Citizen journalism & Citizen service: Twitter-interview Belgian Minister.

A couple of days ago, a Minister from the Kingdom of Belgium organized a Twitter-interview. The “event” was organized in cooperation with a newspaper. As a result, a lot of Q-A occurred between the Minister and officially registered journalists of a publishing group. We do understand this of course. However, the “Twitter-interview-experiment” could have meant the start of “Citizen Journalism” and “Citizen Service”. The first being a form of journalism that enables anyone to take part in the news-making process. The latter being an informative, collaborative and conversation platform for governmental organizations.

Citizen journalism: Twitter-interview with Minister of Belgium

The rise of the internet and the advent of Citizen journalism

With the rise of the internet, journalism gradually changed. Anyone could create articles through blogs. Everybody could be a journalist. They just had to start a blog and write articles. Today, there’s something even more interesting: Twitter.

Twitter-interview Belgian Minister

The interview on December 9 demonstrated that in fact anyone with a Twitter-account could have interviewed the Minister. Anyone was able to ask questions. Everybody was an interviewer.

Citizen service: Twitter as a tool for governments?

The event did not guarantee your question to be answered. Should there be a dedicated governmental service to make sure all citizen questions are answered?

Can Twitter be a useful medium for this? Can governments deploy it to further bridge the gap with their citizens? Is it useful to inform citizens about new laws via a twitter feed? Would it be beneficial to build up conversations about essential social themes over Twitter? Could Twitter bring the government closer to the people? Could this result in happier citizens and an improved quality of life?

Understanding Dutch? Read the Twitter-interview here.