Government Representatives on Twitter

On Twitter today, I came across @johnculberson, Texas Congressman. He was tweeting yesterday from Congress while the FISA vote was going on, responding to citizen’s questions and updating his views. It’s well known that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both used Twitter during their campaigns, but this is different. This is ongoing contact between a representative and his constituents, and I think it highlights a very powerful democratic use of Twitter and similar social messaging systems.

Incidentally, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen from Florida is also on Twitter, but there’s a big difference in how she uses it: She follows nobody and has only 11 people following her, whereas John Culberson is following 1,196 people and has 1,110 people following him. You can’t have a conversation with your constituents if you don’t listen to them. Similarly, Hillary Clinton hasn’t updated her Twitter feed since her campaign ended in June.

So where are the Canadian representatives on Twitter? Are there any at all? I suspect not, because if anybody were in that space first it would be Charlie Angus, and he’s not tweeting — yet. If and when he does move into the micro-blogging/social messaging space, I hope he uses identi.ca, the fantastic new Canadian-run open source alternative to Twitter.