Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Twitter, ABC's "QandA" Program and social participation

After four years in the US, one of the things I most enjoyed about coming back to Australia was reconnecting with the Australian Broadcasting Commission's (ABC) excellent current affairs programming on radio and television.

One program I have particularly enjoyed has been the Question and Answer (QandA) program on ABC TV on Monday nights. Quoting the website (http://www.abc.net.au/tv/video/downloads.htm#?vid=qanda), "Q&A puts punter, pollies and pundits together in the studio to thrash out the hot issues of the week. It's about democracy in action - on Q&A the audience gets to ask the questions. Q&A is hosted by one of the ABC's most respected journalists - Tony Jones."

A third and perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of this program is the real-time TV audience participation generated through Twitter. Following #qanda on Twitter makes you feel like you're in a rowdy town hall political rally and rather than just shouting at your TV in a vacuum, Twittering allows you to share your comments with the wider Twitterati and QandA has also started publishing some of those Twitter comments on the bottom of the screen.

Has Twitter brought us back to old-style Town Hall politicking from the comfort of our own lounge room? How are the political parties responding and engaging with this new phenomenon? And how can I get a computer screen big enough to be able to capture the thousands of Twitter comments and how do I weed out the clever from the profane?

Perhaps an enterprising programmer can solve these problems for us all.