Every White House needs to inform and engage Americans “where we are,” online and offline
In which I suggest the US government should start posting PSAs to TikTok, among other things.
[Hey there! I stumbled into writing this initial entry of Civic Texts today, as I posted an evolving thought over social networks. Bear with me as I work out the kinks. -Alex]
The Obama White House joined Tumblr on this day, one decade ago. In 2023, the White House is not on Tumblr or many of the other social networks it was updating in 2013.
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, GitHub, & Flickr endure. Digg, MySpace, Vine, Storify, GooglePlus, not so much. (It’s surprising that they’re not on LinkedIn.)
Once a White House commits to reaching Americans “where we are”, then the offices of public engagement, press secretary, & communications need to apply online & offline strategies for public participation & information.
Relevant vectors include:
📰 news
📻 radio
📺 TV
💬 texts
🤳social media
📧 email
🎙️town halls
📚libraries
🚉transit
🏫schools
Instead of banning TikTok, imagine if the White House tried to engage ~150 million Americans there, & then crossposted each video PSA across Instagram Snap Inc. & YouTube to ensure that info was available to all.
Start with vote.gov & serve.gov. Build new .gov websit4es & services with us.
I know it looks dark online, but we should still be thinking bigger about how to do more than just get We the People Internet access, as foundational as that is: we need to make it matter, rebuilding trust through the delivery of trustworthy information over time on participatory platforms.
Better digital services won’t be enough: we need integrated offline and online strategies that find publics with information wherever we are.
We need a government communications revolution proportionate to the paired public health and civic crises we have collectively endured over the pandemic.
I still believe in the capacity of my fellow Americans to deliver on it, in no small part by learning about what the rest of the world is doing online and adapting, adopting, and improving civic technologies that meet our own needs.
While the government should engage us "where we are," wherever that might be, I believe that they should ensure that they support non-proprietary, open platforms or protocols whenever doing so is reasonable. I find it obnoxious that the White House has a Twitter account but does not even echo its Tweets to non-proprietary systems such as those reliant on ActivityPub (e.g. Mastodon), Nostr, or other open protocols.
The government can't, and shouldn't, encourage people to shift platforms (e.g. to go where they are not), but it also shouldn't allow its preference for any proprietary platform to diminish the value of more open alternatives. Whenever the White House chooses to engage on a proprietary platform, it should seek to identify and similarly support non-proprietary, alternative platforms.
I think that it’s not only reasonable to support non-proprietary platforms and open protocols, but that it should be the default. There is an ongoing failure of imagination and responsibility right now, as you can see expressed across the varied states of federal, city, & state agency verification on Twitter right now. Instead of not paying & letting a company set the terms by Unverification, the White House could be using its considerable leverage to ensure it and set up on open platforms, crossposting and always ensuring the public does not have to pay for public info.