The Tampere city council meeting doesn’t often get the attention it did last Monday. Via its @tamperelive account on Twitter, the city provided live monitoring of a meeting about the introduction of tram service. The result was 2 226 tweets with the #trevaltuusto (“Tampere Council”) hashtag, and 849 with #ratikka (“tram”). Beyond Twitter, the meeting was live-streamed and attracted 24 232 viewers.
Live reporting from a public meeting can be a great thing. It condenses the core content and shares ideas about the issues in manageable doses. Typically, documents for such meetings are hard for citizens to read, while agendas and minutes hew to traditional modes of presentation. Success in reporting via Twitter does require some new ways of thinking: you aren’t going to get the best results by quoting everything each speaker says. Live-tweeting is a summary and not a transcript. Such tweets should convey meaningful content like new arguments, explanations, or points of views. There’s little value in simply mentioning everyone’s name.
Live-tweeting, and the ability to follow a real-time meeting online, are likely to stimulate interest in policy, which is a good thing. Sadly, political games are likely to frustrate that interest: after hours of discussion and debate, the decision on a tram system was postponed to the next meeting.