Open Government

Chapter 15. Case Study: Tweet Congress

Wynn Netherland

Chris McCroskey

“We the Tweeple of the United States, in order to form a more perfect government, establish communication, and promote transparency, do hereby tweet the Congress of the United States of America.”

Open government empowers citizens to participate. Participation means more than just voting. Participation means applying your unique set of talents to improve the government that works for you. It means pausing in that moment when you ask yourself “Why does the system work this way?” or “Wouldn’t it be great if people could do such and such?”—and when you ask the real question: “What can I do about it?” That’s exactly how Tweet Congress came about.

Tweet Congress: Build an App, Start a Movement

TweetCongress.org provides a directory of all congressional Twitter users and aggregates their tweets, short microblogging updates of up to 140 characters in length. The mission of Tweet Congress is to promote transparency on Capitol Hill. We lobby members of Congress to forgo the usual PR blasts and use Twitter and other forms of social media to engage their constituents in more meaningful, conversational dialogue.

The Idea

On a Friday afternoon in December 2008, we stumbled across our congressman, Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, on Twitter (@michaelcburgess). We thought it noteworthy that a politician not running for national office would be using social media in this way, so we tweeted it out to our Twitter followers. While looking ...