Re: Twitter use by elected officials

I think the Library of Congress may already be archiving all tweets

http://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2010/04/how-tweet-it-is-library-acquires-entire-twitter-archive/


On 11 Nov 2011, at 21:59, Anne L. Washington wrote:

> Maybe  the question is how to archive social media and
> not whether it is a public record?
> 
> The U.S. equivalent of the Hansard is the Congressional Record, if I remember well. They are both official records of what is said on the floors during legislative debate. A tweet is an interesting artifact but not an official part of the debate. Should it or can it be regulated differently?  I suppose it depends on what the situation is.
> 
> Given the difficulty in establishing email as part of a legislative archive, I imagine that establishing tweets is much further down the road in terms of records management policy.
> 
> However, it is a valid question.
> How and really WHO should archive political communication in the form of social media streams?
> 
> 
> Anne L. Washington, PhD
> Standards work - W3C - washingtona@acm.org
> Academic work - George Mason University
> http://policy.gmu.edu/washington
> 
> On Sat, 12 Nov 2011, Tim McNamara wrote:
> 
>> -1 from me.
>> 
>> Hansard records debates. Interjections and such are not included.
>> 
>> On 12 November 2011 09:22, Phil Archer <phila@w3.org> wrote:
>>> One of the discussions during the face to face meeting the other day
>>> concerned elected officials' use of social media. Many western legislators
>>> now routinely tweet from the floor of their house. We discussed whether such
>>> public statements should or should not be part of the public record -
>>> probably above our pay grades - but suppose they, or anyone, wanted to
>>> archive their Tweets and other social media: how would they do it?
>>> 
>>> But the news about Icelandic MP Birgitta Jonsdottir having her Twitter
>>> account forced open by the US courts raised another issue in my mind. In
>>> Britain, MPs in the House of Commons are protected under something called
>>> Parliamentary Privilege which means they can say what they like without fear
>>> of prosecution for slander/defamation (or anything else).
>>> 
>>> That may be a legal rather than a tech matter, but, *if* we do look at this
>>> issue (and I would find it fascinating personally), then it's the kind of
>>> thing we might have to bear in mind.
>>> 
>>> What I actually have in mind for this group, potentially, is a best
>>> practices doc that talks about archiving of social media updates and tries
>>> to distil common points from the various codes of conduct springing up in
>>> parliaments around the world.
>>> 
>>> Just ruminating...
>>> 
>>> Phil.
>>> 
>>> [1]
>>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/11/us-verdict-privacy-wikileaks-twitter
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Phil Archer
>>> W3C eGovernment
>>> http://www.w3.org/egov/
>>> 
>>> http://philarcher.org
>>> @philarcher1
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>

Received on Friday, 11 November 2011 21:51:31 UTC