Vine equals spin room for State of the Union

Friday, 31 January 2014

Vine became the six-second spin room Tuesday, as legislators used the short-form video platform to capture their reactions to the president’s State of the Union (#SOTU) address moments after it happened.

It was a bipartisan, bicameral effort, as members of both political parties from the House and Senate used Vine and Twitter to deliver their rapid response to the speech and start a real-time conversation with their audience.

House Republicans in particular coordinated their use of Vine as the medium to get their responses out minutes after the address. Speaker of the House John Boehner (@SpeakerBoehner), the highest ranking Republican official, was able to distill his views on #SOTU clearly and concisely in 140 characters and 6 seconds:

He also embedded the Vine video on his website.

The House Republican Conference successfully coordinated their messaging on both Twitter and Vine, even creating a “Vine station” in the Capitol where nearly 20 members provided their thoughts both before the speech — what they hoped to hear and encouraging constituent comments and taking questions — as well as after, for the first time offering their reactions in real time. These were shared from @HouseGOP:

In a message, Boehner directed readers to the 2014 House Republican SOTU site to “engage on Twitter with Republican leaders and lawmakers, who will be providing rapid response videos through Vine.” The site, which posted a webcast of the official Republican response (delivered by Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (@CathyMcMorris, Chair of the GOP Conference and the highest ranking Republican elected female in Congress) also featured House Republicans’ live responses in an embedded Twitter list for side-by-side fact checking. Speaker Boehner, together with other Republicans, tweeted out the website and information ahead of time to start the conversation early.

The day before her speech, Rep. McMorris Rodgers tweeted a behind-the-scenes Vine video of the room where she was to film her official response.

Across the Capitol, Senate Republicans were also active on both platforms. @Senate_GOPs tweeted out Vine videos before the speech and as the senators entered the chamber.

In addition, they created a custom timeline of the senators’ Tweets before, during and after #SOTU.

Vine was also quite popular further down Pennsylvania Avenue at the @WhiteHouse. First Lady Michelle Obama (@FLOTUS) sent a quick Vine moment before she headed to the Capitol.

The day before, the President himself recorded a Vine message about the State of the Union that @WhiteHouse tweeted out.

In all, the six-second spin room and the ability to give a real-time rapid response through Vine and Twitter proved to be a powerful tool for elected officials during this #SOTU.

Do you know of other innovative uses of Twitter? Write to mediablog@twitter.com.

*Editor's note: As of November 2017, Twitter has increased the character count of Tweets in certain languages to make it easier to share what’s happening.

 

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