Social Media Take on Role of Presidential Questioner

The decision by President Obama to participate in Wednesday’s first Twitter town hall meeting, live from the East Room, is a reminder that the White House is eager to exploit whatever technologies will help get out his message, unfiltered.

But the forum, an hourlong “conversation” between the president and millions of Twitter users, is also remarkable for the ways in which new media companies are taking on roles that used to be the sole province of traditional news organizations.

And it raises interesting questions for everyone involved: Are the hosts from the social media companies journalists? Do the companies involved, which all lobby the federal government, have a reason to shape the conversation? Are the questions posed by Twitter followers — and trending on the social media service — a better representation of what people want to hear from Mr. Obama than those asked by reporters at last week’s news conference?

In a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, made it clear that Mr. Obama’s advisers believe that the exchanges are valuable.

“We’ve entered a different information age, where people get news and information in a different way than they did in the past,” Mr. Pfeiffer said. “If you’re going to communicate with the broad public, it is no longer sufficient to simply do it through traditional mainstream media.”

He added: “You have to go beyond that because people are getting their information in different ways and from different sources. And we’re always on the lookout for ways to have a productive interaction with the public in new and exciting ways.”

The Twitter town hall meeting is just the latest example of the new political reality for politicians like Mr. Obama.

In April, Mr. Obama sat down with the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for a similar exchange that featured questions from Mr. Zuckerberg and Facebook users. In January, Mr. Obama answered questions from YouTube users in a forum sponsored by Google.

On Wednesday, the president will answer questions submitted during the past several days from Twitter users. The conversation, questions asked in 140 characters or less and answered in Mr. Obama’s typically extended manner, will be moderated by Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey.

Hoping to avoid any accusations that the White House is managing the news, Mr. Pfeiffer and other aides repeatedly noted that questions would be selected in part by 10 Twitter users around the country who were picked by the company.

Those “superusers” will help cull the thousands of questions to pick the ones put to Mr. Obama. The company will also use its own filters, officials said.

“That’s all Twitter,” said Macon Phillips, the director of digital strategy for the White House. “So Twitter came up with a list of people that they felt had good geographic distribution and that they could include in their process of identifying popular themes and representative questions.”

The real change may not be in the desire of the White House to use any means possible to advance its agenda. Throughout Washington, political figures are turning to Twitter as a way to get formal — and less formal — information to their supporters and adversaries.

But the social media companies are now becoming a competitor of sorts to the more traditional means of putting the president on the spot — the on-camera interview by a network anchor, the yelled-out questions by a reporter at an event or the full-blown news conference in the East Room.

The social media companies are now firmly established as an alternative means of getting a president to respond to the big — or maybe not so big — questions of the day. Rather than being up to a journalist or blogger, the direction of the questioning will be largely guided by the broader interests of the Twitter community.

That’s not to say that the traditional political establishment is about to let the questions meander wherever the Twitter users might want them to go. Republicans took to the online service on Wednesday morning, offering tough questions for Mr. Obama on the economy.

“Under 8 years of George W. Bush, the unemployment rate was never above 7.3%,” the conservative blogger Jim Geraghty proposed as a question. “When will it be that low again?”

House Speaker John A. Boehner suggested: “Will you outline a plan #4jobs – other than more spending – for the American people?” He helpfully included a link to jobs.gop.gov, where House Republicans have detailed their proposals.

And Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and a Republican presidential hopeful, suggested that Mr. Obama be asked, “Where are the jobs?”

Will he?

That’s up to Mr. Dorsey, the 10 Twitter users who are culling the questions, and the broader online universe of millions of Twitter users.

It’s a new world.