Can Twitter and Current TV spice up the presidential debates?

An interesting idea (and far more appropriate than liveblogging a toddler’s funeral) from the Center for Independent Media’s youth vote correspondent, Mike Connery at Future Majority.com.

I’ve written in the past about how the upcoming presidential debates seem to be stepping back from the viewer-participation models we saw in the primaries. Well Current TV and Twitter are trying to (somewhat) alleviate that. The two participatory media properties are looking to join forces to give viewers (somewhat) more of a say when Obama and McCain square off.

Via Mashable:

Twitter is continuing to find its way into mainstream media, the latest example being today’s announcement that they have teamed up with Current TV to include Tweets in the cable network’s upcoming coverage of the Presidential debates. The Tweets – which will be selected by Current TV and Twitter staff – will take the form of an overlay on screen. To participate, viewers will need to use “#current” in their tweets during the debates, the first of which airs next Friday – September 26th.

The partnership with Current TV follows a slew of recent integrations of Twitter into mainstream media. Rick Sanchez has been reading Tweets and interacting with his growing Twitter audience on-air for CNN, while political network C-SPAN made heavy use of the microblogging tool during the recent Democratic and Republican conventions.

It’s no MTV/MySpace Dialogue, and neither Obama nor McCain will ever see a word you Tweet, (and what’s up with the fact that Twitter and Current will filter the Tweets?) but hey, it beats watching Wolf Blitzer for an hour and a half . . .

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