On October 15, 2008, the third and final presidential debate was held. During the class period the debate was streamed live online through twitter which added an extra element of entertainment to the debate because you could read what the comments people were submitting though twitter and it was interesting to get other people’s view points and opinions on issues. Not to mention it lightened the intensity of the debate because some of what people were twittering was absolutely hilarious. Of course there were some comments that I could have gone without seeing and obviously some people were just being rude, foolish or not really offering critical opinions or substance. Another good point that was brought up in class after the debate is the filtering system of the twitters. A few people in class were submitting twitters but none of them made it to the air. I wonder if that is because there were too many twitters for the system to handle and it simply would not have been feasible for all the submissions to be streamed or was it because the twitter feeds were being controlled by a gatekeeper that let some through and denying others? And if there was such a gatekeeper than why were they putting through the lame and pointless twitters?
Although I found hacking the debate to be a decent experience there were some setbacks. Sometimes it was distracting when I did want to focus on watching the candidates debate because my eye and attention span kept being drawn to the twitter reads. Also, what was really annoying was that the picture kept freezing and it always seemed to be when one of the candidates was saying something that you actually wanted to hear. I definitely would prefer to watch something like this on the television but it was a great way to utilize the class period and I am glad I got to be part of this shared experience.
