Urban Politics #321 April 16th, 2012
By Seattle City Councilmember Nick Licata
SOCIAL MEDIA AND URBAN POLITICS
I wonder how many of you remember receiving my first e-newsletter, Urban Politics (UP) #01, back in 1996? It addressed transferring the Freeway Park garage to the Washington State Convention and Trade Center. In 1996, one would start their modem, wait 30 seconds to log on, check email, perhaps spend a few minutes chatting with an AOL buddy. One could browse, but there was no YouTube, Huffington Post or Wikipedia. There was no FaceBook, Twitter or Google Search to browse to. There was no such thing as a blog.
16 years later, I still email UP to my subscribers. In a world of 140 character limits and shortening attention spans, UP continues to provide readers a more in-depth analysis on timely public policy issues than other mediums tend to offer.
I have recently expanded UP to include social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and my City Council blog. As a compliment to my more comprehensive UP emails, I now post short informational items and announcements to my City Council UP blog, to Facebook and to Twitter. Each has a specific function.
My UP blog allows for photos, embedded videos and web links leading to additional information and resources related to the topic of the entry. In order to keep in touch with my blog, one needs to subscribe via an RSS feed (really simple syndication. see below). RSS feeds send notifications to a subscriber’s web browser. When one clicks on the notification, it redirects the browser to the source of the feed, in this case my blog. Facebook requires a free membership for access and reaches a much broader audience than does my blog. There, I post both links to my blog as well as short informational items and announcements. Twitter serves a similar function as does Facebook, although it only allows for 140-character-or-less posts, offering abbreviated links to posts exceeding that number.
Some of my recent UP blog postings that may interest you address the anti-poverty initiative called ONE, the City’s Transit Master Plan, trends in King County health inequities and a recent Film Forum film screening at one of my committee meetings.
While I will continue to email UP newsletters, I invite you to consider subscribing to my UP blog, liking me on Facebook and following me on Twitter. That way, you won’t miss postings there that I don’t address in the email version of UP. Instructions on how to do so are below.
Thanks!
COUNCIL MEMBERS & MAYOR’S EMAIL ADDRESSES
Citizens are directed to the following website to complete a form to send an email to the Mayor’s Office. http://www.cityofseattle.net/mayor/citizen_response.htm
Keep in touch…
- Subscribe to my Urban Politics email newsletter by sending a blank email.
- To Unsubscribe, send a blank email (No message needed in the body of the emails you send).
- Subscribe to my blog.
- Like me on Facebook.
- Follow me on Twitter.
