TG Daily: McCain Twitterview – attempting the impossible
Samantha Rose Hunt offers a thoughtful analysis of US broadcaster ABC’s attempt to interview Senator John McCain using Twitter.
“Interviews are conducted so that individuals can learn and understand situations, products or an individual better. Understanding someone within the confines of 140 characters has now been shown to be nearly impossible,” writes Hunt.
Perhaps Twitter wasn’t the right tool for the subject matter of this interview – but can it work for more appropriate content?
We’ve been experimenting with conducting interviews on Twitter at Journalism.co.uk. There are still some bugs to be worked out, but the social element of the interview that you get by opening it up to Twitter is encouraging. All thoughts for improvement greatly appreciated.
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Working in journalism and want to boost your digital skills? Questions about starting a news business online that you've been too afraid to ask?
March 19th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Hi – I’ve conducted short interviews via Twitter but I would say it is more useful for finding people to interview in the first place or for a speculative Q&A that might then lead me to ask for a phone number and have a proper chat around a subject. I think the 140 character limit makes you much more likely to miss out on much of the peripheral info that might lead you onto something new and interesting, which is where many great stories come from.
The Israeli consulate in New York held a Twitter citizen’s press conference during the conflict in the Gaza Strip in January but the format was widely felt to have been somewhat limited for offering proper answers about what was going on and why…
http://comops.org/journal/2009/01/12/why-israels-twitter-experiment-flopped/