Some may say U.S. President Barack Obama’s first Twitter town hall Wednesday marked the beginning of an era.
Twitter users, lacking press passes or Washington insider status, had their first opportunity to ask the president their most challenging questions. That is, if they could get one of their 140-character submissions chosen from the more than 70,000 tweets submitted to the town hall.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey moderated the conversation with Obama. Users could submit questions to askobama.twitter.com, a site hosted by Twitter, or by using the hashtag #AskObama.
On July 20, Republican presidential candidates will debate via Twitter as well. Unlike Obama’s Twitter hosted town hall, the debates will be hosted by 140townhall.com, an unaffiliated site created for the upcoming debates.
These new political platforms raise some important questions about the role of social media and national politics. Has Twitter become an irremovable part of the upcoming elections and should it temper its implicit support for one party over another? Of all the many questions, the one we’d like to pose to you is this:
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