Live-Tweeting Sec. of State John Kerry’s Keynote Address at Frontiers in Development Forum

Due to my interest in poverty issues, I decided to live-tweet Secretary of State John Kerry’s keynote address at the Frontiers in Development Forum, which was hosted by USAID and was held Sept. 18-19 at the Ronald Reagan building in Washington, D.C.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that some of my tweets were favorited and retweeted by people and organizations in the development community. However, as I periodically skimmed the Twitter feed of the hashtag #EndPoverty – which was being used by the forum’s attendees, the development community and the State Department – Kerry’s speech didn’t seem to generate a lot of online chatter except for a few comments and live-tweets from some members of the development community.

Here is how my live-tweeting went:

While I wait for the speech to start, I decide to provide some info from the press release:

A sprinkling of my own interests:

It’s 9:30, the speech is behind schedule already. Not entirely surprised- that’s what usually happens with high-profile speakers.

(Wishful thinking.)

The lights dim and the stage is reset for Kerry’s speech. This goes on for several minutes, with what sounds like elevator music playing in the background.

While I’m waiting, I decide to provide some more background info:

Then, a member of the House of Representatives introduces Kerry and says how great he is.

And finally, the speech begins.

As Kerry is saying that, I’m reminded of discussions we’ve had about social media, sharing and our current networked society that we’ve had in this class and in some of my other Comm classes.

No big surprise there.

I get a notification: my tweet has been favorited! By this organization:

Although I’m happy that someone is actually paying attention to my live tweets, I wonder why a professional organization focusing on poverty issues has favorited my tweet. At the time, I hadn’t updated my profile to say that I’m a senior at the University of Michigan studying Political Science and Communication Studies and taking a journalism class. It just had my name and my profile picture. So how would they know if the information I was reporting was accurate? I could be some random person in some obscure part of the world making things up. Had they heard that exact quote themselves and knew it was accurate? Or were they just putting blind faith in the reporting of some random Twitter user (me)?

This ties back to our discussions about the benefits and drawbacks of citizen journalism.

Anyway, back to the speech.

Another favorited tweet! Again, by IDIN.

I get another notification: this time, my tweet has been retweeted!

By this person:

Who is Executive Vice President of this organization:

This Twitter user is in a high-level position in a professional organization focusing on hunger and poverty issues, and he’s retweeting a tweet from a random Twitter user (me) who could be just making things up. Again, I think about what this means for the future of journalism and professional organizations in general.

Furiously typing away, trying to capture as much info as possible…

I thought that that last tweet might generate some favorites, retweets, etc., since I read news articles all the time about prominent politicians and government officials saying that Congress should or should not pass certain bills. But alas, the tweet remains untouched.