Gregoire Charting Careful Social Media Course

By NW Digest Team at July 7th, 2009.

In our continuing series on Northwest politicos and technology, we received a reply from Governor Gregoire’s Office today. The reply and our analysis follows after the jump.

Rietmann, Kristina (GOV)
Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 1:21 PM
To: NWDIGEST

Please see responses below and let me know if you have any questions! Additionally, you may find this article by Stateline very interesting! Twitter becomes political tool. It has a pretty good list of what governors are tweeting.

The Governor does email from her desktop, but does not have a BBerry. She either tweets from her desktop or tells staff what to tweet … We’re getting into the swing of things on Twitter and may starting answering @replies and direct messages in the future.

Thanks,
Kris Rietmann
OFM/Governor’s Office New Media Manager

When Alaska Governor Sarah Palin resigned on the eve of the 4th of July, few details were made available to the press concerning her decision. Instead, Gov. Palin quickly turned to social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter in an effort to bypass the media and directly communicate with citizens.

While her counterpart to the North (at least for another two weeks) is using social media to respond to a media “crisis” situation, Gregoire is taking a much more measured approach, largely using her Twitter profile to tout community visits, important milestones and accomplishments, and of course, her association with the still popular Obama Administration. If faced with a crisis of her own in Washington State, would Gregoire turn to Twitter to communicate? Or rely more on traditional press? At the moment, it appears to still be the latter.

Tags: Chris Gregoire, Facebook, Sarah Palin, Social Media, Twitter