Elected officials and agencies on Twitter
Barack Obama was tweeting about his own birthday late last week, and he’s also hard at work rounding up supporters for the 2012 election. If social media was important in 2008, it could play a deciding role in the next election, as more and more public discourse goes online, either on Facebook, in the blogosphere or in the short-form venue of Twitter.
One of my favorite Twitter sources is the NASA Earth Observatory. The agency tweets daily links to a wide variety of satellite images that paint an incredible picture of natural and man-made processes on Earth — everything from volcanic eruptions in Iceland to Missouri River flooding and, as in the following tweet, fires in Africa. This, in my opinion, is tax money well-spent.
https://twitter.com/#!/NASA_EO/status/100327868877381633
The National Park Service has multiple twitter feeds, including a separate stream for nearly every park. The latest NPS tweet links to an info page on whitebark pines, an iconic tree of the Rocky Mountains that is fading fast under pressure from global warming. The whitebark is in the five-needle pine family, and there is concern that some of the same problems could afflict Colorado’s bristlecone pines, among the oldest living things on Earth.
NOAA, the umbrella agency for various weather and climate-related sub-agencies, also has multiple Twitter feeds, and I enjoy following Justin’s stream, just because it puts a face to the tweets, and he is responsive to questions posed on Twitter. NOAA has also done live tweets from underwater scientists based at a submerged research station in Florida.
The BLM often tweets updates on management plans and projects, like this info from Oregon.
The EPA is one of the most active agencies on Twitter, offering links to water-saving tips, updates on proposed new environmental regulations. The @EPALive tweetstream is exactly what it sounds like — live tweets from ongoing projects, in this case an ocean voyage that includes water sampling off the New England Coast.
To follow some of the battles over public land management in the West, I follow the tweets of the House Natural Resources Committee, which under Republican leadership is aggressively pushing domestic energy development. I consider this to be a propaganda feed for a conservative, pro-business, pro-oil agenda, but like the Godfather said, hold friends close and your enemies even closer.
And finally, a fun link to a NOAA ocean photo gallery. You can check out the Summit Voice list of government Twitter feeds here.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
