As has been discussed on “The Cloakroom,” (click here and here) the federal government and members of Congress, notably Senators Claire McCaskill, John McCain and Charles Grassley, have flocked to Twitter. Seems lobbyists are now using this medium to lobby for their support.

The National Journal’s Eliza Krigman has an interesting story on this new development:

The Sunlight Foundation is using twitter to directly lobby senators to co-sponsor the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act that we blogged about yesterday. Sunlight courted bill supporters to lobby senators’ blackberrys directly via a ‘Tweet Lobby’.

“[We] believe this will be the first organized direct lobbying of members of Congress over Twitter,” Sunlight Communication’s Director Gabriela Schneider told National Journal. Two senators, Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., tweeted about their support of the bill. Both of these lawmakers supported the bill in previous sessions of Congress so their position is not necessarily a reflection of the twitter lobby.

I wonder: will this drive members of Congress away from Twitter and other forms of interactive social media?

March 24th, 2009 by Craig Paridy | No Comments
Tags: Charles Grassley · Claire McCaskill · John McCain · lobbying · Twitter