinely turns to its blog, Facebook page or YouTube channel where Obama now posts his weekly address.
“All of these things are basically entirely new to government, but have become a standard part of White House operations, with top White House officials recognizing their value and placing them as top priorities, giving the public equal footing in a world where, for most of history, government has had to engage and communicate with them through the press or interest groups,” White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said.
For instance, 60,000 people went to the White House Web site last fall to watch Obama speak to a joint session of Congress on health care, and one-third of them stayed on the site after it was over to talk with administration officials about the speech.
Macon Phillips, the White House new media director who tweets as macon44, said the online chat allowed officials to get “a taste of what questions the actual public had in raw form — rather than simply the questions cable news and Beltway pundits have.”
On the Net:
- White House Twitter: http://twitter.com/whitehouse
- White House Facebook: http://apps.facebook.com/whitehouselive/
- White House YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/whitehouse
Change is Good…
Twitter Intrigues the White House
The White House is fact-checking on Twitter
Accuracy is more important than ever with social media. Mistakes are caught quickly and live on forever. Even the White House will call you out if you mess up some of the details. The following article explains.
The White House has started using a new weapon for correcting news reports, pushing back against a negative story or shaping the press corps narrative of the day: Twitter.
On Monday, deputy press secretary Bill Burton told his more than 4,000 followers — who include much of the White House press corps — that a Washington Post report that morning was wrong. The Obamas, he noted, went to Chicago for Valentine’s Day in 2009, not this past Sunday, as was reported in the Post’s Style section.
It was a small correction but indicative of how the White House press shop can now more actively engage with the press and public through the popular microblogging platform that allows users to post 140 characters at a time and follow any number of friends, celebrities, reporters and a variety of media outlets, large and small.
While there’s long been a White House Twitter feed, only in the past few weeks have members of the administration started using individual accounts in an official capacity. Burton, who’s had an account since August, just started posting regularly in January, gaining attention among reporters with a little pushback against a CNN report.
“Twitter has helped us to quickly get information out, keep up with what is on the minds of our press corps, circulate stories we think they will find of interest and knock down stories that may be counterfactual,” Burton told POLITICO.
Macon Phillips, the White House director of new media, started his own official account last week, and press secretary Robert Gibbs joined Saturday, to great fanfare in the Twitterverse.
“Wow — in a less than 30 hours almost 17K of you are following — amazing — watch out Kim Kardashian! Thanks to all for the smart tips!” he said in one of his first Tweets.
Gibbs told POLITICO that he was inspired to join after watching Burton’s account during President Barack Obama’s surprise visit to the White House briefing room last Tuesday.
Burton could see that reporters were having non-news-related side conversations over Twitter and chastised them for not focusing on the president. Gibbs said it was “fascinating to see what people are thinking, writing, doing in real time.”
Indeed, by following the White House press corps on Twitter, Gibbs — or anyone with an account, really — can get an immediate glimpse of how journalists are reacting to a news story or an issue batted around in the daily briefing. During major speeches, following the political Twitterati can be a way to get a sense of how they might play out in the press later on.
The addition of Gibbs and Burton certainly didn’t go unnoticed among several Twitter users in the press corps, who point out some advantages in having the White House press shop more heavily involved with the political conversations playing out in real time.
David Corn, Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones, said that “if somebody writes a story they want to take issue with, it’s a lot easier to send out a Twitter note with a correction or with a perspective than to make an official statement or a press release or say something during the press briefing.”
Such a correction or clarification can be effective without being heavy-handed, Corn noted, adding that Twitter offers the “aura of informality and tremendous immediacy.” Corn added that the press shop can also highlight a story beneficial to the administration with a tweet and accompanying link.
“Most Americans aren’t tuned in to Twitter, but the Washington and White House press corps definitely are,” said Susan Page, Washington bureau chief for USA Today. “So if a story breaks that the White House wants to instantly dispute — or spread — a tweet from Gibbs or Burton would be a quick way to reach a lot of reporters and probably spark some back and forth. I think it’s a faster way to reach that particular universe of people than giving something to the wires or sending out an e-mail. We’re all flooded with those.”
CBS News Radio’s Mark Knoller, who has over 18,000 followers, said that “Twitter can be a very demanding mistress, and it’ll be interesting to see if Gibbs uses it much.”
“He has so much else on his plate,” Knoller continued. “But now he’s got an outlet to comment or respond to queries or link to something on the White House website.”
Christina Bellantoni, who covers the White House for Talking Points Memo, said that since the “press shop has given every indication they like going around the reporters to talk directly to the nation, [she’d] expect lots more on that front from Gibbs and Burton.” She pointed out that Gibbs posted a Gallup Poll Monday showing global perceptions of U.S. leadership improving from 2008 to 2009, clearly a good story for the White House.
While Burton has been following reporters on Twitter for months — if not tweeting himself — Knoller said that he’s “surprised that it took Gibbs so long to log on to Twitter.” So is Bellantoni.
“They are a little late to the game,” she said, “as evidenced by Gibbs talking about Kim Kardashian in one of his first tweets, but I am still in the ‘Twitter is relevant’ camp.”
“I can’t resist noting how Chuck Todd was one of the biggest Twitter-bashers for months, but once he joined he seemed hooked and has really mastered the format,” Bellantoni said, referring to the NBC reporter. “And Obama somehow got away with having several million followers for years and only issuing his first tweet after the quake in Haiti, so I think Gibbs is safe.”
So what took so long?
Phillips pointed out that the official White House Twitter account had been used throughout the past year to push out news on a regular basis — such as the announcement in July that Obama would be holding a prime-time press conference. The official Barack Obama Twitter account is run by Organizing for America, not the White House.
Just recently, Phillips said that both Gibbs and Burton “expressed an interest in doing a little bit more with Twitter, and so we set them up.” Phillips said that he was in Gibbs’s office Monday morning talking about using Twitter, a conversation that he said made it abundantly clear “we’re in 2010” and “things are changing.”
“He’s able to communicate with the public now and ‘cc’ the press corps,” Phillips said, adding that communication is changing greatly, presenting an “exciting prospect for the press shop and the White House generally.”
While Gibbs and Burton are the first press secretary and deputy to officially use Twitter, the first White House press shop official to embrace the platform was Scott Stanzel, President George W. Bush’s deputy press secretary from just after the 2006 midterm elections until Obama’s Inauguration.
Stanzel said that even in 2007 and 2008 — before a number of White House reporters began using Twitter — he found it useful as a way of following what journalists were interested in and subsequently linking to. “The only time I think I used Twitter in a work-related fashion is when I live-tweeted President Bush’s final press conference” in January 2009.
“It’s a very efficient way to share information and nearly all White House reporters are active in some fashion on Twitter,” said Stanzel, who now runs his own public relations firm, Stanzel Communications.
Given that the Obama White House — like any administration — is concerned with message control, having just any press staffer providing his or her views on Twitter could be confusing if it’s unclear whether that account is speaking officially for the White House. With Gibbs and Burton, two officials who regularly provide on-the-record statements or answer questions in the daily briefing, it’s clear their response to a question on Twitter carries the same weight as if it came from behind the briefing room podium.
So with all this daily — hourly? — back and forth going on over Twitter between reporters and the White House, is Twitter becoming essential to covering the West Wing?
New York Times reporter Peter Baker, who has yet to join Twitter, said he’s “perfectly willing to concede that it may be and that [he may] need to get with the program.”
“Clearly it’s become an important new avenue of communication,” Baker added. “The question is whether it’s essential or distracting.”
New White House Blog Published First Post
Great post on Politics 2.0 by Bill Ives
I have written about the Obama campaign a number of times see for example, Update from the Obama Answer Center – Web 2.0 and US Elections. I wrote in this post, “that it will be great if the US government adopts these practices to better connect with citizens. Perhaps lessons learned during the campaign on such issues as effective web practices to increase citizen engagement can be adopted by the government. There is great potential here. I think it is demonstrates some of the ways the new web can be used to increase engagement and the innovation evidenced by this campaign.”
I was pleased to see that the first blog post, Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov, went up on the new White blog even before the official oath of office and there is a Director of New Media for the White House, Macon Phillips who wrote the post. He said that the initial new media efforts will center around three priorities:
“Communication — This site will feature timely and in-depth content meant to keep everyone up-to-date and educated. Check out the briefing room, keep tabs on the blog (RSS feed) and take a moment to sign up for e-mail updates…
Transparency — The President’s executive orders and proclamations will be published for everyone to review, and that’s just the beginning…
Participation — Citizen participation will be a priority for the Administration, and the internet will play an important role in that…” There is a link to a form for providing input.
Macon said that they would put up the video and the full text of President Obama’s Inaugural Address. I look forward to hearing more. Blogs have come a long way since 2004. I hope that this is the case for our government in both parties as some of the principles of the new web of transparency and participation appear to be adopted by the new administration. See Rob Patterson’s post for more, Post-inauguration thoughts about social media. He said, “The Obama administration is going to do for social media what Teddy Roosevelt did for the Press and FDR did for radio but more so.” It will be interesting to see what happens.
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