How Twitter Made Me a Political Junkie
That’s it, I’m addicted.
To politics that is. Why now? Two things really:
- There’s an election going on in Canada (in case you didn’t know)
- Watching it unfold real-time on social media is quite something
I’ve always been interested in politics, I have always voted, but I have never really followed election campaigns per se. I was one of those people who would watch the debates and read those newspaper articles comparing the policies of the parties the day before the vote. But that’s about it.
This time is different. Tucked under the covers every night in the dark, there I am scrolling around Hootsuite on my iPhone watching who said what to whom on Twitter.
Here’s a sampling of tweet’s from last week.
It was pretty hard to choose which ones to put up. I picked these because I think they illustrate best why I’m enjoying this so much.
Them’s fightin’ words!
It’s like the debates, but in print and I can consume it for 1 min or two hours whenever I like.
In the old world we would never know how reporter @RosieBarton might personally feel about comments from @SenatorJake. We’d never see @SenatorFinley get mad and quit answering questions. And we’d never see party leaders like @M_Ignatieff, @pmharper and @jacklayton throw barbs at each other and see how each responds. It’s crazy.
You should check it out, seriously. It doesn’t mean you have to start tweeting yourself. You can just sign up, and start following who you want. Search the hashtags #elxn41 and #cdnpoli and see what you find. Or you can check out the public list I’ve started on my Twitter page. It’s still small, but is a good starting point if you want to stay up late with your smart phone reading about politics.
