Twitter political debate

The Dutch 'RTL nieuws' is organizing a twitter debate conducted by their parliamentary reporter Frits Wester. In this web 2.0 debate the Dutch political leaders will debate about the important theme's in the run-up to the Dutch parliamentary elections on June the 9th. Theme's, for example safety, integration, milieu and of course the economical problems, will be presented with propositions. According to RTL Nieuws editor in chief Harm Taselaar : 'Social media capture an important role in our current society. With this debate we offer our viewers a special way of getting in contact with the Dutch politic. Frits Wester is an active user of Twitter with many followers (http://twitter.com/fritswester) and with his knowledge of the Dutch political landscape, he is the right man for the job.'

The RTL nieuws Twitter debate will be on 2th of June, between 20.00 hour and 21.30 hour.

I really like this initiative of RTL, it's innovating and it reaches other target groups than with a 'classical' television debate. But I think it has some downsides either, for example a tweet can be max 140 words so the risk of a shallow debate (Wilders's standard) will be high. Furthermore, I don't like it when political leaders come up with one liners because they talk about the future of our country. Anyhow, I am looking forward to this debate..