Presidential Rhetoric in 140 Characters or Less

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama was known early on for his tech-savvy campaign strategies, which included maintaining accounts on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, but the establishment of President Obama as the “first wired president” (Griggs 2009) was undoubtedly confirmed on January 19, 2010 when he personally submitted an update to the Red Cross Twitter feed—a first for a sitting president. Three months later Twitter again entered public discourse when the Library of Congress announced that it would house all of the so-called tweets posted on the rather expansive website—sparking almost instant public debate (Bliumis and Scoble 2010). Much of the controversy surrounding this decision was based on physical location, as it was the proximity of the archive to important documents such as the Gettysburg Address that caused concern. The critics questioned the need to archive arbitrary announcements such as banal statements of one’s sour mood in such a prestigious institution. But one thing that these critics do not address is how to archive new digital forms of rhetoric. The Library of Congress’ decision did clear up one relevant question: where the archive of President Obama’s collective rhetoric on Twitter would be housed.