A Think Tank’s Effective Use of Twitter for the Presidential Debates
Posted by: Rob Bluey
Last Tuesday as I was sharing my thoughts on Twitter during the second presidential debate, I noticed frequent updates from the Cato Institute. Like Heritage, Cato reguarly tweets about its policy work. But what made Cato’s debate coverage special was the instant reaction from its analysts.
Rather than wait until after the debate to comment on the candidates’ policy proposals, Cato’s manager of new media, Christopher Moody, put the libertarian think tank’s policy experts to work right away. The result was instantaneous and informative analysis. The experiment was such a success that Cato plans to replicate it tonight.
By my count, Cato provided 44 updates on Twitter during the 90-minute debate. Its Twitter team included Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow for energy policy and environmental protection; Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies; and Jagadeesh Gokhale, senior fellow for economics and expert on entitlement reform. (more…)
