Social media have introduced two-way direct communication and Obama used the town hall as a way to harness this real-time communication. The town hall was broken into three sections: questions that had “risen to the top” by being retweeted, follow-up questions to Obama’s responses, and opinions that were voiced during the town hall that Obama had the chance to respond to.

The event felt more like a real-time conversation than a town hall hosted by Facebook and moderated by CEO Marc Zuckerburg in April, which included questions submitted in advance.

Tweets leading up to the event were flooding in so fast that the feed on http://askobama.twitter.com/ was impossible to follow. In addition to a Twitter algorithm that looked for a high number of retweets, Twitter recruited a list of journalists to curate questions and responses in real time. According to the New York Times blog Media Decoder, Twitter officials said they looked to journalists as curators to help make sure questions reflected geographic diversity.

In advance of the town hall, Republicans used the hashtag as a way to voice their opposition to Obama’s policies. For example, Nikki Haley, governor of South Carolina, tweeted: “Why is your administration supporting the NLRB’s job killing policies in South Carolina?”

Jack Dorsey, Twitter founder, introduced the session with a reference to the use of Twitter around the world to engage people in conversation and action. Twitter and other social media have been credited with helping to facilitate the so-called Arab Spring.

Dorsey said that 27 percent of the tweets were about jobs, 10 percent were about education and 6 percent were about housing.

Presidents have historically looked for ways to incorporate modern communication channels. For example, President Franklin D. Roosevelt used his “fireside chats” as a means of addressing the American people directly via radio transmissions during the Great Depression.

Obama said he was going to make history by live tweeting at the beginning of the town hall. “It’s only 140 characters,” Dorsey joked as the president appeared to be deep in thought. The town hall audience was also composed of 140 people — followers of the White House Twitter feed who signed up for a chance to attend.

Dorsey referred to a screen behind the president that displayed a map of the U.S. showing where tweets come from and the concentration of topics.

One of the most interesting parts of the town hall, was the inclusion of follow-up questions. For example, after Obama talked about underwater mortgages, a follow-up question was posed by “Shnaps”: “Is free-market an option? RT @whitehouse: Obama on homeowners underwater: Have made some progress, but+ needed, looking at options.” Twitter seemed to rely heavily on its curators for these follow-up questions and the responses that followed.

The last 20 minutes included response Tweets with a chance for Obama to respond. For whatever reason, the Official Q&A did not include these responses in its stream. I don’t think they were quite sure how to handle posting of these responses on Twitter.

On CNN’s live blog, it was observed by Shawna Shepherd that “Obama answers at least twice as many questions at twitter @townhall than he usually answers at news conferences in same time frame.”

The amount of advance preparation and coordination that Twitter put into the event obviously made a huge difference in the quality of the town hall. Whether they were truly representative of all #askobama questions will be a question I anticipate analysts will continue to look at closely.

Kristina Courtnage Bowman is an MCDM graduate who now works at the University of Washington Department of Communication, helping faculty and students use new media.

Photo courtesy JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

Most Commented Posts

• November 21, 2008 -- Crowdsourcing: Name the New MCDM Center! (37)
• November 9, 2009 -- An Ode to Contemplation (32)
• October 14, 2011 -- MCDM’s Toast to a Bully (30)
• February 25, 2008 -- Flip Video Vlog: Codecs and You! (25)
• November 9, 2010 -- Windows Phone 7: Could Mobile Gaming Be Microsoft’s Ticket? (21)

#1. KOMO4 News: Step into the life of KOMO4 reporter Mark Miller as he gathers the news of the day beginning at 3:30 a.m.

[update coming soon]

#2. Steve Ringman from Seattle Times: Photographer Steve Ringman strives to stay on top of technology in a rapidly changing environment.

#3. West Seattle Blog: This mother and professional blogger – and her family – have created a popular hyperlocal news site.

#4. Ross Reynolds at KUOW: A professional radio show host gives his take on citizen journalism and changes in media.

#5. To Catch a Marathon: What is user-generated content and what does it look like? Four students set out to film their own user-generated content at the Birch Bay Marathon.

Related Posts

• January 24, 2011 -- Four Peaks Salon: Transmedia Storytelling and Net Neutrality (5)
• March 6, 2009 -- Journalism on the Brink: Video (11)
• February 24, 2008 -- West Seattle Blog Preview (1)
• January 26, 2012 -- The Anatomy of an MCDM Foundation Course (1)
• January 12, 2012 -- Your Phone Was Probably Made in a Sweatshop (5)

Related Posts

• May 4, 2008 -- Using the Flip for enlightenment (0)
• February 24, 2008 -- Marathon weekend (0)
• February 15, 2008 -- Flip test run (0)
• January 24, 2012 -- Will 2013 be the year of video glasses and augmented reality? (1)
• November 25, 2011 -- To Connect or Not to Connect? (11)

Two days and five hours of footage later, the Scorsese team has filmed the filming of the Birch Bay Marathon north of Bellingham. Our objective: Capture the process of creating a film using consumer technology (specifically the flip camera).

While we have a full cast of characters, it seems like everyone fits into three main entities:
1. Us, the film crew
2. Joel, the race director, and the rest of the volunteers who made the race possible.
3. The runners

What’s the common thread in these three entities? One possibility: Lots of work leading to a moment of accomplishment, exhilaration and exhaustion.

Scouting the course

On Saturday afternoon, Sarah, Adam and Garrett pulled into my driveway and we loaded my bike into the back of Sarah’s vehicle and headed to Birch Bay. Armed with a map and GPS we found the starting line, but there was no sign that this would be where 60 people would line up at dawn the next morning to run 26.2 miles.

The Sleepover

Since I live the closest to Birch Bay everyone stayed at my place Saturday. I worked Saturday evening so the rest of the Scorseses made themselves at home editing video and preparing for the next morning’s early departure.

Race day

For whatever reason, I wasn’t able to sleep at all Saturday night. It probably had something to do with the fact I went to bed about two hours before I normally would. At 5 a.m. my alarm went off and I reluctantly got out of bed and found Garrett and Adam awake but bleary eyed, still under the blankets on the living room floor and couch. After a quick breakfast of bagels and bananas we hit the road. As the first rays of light appeared on the horizon, Sarah and Garrett narrowly missed hitting a deer that strayed onto the road.

When we arrived at the starting line, Adam and I bearing gifts of coffee we stopped to get at the AM/PM, we interviewed the first people who had the luck (or misfortune) to walk past our vehicles and sign a release form: David, Rick, Narvie and Narvie’s wife, Amy. These would be our main characters and we would film them at every checkpoint in addition to a post-race interview.

Watching a marathon can be a trying experience. After the runners pass one checkpoint you race to the next checkpoint. And then you wait. And wait some more. Luckily we had beautiful weather and gorgeous Birch Bay as a backdrop while we waited.

As the runners finished we used a combination of the flip camera and a digital audio recorder and lapel mic to record post-race interviews. I waited about two miles back on my bike to get some footage of the running and phone ahead when one of our main characters was close to finishing (more on the bike cam to come).

Being a spectator at the marathon did make me want to run another one. I ran the Seattle Marathon about three years ago and had enough injuries and sore muscles that I was not in a hurry to run another one, but after I finish the MCDM program, I might have to reconsider — or at least go for the half.

Related Posts

• May 10, 2010 -- How to Create a Vlog (2)
• May 2, 2009 -- Twitter & Skype classroom coverage of Paul Gillin (4)
• March 6, 2009 -- Journalism on the Brink: Video (11)
• January 23, 2009 -- The Death of Story? Not in My Class. (10)
• January 16, 2009 -- How Will You Watch the Inauguration? (4)

Related Posts

• March 9, 2008 -- Bike cam (0)
• January 24, 2012 -- Will 2013 be the year of video glasses and augmented reality? (1)
• November 25, 2011 -- To Connect or Not to Connect? (11)
• April 5, 2011 -- Intent vs. Impact (0)
• March 7, 2011 -- Ken Rufo on “Pataphysics,” Digital Collectives and Truth Protocols (1)

Some that I’ve seen on this blog already:

• Zoom capabilities of Flip camera
• Necessity of a tripod
• Working to get permissions
• Audio limitations
• Public’s reaction to cameras
• Finding Aristotle’s “action-idea”

Thanks for your input!

Kristina

Related Posts

• February 24, 2008 -- Marathon weekend (0)
• April 12, 2011 -- The Flip is Dead, Long Live the Flip (15)
• April 23, 2009 -- Hulu + YouTube = Funny Or Die, or how to solve YouTube’s revenue problem (1)
• November 21, 2008 -- Crowdsourcing: Name the New MCDM Center! (37)
• May 9, 2008 -- Can UGC be journalism? The Seattle Times has some doubts. (3)